Uncovering Leadership Styles: An Analysis of Jeff Bezos and Amazon.

com
Leadership plays a vital role in creating healthy sustainable organizations. An organization is
impacted by a leaders ability to determine steps and actions necessary to move the organization
forward. Exploring the leadership of organizations can therefore, provide insight to why certain
organizations thrive while others do not. As this report explores the leadership style of Jeff
Bezos: the founder, Chairman and CEO of Amazon.com, it will seek to marry his leadership to
the wellbeing of the company and to draw valuable conclusions from the relationship. The next
section will focus on the leadership style of Jeff Bezos and how it fits in with existing theories on
leadership.
Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos born January 12, 1964 is an American technology entrepreneur and
investor. He has played a role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of
Amazon.com, an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products and services,
most recently video streaming. Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web
and a model for Internet sales.
Bezos' other business interests include aerospace and newspapers. He is the founder and owner
of the privately-funded aerospace developer and manufacturer Blue Origin, founded in 2000,
with test flights to space beginning in 2015, and plans for commercial suborbital human
spaceflight beginning in 2018. In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post newspaper. A
number of other business investments are managed through Expeditions. As of 1 January 2016,
Bezos' personal wealth is estimated to be US$59.2 billion, due in part to a recent spike in
Amazon's stock price, ranking him 4th on the Forbes list of billionaires
Bezos often displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency. He attended Miami
Palmetto Senior High School. While in high school, he attended the Student Science Training
Program at the University of Florida, receiving a Silver Knight Award in 1982.He was high
school valedictorian and was a National Merit Scholar.
He attended Princeton University, intending to study physics, but soon returned to his love of
computers and graduated summa cum laude, with two Bachelor of Science degrees in electrical

engineering and science. He also served as the President of the Princeton chapter of the Students
for the Exploration and Development of Space
Business career:
After graduating from Princeton in 1986, Bezos worked on Wall Street in the computer science
field. Then he worked on building a network for international trade for a company known as
Fitel. He next worked at Bankers Trust. Later on he also worked on Internet-enabled business
opportunities at D. E. Shaw & Co.
Amazon.com:
Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994 after making a cross-country drive from New York to
Seattle, writing up the Amazon business plan on the way. He initially set up the company in his
garage. He had left his "well-paying job" at a New York City hedge fund after learning "about
the rapid growth in Internet use", which coincided with a then-new U.S. Supreme Court ruling
holding that mail order catalogs were not required to collect sales taxes in states where they lack
a physical presence.
Bezos is known for his attention to business details. As described by Portfolio.com, he "is at once
a happy-go-lucky mogul and a notorious micromanager: "an executive who wants to know about
everything from contract minutiae to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases."
On August 15, 2015 the New York Times wrote an article entitled "Inside Amazon: Wrestling
Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace" about Amazon's business practices and Jeff responded to his
employees with a Sunday memo claiming it doesn't represent the company he leads and
challenged its depiction as "a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter
heard and to contact him directly if true.
Blue Origin:
In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup company, partially as a result
of his fascination with space travel, including an early interest in developing "space hotels,
amusement parks, colonies and small cities for 2 million or 3 million people orbiting the Earth."

