International Business Management of Amazon​

Executive Summary

The current paper tends to discuss the effectiveness and the significance of business competitiveness and strategic business performance in a much detailed manner. This also widens the scopes for business performance and strategic business approaches to retain the competitive strategies to retain a higher number of business competitiveness. Moreover, this report has selected Amazon Company as a case research to identify and analyze the international business management perspectives. Using appropriate management approaches of Amazon, this paper has been able to analyze and discuss the factors while managing the growth framework.

This paper has also focused on the analysis of business competitiveness and leadership perspectives in a much detailed manner. Later, with the use of Hofstede’s cultural model, this paper has been able to validate the issues relating to business marketing management in the international environment more efficiently.

Table of Contents

1.0 Introduction.. 4

1.1 Organizational Background. 4

1.2 Report Aim and hypothesis. 5

Part A.. 5

2.0 Management Approaches of Organization.. 5

2.1 Role of Leadership Style. 7

2.2 Role of Organizational Culture in Employee Motivation.. 8

Part B.. 9

3.0 Conflicts and Cultural difference in different Counties. 9

3.1 Role of Cultural model to resolve conflicts. 11

4.0 Leadership Experiences and Its effectiveness (Depending on theories) 12

5.0 Team management based on Belbin model 13

6.0 Strengths and Opportunities for development 14

7.0 Conclusion.. 14

References. 16

1.0 Introduction

In the contemporary world, organizations are not surrounded by any particular country or province. With the changing business spectrum, especially due to the digital transformation, organizations are trying to expand the business beyond their national territory. Hence, it has become important to understand the role and importance of international business management to ensure business growth in a speculative way. Business management, therefore, can refer to the practice of implementing different methods and innovations to make the organization more effective and efficient. Along with improving the organizational work system, it also empowers and trains its employees, introducing different systems and technologies to improve production quality. Therefore, in this report, I am going to describe the way Amazon organizes its global team management. Being one of the most prominent global business organizations,it always needs to be aware regarding its policy implementation and practice to ensure employee enrichment. 

1.1 Organizational Background

Amazon is one of the most promising e-commerce business organizations that, after establishing in 1994, only looked forward to its business growth. The founder of this company, Jeff Bezos, started the business by selling books, and soon it transformed into a seller that sells “A to Z ” or every type of product that one uses in their regular life. In 2020, Amazon was able to make a net income of US$ 21.33 billion. Currently, the company operates in different mediums such as Amazon Prime, Kindle, Amazon Music, and many more. It is continuously increasing its business using these platforms. According to the business report 2021, Amazon operates in more than 200 countries around the world and is running successfully.Due to its rapid internationalization, the company is influenced by different cultures, leadership styles, and management styles according to the changing culture of every country. Amazon believes in universalism and neutral organization operation to achieve its aims. The company believes in planning to control the outer direction for ensuring organizational success.

Figure 1: Amazon Logo

(Source: annualreports.com, 2021,)

1.2 Report Aim and hypothesis

The principal aim of this report is to understand the approaches related to business management in the international context. Along with that, it will also intervene in the areas regarding the influence of different cultures and leadership practice in managing a business in the international arena while facing continuous change according to the changing countries.

The primary hypothesis of this report is to establish a proper understanding regarding the use of different leadership styles for organizational development (Horoshkovaet al., 2019).

The influence of culture, leadership style, and management approaches helps an organization to develop business practices and also helps to adopt the changes accordingly.

Part A

2.0 Management Approaches of Organization

Due to digital capitalism, society and the working world are undergoing several changes. They are facing structural change to informational from industrialism in the global context that values digitalization more than anything. Not only the IT or Information Technology workers, other platforms that operate in this time also focus on rapid decentralization and virtualization of organization. According to Linke(2019), in the computerization and digitalization of the current working world, the organization managers are becoming so influential in understanding and motivating employees to ensure organizational development (Linke, 2019). Organization management, therefore, can be referred to as the process through which different techniques and technologies are being used to control and direct the organization. These approaches may be adopted by the organization or the individual manager of an organization.  In this context Karamyshev, (2018) two approaches for enterprise management to understand the way enterprises can eventually develop the business growth in their operating country. In the first approach, the researcher mentioned that the essence of management consists of some similar work that separates the structural unit of the organization. It includes departments, bureau, and divisions. However, the basis of structural organization management includes some regulatory documents that determine objectives, goals, organizational structure, and work descriptions. This approach is comparatively rigid towards intra-organizational discipline and hierarchy (Karamyshev, 2018). While the second approach tries to minimize organizational performance. This approach is known as the process approach under which the organization consumes its resources such as labor, material, and information resources. This approach presupposes work specification and its output on products.

