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BUS294 Case Study Project organization, behavior and leadership. Assignment Goal: Identify the structure of an Step 1: Students will choose one of the following companies. No company shall be assigned twice. Amazon Walmart Coca-Cola Nike Disney Google Target Ford Walmart Apple General Motors IBM Target Amazon General Electric Microsoft Ford Facebook Toyota McDonalds *Note: If you decide to choose a company that is not listed above, you must receive prior approval fromyour instructor. ** Upon approval of your instructor, the student can instead choose a list of small businesses in NYC by visiting http://nybizlist.com/nve-small-business-directory.htm case study that focuses on the assigned company's Step 2: Student shall complete an original leadership, organizational structure and behavior. A. SWOT Analysis(At least 2 slides) Required Information for Part A (Review pgs. 79-80 from the textbook) 1. Inside the Company When identifying the strengths and weaknesses, please keep the following questions in mind: How does the company treat and incentivize employees? How is the company's behavior perceived by the general public? How are internal decisions made? Is there an entrepreneurial system in place? Vice How does the company recruit top talent? o If your chosen company doesn't clearly address one or more of the questions listed above, then those will be the company's weaknesses If the company does clearly address one or more of the questions listed above, then those will be the company's strengths. Please review your chosen company's website for other strengths and weaknesses. 2. Outside the Company When identifying the opportunities and threats, please keep the following questions in mind: Are there opportunities for the company to expand in other locations? Are there opportunities for the company to expand to another industry? How does this company fair with its competitors? e.g. net sales, income, stock price. How is the projected market growth in this industry? o B. Organizational Structure of a Company (At least 2 slides) Required Information for Part B: (Review pgs. 515-517 from the textbook) i. How is the company's leadership and team structured? ii. Specifically identify top leadership, their responsibilities, and goals. ii. Why does this company use this specific structure? iv. What are the benefits of this structure? a. What are the potential pitfalls of such a structure? v. Hint: Please include an organizational chart. Please visit https://online.pointpark.edu/business/types-of-organizational-structures/ to view the different types of organizational structures and a description of each structure. C. Leadership Analysis (At least 2 slides) Required Information for Part C: (Review pgs. 508-511 from the textbook) i. Who are the top two decision-making leaders (i.e. CEO, COO, President) of the company? Explain their roles. ii. What is their leadership style? (Motivation, Team-Based, Fear-Based) ii. How do they make decisions? iv. Have they been successful in their role as leader? a. D. Student's Thoughts and Conclusions (At least 2 slides) a. Do you agree with how the company is structured? What would you change and why? b. Do you agree with the leadership style of the CEO? c. Would you like to work for someone like this CEO? Why d. What do you think are the most important responsibilities of a leader? e. Conclude the case study by computing the following financial ratios for the or why not? company's and return on the textbook. How do the current ratio and return on assets ratios compare 2014 fiscal year: current ratio, return on assets, debt ratio, equity. These formulas could be found on pages 285-287 from

Answer 1

CASE STUDY ON AMAZON

Amazon is the world’s leading online retailer and its success has spurred other physical, brick, and mortar retailers to have an online presence. It is often referred to as the online equivalent of Wal-Mart because of its reach and global footprint as well as its aggressive pricing strategies. Amazon can leverage on several opportunities in the emerging markets and can ensure that its global supply chain of networked warehouses deliver substantial value for itself and its stakeholders. Further, Amazon has to rethink its business model of operating at close to zero margins and the fact that the company has not returned a decent profit in the last five years gives it much room for improvement.

Strengths

• Being the world’s leading online retailer, Amazon derives its strengths primarily from a three-pronged strategic thrust on cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. This strategy has resulted in the company reaping the gains from this course of action and has helped its shareholders derive value from the company.
• Amazon primarily derives its competitive advantage from leveraging IT (Information Technology) and its use of e-Commerce as a scalable and an easy to ramp up platform that ensures that the company is well ahead of its competitors.
• One of the key strengths of Amazon is that it enjoys top of the mind recall from consumers globally and this recognition has helped it enter new markets, which were hitherto out of bounds for many e-Commerce companies.
• Using superior logistics and distribution systems, the company has been able to actualize better customer fulfillment and this has resulted in Amazon deriving competitive advantage over its rivals.