The company was kept secret for a few years; it became publicly known only in 2006 when
purchasing a sizable aggregation of land in west Texas for a launch and test facility. In a 2011
interview, Bezos indicated that he founded the space company to help enable "anybody to go into
space" and stated that the company was committed to decreasing the cost and increasing the
safety of spaceflight. Blue Origin is "one of several start-ups aiming to open up space travel to
paying customers. Like Amazon, the company is secretive, but in September 2011 revealed that
it had lost an unmanned prototype vehicle during a short-hop test flight. Although this was a
setback, the announcement of the loss revealed for the first time just how far Blue Origin's team
had advanced. Bezos said that the crash was 'not the outcome that any of us wanted, but we're
signed up for this to be hard. A profile published in 2013 described a 1982 Miami Herald
interview he gave after he was named high school class valedictorian. The 18-year-old Bezos
said he wanted to build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million
people who would be in orbit. The whole idea is to preserve the earth he told the newspaper....
The goal was to be able to evacuate humans. The planet would become a park.
In 2013, Bezos reportedly discussed commercial spaceflight opportunities and strategies with
Richard Branson, multibillionaire founder of Virgin Group and Chairman of Virgin Galactic.
In 2015, Bezos further discussed the motivation for his spaceflight-related business when he
announced a new orbital launch vehicle under development for late-2010s first flight. The vision
for Blue is pretty simple. We want to see millions of people living and working in space. That's
going to take a long time. I think it's a worthwhile goal. In 2016, Bezos opened up the Blue
rocket design and manufacturing facility to journalists for the first time, and gave extensive
interviews that included an articulation of his vision for space, and for Blue Origin. Bezos sees
space as being "chock full of resources" and foresees a "Great Inversion" where there will
emerge "space commercialization that stretches out for hundreds of years, leading to an era when
millions of people would be living and working in space." He sees both energy and heavy
manufacturing occurring in space, having the effect of reduced pollution on Earth, in effect
reducing the probability that something "bad happens to the Earth." Bezos has said that he is
trying to change the fundamental cost structure of accessing space.

On November 23, 2015, Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle successfully flew to space,
reaching its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before executing an historic
vertical landing back at the launch site in West Texas. Blue Origin is currently in an extensive
flight test program of New Shepherd which expects to begin carrying "test passengers" in 2017
and initiate commercial flights in 2018. Blue is currently building six of the vehicles to support
all phases of testing and operations: no-passenger test flights, flights with test passengers, and
commercial-passenger weekly operations.
The Washington Post:
On August 5, 2013, Bezos announced his purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million in
cash. Amazon.com is not to be involved. "This is uncharted terrain," he told the newspaper, "and
it will require experimentation. Shortly after the announcement of intent to purchase, The
Washington Post published a long-form profile of Bezos on August 10, 2013. The sale closed on
October 1, 2013, and Bezos's Nash Holdings LLC took control.
In March 2014, Bezos made his first significant change at the Post and lifted the online pay wall
for subscribers of some number of U.S. local newspapers including The Dallas Morning News,
the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Bezos revealed in 2016 that he conducted no due diligence when accepting the first offer from
former The Washington Post owner, Don Graham.
Google:
Bezos was one of the first investors in Google, investing $250,000 in 1998
Philanthropy:
Under Bezos direction, Amazon has been criticized as "stingy" in its corporate giving practices.
Amazon has environmental initiatives for improving its internal operations and researching
climate change, has used its homepage for disaster relief fundraising, supported writers, has Wish
List functionality for non-profit donations, and Amazon Smile offers a charitable donation of
0.5% on purchases of selected items (criticized as small and possibly counterproductive).

Journalist Shawn McCoy contrasted the philanthropic practices of Amazon and Bezos with the
comparatively much more generous Microsoft (also based in Seattle) and fellow billionaire Bill
Gates who by 2013 had donated $28 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, making it
the largest private foundation in the world. McCoy noted that unlike many other billionaire
technology entrepreneurs, Bezos had not signed the Giving Pledge to give away half of their
personal wealth in their lifetimes. Some found Bezos more similar to Steve Jobs, who was
skeptical of philanthropy and made no known major donations.
Non-profit projects funded by Bezos Expeditions include:
First full-scale prototype Clock of the Long Now, designed to last 10,000 years. $42
million
Bezos Center for Innovation at the Seattle Museum of History and Industry - $10 million
Recovery of two Saturn V first-stage Rocket dyne F-1 engines from the bottom of the
Atlantic Ocean. They were positively identified as belonging to the Apollo 11 mission's
S-1C stage in July 2013.
Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton Neuroscience Institute - $15
million.
Bezos Family Foundation, an educational charity.
The foundation gave $10 million in 2009 and $20 million in 2010 to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center. Bezos also donated $800,000 to World reader, founded by a former Amazon
employee.
Recognition:
He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year in 1999. In 2008, he was selected by U.S.
News & World Report as one of America's best leaders. Bezos was awarded an honorary
doctorate in Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. In 2011, The
Economist gave Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle.