However, there are mainly three types of organizational management approaches, such as functional approach, process approach, and project approach.

Functional Approach: This approach is the most common type of management approach that divides the staff of the organization into small groups. These groups are based on some specialized “functional areas,” such as marketing, finance, and IT (Knight & Hahn, 2021). The organizations that follow this structure use specialization-based principles to perform organizational functions (Mohelska&Sokolova, 2018). The major disadvantage of this approach is that it is a very complex system. Hence, due to its division into several hierarchy groups, it faces issues in conveying messages to all potential groups.

Process Approach: The process approach reflects the process system operation of an organization. Together by identifying and interacting with the processes, an organization manages its operations. The principal purpose of this approach is to increase the organizational effectiveness and efficiency to achieve the defined objectives. The effectiveness of this approach is generally being assessed by both internal and external processes of operation review. However, this is the most powerful way to manage and organize the organizational activities to create value for the interested parties and consumers. Organizations, in this case, are mostly structured into hierarchical functional units to manage the operations normally as well as vertically (Marsen, 2020). The process management approach also introduces horizontal management and eradicates the barriers between different functional units to achieve the main objectives of the organization.

Project Approach of management: This is comparatively a new approach in organization management. Under this approach, the organization tries to divide the staff into top teams and allocate them a particular job role to achieve the organizational goals. It has rapidly interfered with those organizations that are traditionally non-project-oriented (Basten&Haamann, 2018). The project approach, therefore, can be described as an in-depth exploration of any particular topic that is initiated to involve an individual in a group. The main of this approach is to encourage and motivate the employees to adopt changes and operate accordingly. This approach mainly works with the help of three major models as the waterfall model, agile model, scrum model, and Kanban model. The followers of this approach prefer to implement systematic management that guides the organizations to deal with some complex problems and find out the opportunities for organizational development (Serrat, 2017). However, according to some researchers, this approach tends to blow the problem to its largest dimensions. In contests, some others have described that this project redefines, analyzes, synthesizes, and improves the decision-making process for an organization.

Amazon implements the hierarchical corporate approach for organization management. Being one of the largest retailers in the business world,the hierarchical structure suits it the best. It prefers to be more flexible to give its employees a chance to express their point of view. The inclusive approach of this company helps it to retain popularity among its consumers and employees. Still, it has developed some issues regarding organizational operation management. The leaders are also responsible for understanding and operating accordingly (Sirotkina, Golikova, &Romashchenko, 2018). In further sections, this report will show the way leadership affects business management and improves its functions.

2.1 Role of Leadership Style

In this contemporary time organization achieves success not only through its financial resources; eventually, it also includes the proper use of its physical and psychological human resources. According to González-Navarro, et al. (2018), changes have become one of the most dynamic and inherent aspects of organizational operation. With the changing scenario, workers now need to deal with more uncertainty and adopt new situations. This is influencing organizations to change or experiment with new leadership styles to ensure the progressiveness of the organization as well. 

On the other hand, Muhammed &Zaim. (2020) focused on the way leadership strategy can increase support to employees and its influence on individual behavior. While discussing so, the study discussed different leadership styles that can be implemented within an organizational operation to get maximum benefit.

