Jeff+Bezos+104

**Jeff Bezos**

** It takes a lot of guts to leave the comforts of your stable job on Wall Street, then move your family halfway across the country and invest all of your parents’ life savings to start up a new business with merely a 10% chance of success. However, Jeffrey Preston Bezos, later well-known as “Jeff” Bezos, decided to make the gamble. “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew one thing I would regret is not trying.” With this philosophy in mind, Bezos created Amazon.com in 1995. Initially, Amazon was just an online bookstore. Over the years though, Amazon diversified its merchandizes and began to sell DVDs, videos, MP3 players, video games and electronics, etc. The humble business, which kicked off in Bezos’s garage, has become a giant online retailer today, shipping a vast range of products to customers around the world. **

**The inspiration for Amazon sparked off when Bezos discovered an amazing phenomenon: internet usage was increasing by 2300% a year. This statistic set off an alarm in his head. He began to brainstorm ideas on how to build a business plan around this growing industry. After doing some research, Bezos decided that books would be the best market to begin an e-commerce business in for several reasons. First, unlike clothes that consumers want to try on, or food that could potentially spoil, because books possess a minimally low risk for consumers to buy online before seeing. For this reason**, **Bezos believe that more people would be willing to order books online than other products. Secondly, books are relatively easy to package and ship so in terms of storage and distribtion, book were more favorable than other goods. In the end, all of Bezos research paid off. Upon creating his company in 1995, Amazon shipped books to all 50 states and to 45 countries.** ** Due to his immense entrepreneurship success and down to earth personality, Jeff Bezos is easily a model leader to be studied in the contexts of Organizational Behavior. His motivation, personality and values have created a business which completely changed the dimensions of retailers and markets. Bezos is a modern day example of the American Dream achieved through hard work, creativeness and a little bit of luck. **



Motivation


 * Motivation is the key to success in any business or corporation. In order to operate successfully, a corporation’s leaders must be able to motivate employees from all divisions and levels within the company. Amazon is no different. Amazon employs approximately 33,700 individuals around the world, so it is integral to the success of the corporation that Bezos be able to motivate everyone from entry-level employees to upper level executives. **

** In a 2001 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Bezos discussed his personal motivation. Bezos explained, “I love people counting on me…today it’s so easy to be motivated, because we have millions of customers counting on us at Amazon.com. We’ve got thousands of investors counting on us. And, we’re a team of thousands of employees all counting on each other. That’s fun.” **

** McClelland’s Need Theory provides a significant amount of insight into the way Bezos motivates his employees. Bezos promotes the Need for Affiliation. He sees Amazon.com as an identity for its employees to unify under. Whenever he discusses plans for the corporation, he uses words like “we” and “team.” Bezos is proud of the fact that his employees rely on each other. This Need for Affiliation translates to a unique sense of family and unity at Amazon.com. **

** McClelland’s Need Theory additionally emphasizes the Need for Achievement. Amazon’s Career Opportunities webpage lays out the important leadership principles for potential employees. One of the top principles is “Insist on the Highest Standards.” Under this headline reads, “Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes.” Later on, the page states, “Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Bezos relies on his employees to “think big” in order to achieve corporate success. **

** Competition is another important facet of corporate success, which also ties in with McClelland’s Need for Achievement. While Amazon.com has always been competitive by nature, the competition has recently evolved to a market in its infancy: the tablet device market. In September of 2011, Amazon.com released its new product, the Kindle Fire. This tablet, priced at $199 (which is substantially lower than market competitors) is a prime example of the importance competition plays in corporate success. Bezos was willing to challenge a market dominated by Apple’s iPad even though other corporations such as HP and Motorola had already failed. ** ** Finally, the Need for Achievement is best stated in Amazon’s final leadership principle: “Deliver Results.” Through effective leadership within the company, Amazon is able achieve the success they desire through customer satisfaction, market share growth, and revenue increases. **

** Hertzberg’s Two Factor Theory is equally insightful in determining Bezos’ motivation strategies. While hygiene factors do not directly lead to job satisfaction, they do play an important role in ensuring there is no job dissatisfaction. At Amazon, these hygiene factors include health care, vacation time, personal days, and basic benefits, all of which are standard to every employee. **

** Hertzberg’s notion of motivation factors moves employees beyond a neutral attitude to positive job satisfaction. Three of the motivation factors particularly relevant to Amazon are responsibility, ownership, and growth. The Career Opportunities webpage discusses ownership as an integral leadership principle. The page states, “[Leaders] act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team.” The accountability Bezos holds Amazon employees to is motivation for them to perform quality work. **

** Growth is another factor of significant importance. New ventures, such as the Kindle Fire discussed above, create new job opportunities. As Amazon.com broadens its product line, new jobs are available in technology and marketing divisions. The possibility of individual growth, in a company that is clearly growing as a whole, motivates employees to maintain a high level of productivity and efficiency. **

** While the above discussion focuses on the positive motivation strategies Bezos has enforced, a recent situation at a warehouse in Pennsylvania caused many to question the reputation Amazon has been previously known for. On October 1, 2011, The Los Angeles Times released a report regarding the working conditions of an Amazon warehouse near Allentown, Pennsylvania. The article reveals: **