In 2012, Bezos was named Businessperson of The Year by Fortune.

He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the 2011 Bilderberg conference in St.
Moritz, Switzerland, and the 2013 conference in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. He is a
member of the Executive Committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012.
As of October 22, 2015, according to Bloomberg News, Bezos is the third richest person in US,
with a net worth of $53 billion. As of January 1, 2016, according to Forbes, Bezos is listed as the
4th wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $59.2 billion. He was ranked
the second best CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review, after Steve Jobs of Apple.
Jeff Bezos Leadership at Amazon:
Jeff Bezos is the founder and current CEO of Amazon that brought him great success from the
idea of online shopping. Forbes (2013) reports his current wealth to be around $25.2 billion
dollars making him the most successful internet retailer. Jeff Bezos leadership of Amazon can be
examined using the Skills approach. Northouse (2013) describes leadership skills as the ability to
use ones knowledge and competencies to accomplish a set of goals or objectives and these
leadership skills can be acquired or that leaders can be trained to develop them. Bezos developed
a knowledge or understanding for the needs of customers and with this acquired knowledge he
was able to transform Amazon to focus on these needs of the customers.
Jeff Bezos success at Amazon can be explained using Katzs Three Skills Model of leadership.
In Katzs Three Skills Model there are three basic skills important in leadership which is
technical skill, human skill, and conceptual skill.
Technical skill is knowledge about and proficiency in a specific type of work or activity, such
that would include competencies in a specialized area, analytical ability and the ability to use
appropriate tools and techniques (Northouse, 2013). Bezos demonstrate how to use the
appropriate tools and techniques to succeed.
His techniques focus on the long term, I always tell people if we have a good quarter it are
because of the work we did three, four, and five years ago. Its not because we did a good job this

quarter explains Bezos in an interview (Newsweek, 2009). Bezos techniques also include, We
start with the customer and we work backward. We learn whatever skills we need to service the
customer. We build whatever technology we need to service the customer.
Another skill in the model, human skill is knowledge about and the ability to work with people,
which means being aware of ones own perspectives on issues and, at the same time, being aware
of the perspectives of others (Northouse, 2013). This CEO strives on the customers needs.
Figuring what customers want before the cash register rings and then making those insights pays
off (Forbes, 2012). Bezos being aware of the perspectives of the customers is able to shape the
goals and needs of the company to meet these needs of the customer.
The skills from Katzs model demonstrated the most by Bezos would be conceptual skills.
Conceptual skills are the ability to work with ideas and concepts and are central to creating a
vision and strategic plan for an organization. A leader with conceptual skills is good at putting
the companys goals into words and can understand and express the economic principles that
affect the company (Northouse, 2013). Bezos work ethic and roots of pushing himself while
working hard to succeed builds learning of self-reliance. The respect for that ethic explains why
Amazon screens its job candidates for a strong bias to action and an ability to work through
ambiguity (Forbes, 2012).
Forbes (2012) saluted Bezos ability to push massive changes through the organization, in
particular the initiatives that led to Amazon Web Services. Providing the most insight of Bezos
as a leader can be gained from Jeff Bezos: Top 10 Maxims decoded a list of concepts relating
to the CEOs leadership.
Jeff Bezos: Top 10 Maxims decoded (Forbes, 2012)
1.

Base your strategy on things that wont change.

2.

Obsess over customers.

3.

We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

4.

There are two kinds of companies: Those that try to charge more and those that work to charge
less. We will be the second.

5.

Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.

6.

Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove well settle for intense.

7.

If you want to be inventive, you have to be willing to fail.

8.

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your
time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.

9.

Everyone has to be able to work in a call center.