1. Autocratic leadership: This type of leadership imposes all decisions on employees or team members. They hardly get any chance to give any ideas or recommendations to the leaders. Though this is appropriate for certain situations, in most cases, it tends to fill the organizational development due to its utmost rigidity (Folger et al., 2021).
2. Transformational: This leadership style tries to implement changes in the overall organization system to adopt the constant developments. Followers of this leadership style are known as quiet leaders that use rapport, inspire and empathize with their followers. In this way, the employees possess courage, confidence, and sacrifices to ensure the greater good. 
3. Democratic:  This style is being adopted by most companies as it gives the employees more flexibility to express their views and develops unity among them. In this way, the overall organizational performance increases, which helps the organization to achieve the expected goals (Lumi, 2020). The democratic leadership style also engenders trust in each other and increases team spirit. In this way, the relationship between team members and leaders also becomes cooperative that allows the creativity of employees, and ensures their growth.

Amazon is one of the most promising multinational organizations, has implemented the Democratic Leadership Style that sets high standards for its employees. Along with that, it also expects the employees to fulfill these standards with maximum effort. In this way, the company has provided the employees the right to implement different innovative ideas for organizational development. Also, it tries to resolve the discrimination to ensure equality among employees.

2.2 Role of Organizational Culture in Employee Motivation

Apart from leadership style, organizational culture is also important to enhance employee and organizational performance. Employee motivation, therefore, is highly related to leadership that influences the organizational culture in a significant way. According to Soomro& Shah (2019), in this contemporary situation, the organizations have been successfully able to analyze their own culture and its influence on overall performance. In this respect, the organizations are trying to modify the cultures that will give them a better environment and practice. Hence, organizational culture includes the value of employees with the development of a hitch. The organization ensures not only high performance but also is able to understand the requirements of employees that can ensure greater performance and collaboration among them.  There are mainly two types of culture that can be implemented by the organizations. Rozannaet al. (2019), therefore, has mentioned a supportive and bureaucratic organizational culture that has been implemented the most till now. Supportive organizational culture ensures a warm and friendly work environment that lets the employees work with honesty, fairness, and openness. As the employees in this culture enjoy a helpful work environment, thus it motivates them to give their maximum for achieving organizational success (annualreports.com, 2021).

Amazon, therefore, implements a supportive organizational culture that pushes its employees to go beyond their limitations to provide and implement innovative ideas and solutions for organizational development. The main feature of Amazon’s organizational culture is boldness, peculiarity, and customer-centricity (Beugelsdijket al., 2017). Through Democratic leadership and a Maslow hierarchical management approach, the company tries to accelerate invention on behalf of their customers. The CEO of Amazon believes in possibility and not the probability of success, and for that, it is important to follow inclusiveness rather than individualism (sell.amazon.in, 2021).

Part B

3.0 Conflicts and Cultural difference in different Counties

As multinational organizations are not limited within the boundary of any particular country and operate in multiple countries thus, it makes them appoint employees from various regions while operating in a new country. Along with that, in current time, migration for better livelihood has been increased (Varnum and Grossmann 2017). People move to the developed world from the developing world to find a better workplace and work satisfaction. In this regard, especially in developed countries, the availability of cheap and skilled laborers has also been increased. In contrast, people move towards towns from the rural areas for better jobs and livelihood. This is increasing the cultural and general differences among employees and the competition as well. This is gradually increasing the conflicts among employees, which is affecting organizational success.  While discussing this, Stahl et al. (2019) mentioned that the organization mainly faces issues related to differences and diversity that lead to the environment of discordance within an organization. According to the study, the organizations mainly faced issues in cross-cultural management while setting up any particular organizational culture (Stahl et al., 2019). The company focuses on cultural differences rather than focusing on its outcomes. It is important to understand and evaluate the outcome first in order to make the development of the organization.  In my team, the representatives of and UK culture can be evaluated through this model. 

Being an employee in an international organization like Amazon, I have closely observed some cultural and organizational bias that is way more impactful in employee performance than it can be assumed. However, the analysis of the cultural differences of Amazon can be discussed through Hofstede’s cultural model dimensions.

