Course : organisational behaviour

How Jeff Bezos Manages at Amazon.com

In 1994, Jeffrey Bezos, a computer science and electrical engineering graduate from Princeton University saw an entrepreneurial opportunity in the fact internet usage was growing at a fast pace. Bezos realised that online book-selling market offered an opportunity for him to take advantage of his technical skills in the growing virtual marketplace.

Bezoss plan was to develop an online bookstore that would be customer-friendly, easy to navigate and offer the broadest possible selection of books at low prices. He realised that compared to traditional book-stores an online bookstore could offer customers any books in print.

Bezos launched his venture online in July 1995 with USD 7 Million borrowed capital. Within weeks he had to find larger premise and hire more staff as book sales grew. The problem facing him now was how best to motivate and co-ordinate his employees to best meet his new companys goals. Hi solution was to organise employees to small groups and teams based on the work tasks they needed to perform in order to satisfy his customers.

First, Bezos created the information technology (IT) team to continue to develop and improve the proprietary software he had initially developed. Then he formed the operations group to handle the day-t0-day implementation of these systems and to manage the interface the customer and the organisation. Third, he created the material management/logistic group to come up with the most cost-efficient way to obtain books from publishers and distributors and then ship them quickly to customers.

To ensure that Amazon.com strived to meet its goals of delivering books speedily with excellent customer service, Bezos paid attention to the way he motivated and controlled his employees. He realised that providing good customer service is the most vital link between customers and a company so he de-centralised authority and empowered employees to search for better ways to meet customer needs. From the beginning Bezos socialised his employees into his company by encouraging them to adopt his values of excellent customer service. He also established strong norms about how employees first task is to satisfy customers.

All Amazon.com employees are carefully selected and recruited; they are then socialised by the members of their work groups so that they quickly learn how to provide excellent customer service. Also to ensure his employees are motivated to provide excellent service, Bezos gives all his employees share in the company. Today employees own 10 percent of Amazon.coms share.

Finally, as a leader, Bezos is a hands-on manager who works closely with employees to find innovative, cost-saving solutions to problems. As a figurehead he spends a great deal of time flying around the world to publicise his company and he has succeeded because Amazon.com is one of the best known dot.com companies. At Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos behaves in ways that help to improve employees work attitudes and increase their performance, which improves the well-being of employees, customers and his company.

(Source: adapted from George J.M & Jones GR (2012) Understanding and Managing Organizational Behaviour 6th ed Pearson Education, pg 57)

Question 2

Explain how Jeff Bezos structured Amazon.com to deliver high quality customer service.

Note : -

- answer base on the question

- answer must be in 500 words above. Answer must base on the case study

thank you

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