Amazon Situational Model

Introduction

Amazon.com, is an American e-commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, and launched in 1995, Amazon.com began as an online bookstore before diversifying its product lines by adding VHSs, DVDs, music CDs, MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and more. Amazon has since established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, China, and Japan.

Since starting out in his garage in Bellevue, Washington, Jeff Bezos has gone on to form one of the greatest ecommerce sites the internet has ever seen. Amazon in 2009 served three distinct groups of customers;

• Consumer customers: through their retail websites, Amazon provides a

Amazon is extremely market-oriented. For instance, Amazon was positioned by its leader as global customer-centric company where virtually anything that people are looking for can be successfully found and ordered. The most attractive sides of Amazon‘s business strategy are low prices, vast selection, and more importantly convenience for their customers. Therefore, with these strong qualities, the company continues to grow as a world-class web commerce giant.

Also, among Amazon’s advantages is its infrastructure. They developed a unique web platform which provides high inventory turnover and fast shipments. Respectively, these factors boost Amazon’s cash flows and company’s competitors just cannot reproduce it.

Behavioral Theories of leadership is another approach that claims the leaders are made and it concentrates on mental qualities or internal states. It is easily applicable to Jeff Bezos, since he is a self-made business tycoon. Constant learning and innovations are some of the characteristics of Jeff Bezos. Continuous learning is an integral part of leadership development and is crucial for the success of any organization.

He may also be defined as a participative leader in accordance to Participative leadership theories. It suggests that leader takes the input of other employees or team

It concentrates in the connections between leaders and followers and deals with motivation and inspiration of the team.

SKILLS BASED THEORY OF LEADERSHIP

Skill Areas

Robert Katz developed one of the major theories of skills-based leadership, which recommends that good leaders have a set of skills that they have developed over time. He identified technical skills related to the field, human skills related to communicating with people and conceptual skills related to setting vision as the major areas that leaders need to develop. He highlighted that Higher-level leaders however, need to be stronger on their conceptual skills, whereas more pro-active leaders need to have stronger technical skills.

After more in depth research into Katz model Mumford identified problem-solving skills, social judgment skills and overall knowledge as the three major competencies needed by a leader. Mumford 's model also acknowledged the importance of personal characteristics, performance, career experiences and the context in which the leader worked as major factors in a leader 's effectiveness.

Advantages of the Skills Based