1. Power distance: Though amazon uses an organizational hierarchy still being a flatter one, it allows its employees easier access to its management. It motivates the employees to perform with more efficiency. However, being a part of the team,I have identified various cultural conflicts between India and the UK (González-Navarro et al., 2018).  The score of power distance completely differs in the UK (35) and India (71). While the UK people believe in not limiting the scope of people to work on a team, in contrast, the Indian culture prefers to centralize power despite its low capacity of management. In this regard, I faced conflict as I tried to centralize power and the rest of my team members preferred to complete the task in a democratic way.
2. Individualism or Collectivism: The organization always tries to value the employee’s privacy both in the workplace and personal life. Neither the company encroaches on the personal matters of an employee. In contrast, it tries to provide privacy whenever required. While the UK people scored higher (89) in individualism, India scored only 48 in this. I believe that people who are known to me can get better opportunities than others. That was not accepted by other team members, and the UK people prefer to justify the ability of individuals. Here a conflict arose due to my decisions to promote my fellow member as project manager as there was another member who performed better and deserved to be in the position.       
3.  Masculinity or Femininity: Amazon has a low score in the MAS dimension. Interestingly both the members have a low score in femininity and high in masculinity. This created issues in team member selection and responsibility distribution. In this way, the conflict between other team members arose, which can be one of the main reasons behind demotivating women employees of the team (Muhammed &Zaim, 2020).  
4. Uncertainty: Despite being a flexible organization, the company is forcing its employees to take high risks to achieve their organizational goals. Even in this dimension, both the countries scored very low as the difference is only about 5 scores (35 and 40). It shows people are less interested in uncertainty and believe nothing can go perfectly according to plans. It resulted in a lack of planning to do the project that evolved various problems from job distribution to monitoring the proper progress.
5. Orientation: Amazon places high importance on the rights and values of every employee. Amazon tends to understand how the problem can be resolved then why it has evolved. In this case, too, both team members prefer to maintain time-honored traditions. Despite having the same score (51) in this regard, the team members differ in punctuality (Soomro& Shah 2019). While I have forgiven the lack of punctuality of my team members, the member from the UK was quite arrogant regarding this matter without even listening to the reason. This not only causes conflicts among team members but also influences their performance. 
6. Indulgence or Restraint: Amazon prefers to be an indulgent one that provides employees better benefits like flexible working hours. It also tries to provide the employees with several facilities. With a high score of 69 than the low score of 26 of India in this dimension stands with indulgence in respect of restraint of India. In this regard, I have indulged with my team members in conflict regarding spending money on projects. Where I believed in planning the financial budget for successful project completion, I got refrained from my coworker.

These conflicts led the team to face several hazards in work progress, and I badly wanted to resolve the issues to ensure the success of the organization.

3.1 Role of Cultural model to resolve conflicts

Hofstede’s cultural model is one of the most powerful tools to understand and analyze the cultural differences between different countries and employees. In this way, the organization successfully identifies the existing as well as probable issues that need to be resolved to justify the organizational norms, values, rules, and regulations. This cultural model dimension helped me to identify the main issues that were evolving between me and my team members that led me to find out the best possible ways to resolve the conflicts (Rozannaet al., 2019). It was not only necessary for organizational development. Hence it was equally important for the success of teamwork.

4.0 Leadership Experiences and Its effectiveness (Depending on theories)

Being a believer in the democratic leadership style, I tried to implement the democratic leadership approach within the project while working in the organization. Under this leadership style, every team member got an equal opportunity to exchange their ideas freely. In this regard, the team members were able to share their opinion regarding the involvement of other members within the organization. Along with that, it helped me to maintain unity and integrity among team members. It also accelerated the growth of the project simultaneously. Democratic leadership, however, provides the scope to encourage people not only to hate their requirements, instead of the issues they are facing as well. In this way, I was able to encourage their creativity level and reward them according to their performance.  I think this style of leadership helped me to make final decisions on many occasions and ensure the project quality as well. From determining their roles in a particular project to evaluating the performance, I tried to involve all my team members to understand their requirements to complete the project.

Eventually, it brought some problems in my way of leadership as well. Due to the differences in opinion, one of my team members and I indulged in conflicts. Due to which the other team members were also raising internal conflicts while working on the project. Instead of focusing on my leadership criteria, I rather went on following my cultural dimension that led the women team members to feel underrated and discriminated against under my leadership. Also, to understand and recognize the viewpoint of all members, I rushed to make some poor decisions that influenced the work progress as well (Park &Nawakitphaitoon 2018). These issues were common as there were people from different cultural backgrounds, and it is quite obvious to raise internal conflicts over any decision.