10. This is Day 1 for the internet. We still have so much to learn.

Jeff Bezos Leadership Style

Bezos: a Transactional Leader:
Jeff Bezos is a task oriented transactional leader. Stone (2013) describes Bezos as a
micromanager with rigorous standards who is often uninterested in other peoples opinions. This
could be termed as transactional leadership. According to Northhouse (2013) transactional
leaders influence because it is in the best interest of subordinates to do what the leaders want.
Transactional leaders are also termed to be quite effective in achieving operational goals and
outcomes and creating businesses that thrive in the era of global competition (Ismail, Mohamad,
Mohamed, Rafiuddin and Zhen, 2010).
Bezos: a Transformational Leader
In addition to Bezos transactional leadership qualities, the Amazon head can also be termed as a
change agent who seeks to innovate. Qu, Janssen and Shi (2015) find that transformational
leadership produces extraordinary results and delivers follower creativity. Transformational
leaders are known to create a fascinating vision of the future, which gains the hearts, and minds
of people (Djumalieva, Widlak and Sarkar-Barney, 2013). By linking their companys long-term
goal to their peoples values, transformational leaders arouse interest and commitment to act on
the vision, driving team effort beyond ordinary possibilities (Howell and Avollio, 1993). Bezos
undoubtedly grades high in this field. This can be seen from the growth of Amazon.com, which
is arguably a result of his ability to envision, inspire, and innovate even when competitors and
investors alike did not believe his creation could bring positive financial returns.
Health of Amazon.com
Work Environment:
Amazon has a stressful work environment. Cook (2011) finds that Amazon is ranked as one of
the most stressful and inflexible working environments in the high-tech world. Mahapatra (2013)
further claims that Amazon has the second highest employee turnover of all Fortune 500
companies. Additionally, workers at Amazon have also cited the fact that Bezos often berates
them and is highly opinionated, never losing a chance to inform those who challenge him that he
is the CEO of the company (Stone, 2013). It could therefore be argued Bezos transactional style

of leadership results in employees at Amazon not being satisfied about their working conditions.
Company Growth:
Amazon.coms shares are valuable and show a sign of positive growth. On January 13 th 2015,
Amazon.coms shares were upgraded from Neutral to Buy by Citi Bank (Street Insider, 2015).
This suggests that Wall Streets investment consultants have a strong belief that Amazon.com
will grow in the foreseeable future and the company is progressing positively. It should be noted
that most share upgrades look at the top line and not the bottom line.
Despite the growth in revenues and sales & the financial perspective of Wall Street, Amazon has
been suffering from losses for years now. Bensinger (2014) finds that Amazon reported a loss of
$123 million despite an increase in revenue of 23%. Perhaps a careful analysis may establish that
both the losses and the revenue and consumer growth are linked to the leadership style of Bezos.
Relationship between Jeff Bezos Leadership Style and Health of Amazon.com:
Bezos transformational style of leadership has resulted in Amazon attaining the growth that it
has achieved over the last two decades. The company went from being an online book store to
becoming an online retail store that challenges on and offline competitors alike due to Bezos
visionary focus and commitment (Stone, 2013).
In spite of these recommendable efforts, Bezos transactional leadership qualities may have
arguably resulted in a stressful working environment where employees do not feel well
positioned to caution this extra ordinary leader about his unrealistic business expansion plans.
Mangalindan (2014) attributes Amazons huge losses regardless of revenue and sales growth to
the companys hunger for expanding its already gargantuan portfolio. It is reasonable to assume
that this is a direct result of Bezoss will to expand by any means at a fast rate.

Conclusion:
To sum up; Jeff Bezos is a task oriented, transactional and transformational leader. His leadership
style has resulted in Amazon being a success story in terms of revenues, sales and stock price
analysis yet lacking in being a good working environment and recording a profit on the bottom
line. Perhaps, Bezos must slow down his transformational characteristics and allow Amazon to
record profits before expanding it any further. Also, it may be beneficial to the company that
Bezos tones down his transactional leadership qualities in an effort to make the environment
friendlier and flexible.

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