Amazon Management Style

1. Introduction

Amazon has been criticised for its unpopular management styles by many. This paper will provide an insight to how these unpopular methods pose as a challenge for the managers, ranging from the lack of different management styles to the amount of distrust in the company.

Whilst Amazon is immensely successful, there will be new problems arising daily in the future. Just a single management style would not be able to sustain the business and overcome all the obstacles.

In this paper, the problems analysed in Amazon will present the shortcomings that hinder the company from maximising its full potential, and the solutions to the problems.

2. Background

Amazon is an e-commerce company founded by Jeff Bezos in America (Schneider 2017). Amazon is the top retailer in USA, overtaking Walmart, with a market valuation at $250 billion, making Jeff Bezos the fifth wealthiest man on Earth as quoted by Forbes.

Despite the company’s successes, Jeff Bezos has led many valuable employees to quit and lose their jobs, while those still working with the company to feel discontented, preventing them to fulfill their upmost potential for the company.

Jeff Bezos is result driven and does not comply with the favoured ways of mangement of today. His strictly scientific management style has posed as an issue to a percentage of the employees in his company.

3. Identifications of issues and problems

One of the major problems in Amazon is due to Mr Bezos having a strict scientific management style. This is portrayed through by Amazon’s harsh way of treating its employees and disconnected managing. Amazon has little regard to the employees, leaving a low trust relationship between employees and focus mostly on the results, leading to the dehumanisation of the workforce (Nawaz 2011). According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the sense of safety, belonging and self esteem are all essential for an employee to be motivated, all in which Amazon has failed to provide to its employees, which leads to employees not working at their full potential (Kuar 2013).

Taylor suggested to keep productivity at the maximum, even by undervaluing the social needs of employees (Vliet 2015). A percentage of employees from Amazon performs well with the management style as it pushes them to their limits. However, this may not be the case for most as most employees are unable to keep up with this style of management.

Another problem in Amazon derives from the lack of trust. In order to have an effective team, trust is one of the most important factors, as it helps lead to cooperation (Robbins et al. 2016a). This is not seen in Amazon as it is common for sabotage to take place in the company. Performance evaluation and rewards system is one of the key factors to make an effective team as well, unfortunately,