The principal positive notion of democratic leadership is to get the maximum commitment from the team members. This helped me to resolve the conflicts among team members with group discussions. Undoubtedly my team members have helped me to evaluate different decisions and bring them to a compact one. Also, their rights to identify the issues have helped me to identify my faults and recover them for better performance. In this regard, I have successfully ensured to increase productivity by implementing different creative solutions. Although there was a high chance of minority override, the collectivist approach, in this case, helped me as well as my team members to understand the issues of every individual and take a collective decision that benefits all.

5.0 Team management based on Belbin model

The Belbin model helps us to identify our behavioral strengths and weaknesses for developing our skills and knowledge. There are mainly 9 roles that can be observed within a team memes that include resource investigator, team worker, coordinator, planner, specialist, monitor evaluator, shaper, implementer, and complete finisher. I have worked in a group where the team members belong to different cultures.

If I focus on my role in the team, I can say I have tried to perform my roles and responsibilities properly to impose teamwork while working on the team. It not only helped me to identify the required works. Eventually, it helped me to become diplomatic (Cheonet al., 2018). However, understanding the requirements of every team member, sometimes I faced issues and indulged in conflicts. Still, I tried to maintain coordination with all to achieve maximum commitment from my team members. 

A member of my team was able to investigate the resources that could be more appropriate for the project. He is outgoing, enthusiastic, and an explorer of opportunities to develop contacts. It has helped us to become more optimistic and find quick solutions to the existing issues. However, in some cases, he failed to follow up his activities with me which created issues in further work progress. 

There were girls in my team who were able to implement different creative ideas, which were helpful to resolve very complex situations. Along with that being strategic, discerning, and sober, they used to observe the options very minutely and judge accurately. Due to my cultural opinion, both the team members faced a lack of involvement and became overly critical in some cases.

There was another team member who was a combination of all capabilities that made him dedicated to his job. Being a single-minded and self-starting person, the member was able to gain maximum knowledge and implement them for the betterment of the project. 

With the support and cooperation of all, I tried to implement the leadership style in a dynamic way. However, in some cases, I failed to thrive on the pressure on my team members and became aggressive to get things done. In this regard, I faced internal conflicts within my team. Nevertheless, my co-team members used their capabilities in the most effective way that makes the overall work constant and almost perfect.

6.0 Strengths and Opportunities for development

As a team leader, I am supposed to focus on my skills and strengths to ensure the huge productivity of my team members. In the previous section, I mentioned my team worker skill that I try to use for team management with the best potential. I have the skill to identify the risk within a project that helped my team to resolve the probable risks and reduce their impact on the project. Furthermore, I am able to make deep communication with all my team members that helped me to understand their state of position in the team and the issues they are facing. I always tried to implement equality within the team for every team member that helped me to get constant support from my team members (Rahim 2017). I always indulged myself in the problems of work and never let the members work alone. Therefore, the employees never hesitated to come to me to resolve their queries and give their valuable suggestions. I tried to gain knowledge from my coworkers to increase my skills and knowledge for personal as well as professional development.

Still, I think there are some factors that need to be developed to get maximum benefit for sustaining the success. Sometimes I became too rigid to change my decisions and reacted aggressively. This needs to be improved to ensure constant support from my team members; also, I must reduce the tendency of masculinity of my organizational culture to get maximum involvement of eerie team members for future projects. 

7.0 Conclusion

In this report, I have tried to focus on the organizational management approaches used by one of the most popular e-commerce organizations Amazon. In doing so, I have observed there are many factors that influence an organization to adopt different types of organizational approaches. The organizations, as well as their employees, are always being influenced through the adopted cultures and leadership styles to ensure motivation and employee productivity. Where, in a big organization like this, it is natural to have cultural differentiation. Simultaneously it is also important to follow the modern work culture for better performance. I have faced several issues in conducting teamwork, but with the utmost support of my team members, and after implementing skills and knowledge, I managed to control the situation and resolve the issues as well. It helped me to understand that it is always required to understand the difference between the traditional and modern work culture to involve every team member without harming their respective culture.