** “Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse.” **

** Similar accounts emerged from multiple news outlets. This motivation situation relates directly to Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy. Workers at this particular plant were unable to complete their work because their most basic needs were unmet. Both the physiological and safety/security needs of employees were neglected, resulting in low productivity, not to mention the blatant ethical issues at stake. Workers were not motivated to get anything done—they were physically unable. Despite the fact that Bezos was probably unaware of the working conditions, the situation reveals an inconsistency between the motivations used in the corporate Amazon environment and the environment of wage-earners in warehouses. **

** Clearly, Bezos is doing a lot of things right in motivating his employees. His company has managed to survive and stay on top through a difficult recession. Nonetheless, there is always room for improvement. **

** Personality **

**In using the Big Five Personality Inventory, Bezos’s emotional stability should be fairly high. Bezos’s sense of style is not what you would expect from a traditional corporate superstar. His wardrobe suggests a relaxed, cool lifestyle. Bezos often dresses up in a “uniform,” consisting of blue jeans and a button down shirt. His disregard for the conventional business dress code also gives away a hint: Bezos is a low self-monitor. This could be inferred because Bezos doesn’t change the way he behaves, in this case, the way he dresses, depending on who he is around him.** **In addition, Big Five Personality Inventory factor of extraversion can help us measures Bezos’ attitude towards society. The fact that Bezos is an extravert is shown through his active entrepreneur attitude and desire for innovation. He seeks out valuable individuals and negotiates the best prices for the merchandise sold on his website. This quality plays a key role in enhancing the competitiveness of the corporation and contributes to the growth of online retailing.**
 * Jeff Bezos’ personality lies in the spirit of Amazon - unique and inspirational. Interestingly enough, a man like Bezos, worth nearly $ 500 million, chooses to reside in a small apartment and drive a Honda to work. At the end of the day, Bezos is a successful innovator and businessman with a personality of a celebrity. **

**Bezos’s openness is measured through his appreciation for new ideas. After all, Amazon.com is the fruit of innovation and courage. Bezos thinks differently – he has a notion of the “two-pizza team”; if you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, then it’s too large. This limits the group to a relatively small size depending on demand and efficiency. Bezos has never been satisfied with the achievements of Amazon and has always focused on new opportunities for the future. In 2007, Amazon launched the first Kindle, which enabled customers to read books electronically. The creation of the Kindle marked another peak in the careers of Bezos.** **Conscientiousness is another personality trait. Bezos is hardworking, dependable and organized. He is independent and loves to focus on the task on hand, how to execute it, and how to prosper. Bezos is willing to take risks, but only after careful calculations and thorough research on the subject. Just like Amazon, Jeff Bezos’ personality is intriguing to the new generation of entrepreneurs.**

**Values**

**Values are strongly affected by direct experience. For Jeff Bezos, career success were founded in the early on. Bezos’s most significant values are ambition, achievement and wisdom. Since being a toddler, Bezos would break apart his toys with a screwdriver. Later on, Bezos showed his immense interests in science, mechanics and technologies. In his school years, he converted his parents’ garage into a laboratory for experiments. Bezos values the importance of fulfillment in work, which influenced his initiative to start Amazon. This value provides an explanation for Bezos’s tendency to always look for new opportunities through science and knowledge. In 2004, Bezos founded the “Blue Origin” project for commercial human spaceflights.**

**Bezos also possesses the value of responsibility and independence. In an interview, he recalled the days when he worked on his grandfather’s ranch. “I spent three months every year from the age of four to the age of 16 working on the ranch with my grandfather, which was just an incredible, incredible experience. Ranchers - and anybody I think who works in rural areas - they learn how to be very self-reliant… we would, you know, repair the D-6 Caterpillar bulldozer when it broke… we would build cranes to lift the gears out.” After Amazon became a global success, Bezos did not retreat into a life of leisure but continued to move forward in his career.**

** These values have certainly had an influence on the work attitudes and behavior of Bezos. According to one account, Bezos is “a notorious micro manager… an executive who wants to know about everything from contract minutiae to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases.” Bezos enjoys his work and likes to have control over almost all aspects of Amazon. Bezos is the spirit of Amazon; as the creator, he is the most committed and the one who makes a difference. Bezos encourages his employees to have the same commitment and attitudes towards Amazon. **  =Amazon's Lead: Jeff Bezos=

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** For more information, check out the following links: ** [|Los Angeles Times: Amazon warehouse workers complain of harsh conditions]

[|Jeff Bezos Interview: Academy of Achievement]

[|The Great Leaders Series: Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon]

= **Bibliography: ** =

**Spector, Robert. __Amazon.com: Get Big Fast.__ New York; Harper Business, 2000. **

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Mark, Leibovich. __The New Imperialists__. Paramus, NJ; Prentice Hall, 2002. **

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Bacon, Terry R. __The Elements of Power: Lessons on Leadership and Influence__. New York; AMACOM American Management Association, 2011. **

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Byers, Ann. __Jeff Bezos: the Founder of Amazon.com.__ New York; Rosen Pub. Group, 2007. **

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Spiro, Josh. __The Great Leaders Series: Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com. Inc.__ Oct 23, 2009. ** **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';"> http://[|www.inc.com/30years/articles/jeff-bezos.html] **


 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">Jeff Bezos Biography __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">. Academy of Achievements. Aug 9, 2010. [] **