Do Leadership Principles Boost the Job Satisfaction of Employees?

                      Academic skills

                   Do leadership principles boost the job

                          satisfaction of employees?

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Name: Arseny Botrous

Student ID: 2611142

Tutorial teacher: Rowena Blokker

                           Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  Case description

The American CEO Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon made the organisation advance in the right direction tremendously from its foundation till now. This was only possible through the leadership principles he established in the organisation from the start. Being guided by the leadership principles, the Amazon employees, also called ‘Amazonians’, are guided to be at their best working performance and describe the way they should act. “Thanks in part to its ability to extract the most from employees, Amazon is stronger than ever.”         

 “As the company grew, Bezos wanted to codify his ideas about the workplace, some of them proudly counterintuitive, into instructions simple enough for a new worker to understand, general enough to apply to the nearly limitless number of businesses he wanted to enter and stringent enough to stave off the mediocrity he feared.” (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015) Jeffrey Bezos wanted to make work understandable as much as possible for the workers. That still does not mean working there is easy. “It’s not easy to work here.” (Nocera, 2015)

While the company was growing, Jeffrey Bezos started to be devoted to his initial concepts, looking at them in terms of morals. This was the start of his leadership principles. The turnover of one billion dollars, after only six to seven years on the market to be active, also showed how strong Amazon in the meantime had applied differentiation. Bezos initially wanted to sell only books, but soon got emails from customers or he did not want to sell other items. "We actually started to get emails from customers saying," Would you consider selling music, because I'd really like to buy music, and DVDs, and electronics? ", Bezos later said about this development. He simply answered consumer demand and that paid off. His ‘consumer obsession’ principle paid off. Very important were the sales goals that Bezos set for itself. He did this very carefully, which was unusual for a phase in which everyone was extremely enthusiastic about the opportunities that the internet could offer. Amazon.com revealed that it only expected a profit after four to five years.

With the established leadership principles of Amazon, you have to constantly criticize each other, stay on standby until the end of the night and you burst into tears at every turn.

Stay there and work is hence a nightmare. Yet it is precisely the success of his so-called 'start-up culture' why Amazon was so admired. A working environment where all parts are decentralized, employees themselves bear great responsibility and they are pushed to the extreme to perform through a constant checkout culture. Employees at Amazon are all their own owners, who work hard to get something off the ground. Except that their work naturally contributes mainly to the profits of the parent company.

It is the flexibility and entrepreneurship that must be the future of working. The illusion of the freedom to run your own business under the banner of a large company is what makes Amazon attractive. Amazonians have the complete freedom to work three thousand strokes in the round.

Amazon shows how the start-up culture works when it is rolled out to a company of mega format. It is perhaps not so much the complete disregard of the rules, which makes the disruptive innovation so successful. Rather, it is the glorification and stimulation of a work culture of own strength, entrepreneurship and responsibility. Everyone's own business, but the profit in one pot.

“Leadership as a distributed function is gaining ground, which leads to the possibility that anyone who facilitates progress toward some desired outcome is displaying leadership.” (Schein, 2017)

In this research leadership principles will be analysed to demonstrate a boost to working performances of the Amazonians.

Leadership principles is, according to Jeffrey Bezos, the finest structural philosophy which delivers many accomplishments. Yet, that does not mean that every organisation will become successful. Whether leadership principles actually boost job satisfaction, will be answered using the following sub questions.

1. SQ: Does leadership principles lead to a better overall working performance?
2. SQ: Does having a higher salary lead to a boost in job satisfaction?
3. SQ: Is there a correlation between leadership principles and job satisfaction?

Throughout this research, quantitative form of research will be used to answer and elucidate the question: Do leadership principles boost the job satisfaction of employees?

Application of the two constructs to the case

In order to answer the research question, first the theoretical constructs related to this case need to be explained. Jeffrey Bezos totally approves leadership principles and considers that by following the leadership principles, there will be a boost in job satisfaction. “Our Leadership Principles aren’t just a pretty inspirational wall hanging. These Principles work hard, just like we do. Amazonians use them, every day, whether they’re discussing ideas for new projects, deciding on the best solution for a customer’s problem, or interviewing candidates. It’s just one of the things that makes Amazon peculiar.” Leadership principles can improve the team morale and boost the production. However, dealing with leadership principles as a form of management is really difficult to operate with as it is not a developed form of management. The fact that only Amazon uses this form of management substantiates this. On the other side, if developed, this form of management would be ideal for organizations. A working environment turns into a world of frequent combat. together, but also against the other, for your own sake. Co-workers challenging on another. Doesn’t matter if it feels uncomfortable or exhausting. With such a working environment, there will be a fluctuation in teamwork. “Teamwork is defined by as a cooperative process that allows ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results.” (Scarnati, 2001).