Weaknesses

• In recent years, Amazon as part of its diversification strategy has been “spreading itself too thin” meaning that it has allowed its focus to waver from its core competence of retailing books online and allowed itself to venture into newer focus areas. While this might be a good strategy from the risk diversification perspective, Amazon has to be cognizant of losing its strategic advantage as it moves away from its core competence.
• As Amazon offers free shipping to its customers, it is in the danger of losing its margins and hence, might not be able to optimize on costs because of this strategy.
• Considering the fact that Amazon is an online only retailer, the single-minded focus on online retailing might “come in the way” of its expansion plans particularly in emerging markets.
• One of the biggest weaknesses and something that has been oft commented upon by analysts and industry experts is that Amazon operates in near zero margin business models that have severely dented its profitability and even though the company has high volumes and huge revenues, this has not translated into meaningful profits for the company.

Opportunities

• By rolling out its online payment system, Amazon has the opportunity to scale up considerably considering the fact that concerns over online shopping as far as security and privacy are concerned are among the topmost issues on the minds of consumers. Further, this would improve the company’s margins as it lets it reap the advantages of using its own payment gateway.
• Another opportunity, which Amazon can capitalize on, relates to it rolling out more products under its own brand instead of being a forwarding site for third party products. In other words, it can increase the number of products under its own brand instead of merely selling and stocking products made by its partners.
• Amazon can increase the portfolio of its offerings wherein it stocks more products than the norm currently which places it in a position of strength and comfort as this can translate into higher revenues.
• The fourth opportunity, which Amazon has, is in terms of expanding its global footprint and open more sites in the emerging markets, which would certainly give it an edge in the uber-competitive online retailing market.

Threats

• One of the biggest threats to Amazon’s success is the increasing concern over online shopping because of identity theft and hacking which leaves its consumer data exposed. Therefore, Amazon has to move quickly to allay consumer concerns over its site and ensure that online privacy and security are guaranteed.
• Because of its aggressive pricing strategies, the company has had to face lawsuits from publishers and rivals in the retailing industry. The obsessive focus on cost leadership that Amazon follows has become a source of trouble for the company because of the competitors being upset with Amazon taking away the business from them.
• Finally, Amazon faces significant competition from local online retailers who are more agile and nimble when compared to its behemoth type of strategy. This means that the company cannot lose sight of its local market conditions in the pursuit of its global strategy.

Amazon has its task cut out as far as its future strategies are concerned and this SWOT Analysis can provide a guide and a roadmap that the company can implement going forward. The key take away from this SWOT Analysis is that Amazon has to focus on profitability and not volumes alone if it has to be competitive in the future where volumes and market leadership are not alone to add value to its stock.

Recruitment Process:
Amazon conducts 5-6 rounds to select freshers as SDE (SDE-1) in their organization. The following rounds are conducted:

• Written Round
• Online Coding Round
• Multiple Technical Rounds
• Hiring Manager Round
• HR Round

Written Round:
The Written round majorly consists of two sections namely Aptitude / Logical Test and technical test. The technical test contains questions mainly from C, C++, Operating System, Data Structure, inheritance, functions. Generally in MCQ format with a given time frame of about 30 minutes.

Online Coding Round:
This round is hosted online and the candidates are presented with 3-4 coding questions, the questions are of intermediate difficulty, mainly from Arrays, strings, and matrices.
To clear this round, one should have a strong understanding of these data structures.

Telephonic Round:
This round is purely algorithmic based with around 2-4 questions ranging from arrays, trees, to dynamic programming problems. You are to present algorithm and in some questions, the code also if necessary. Apt candidates are selected for further rounds.

Technical Round 1:
Technical rounds are face-to-face algorithmic rounds in which candidates are presented with 2-4 questions, all from data structures. The most commonly asked DSs are the matrix, binary tree, BST, Linked list.

Technical Round 2:
Same as previous round, however the difficulty is increased and more questions from Trees, BST, and Tries are asked. One should have a clear knowledge of tree-based recursion, and the standard questions based on it are a must.

Hiring Manager Round:
This is generally the most technical-intensive round, with questions ranging from the projects you have done, the technology used in them, design problems and DS/Algo problems and tricky puzzle-like questions.

HR Round:
You can expect HR questions like :
1. Tell me about Yourself, your family
2. How do you see yourself five years from now?
3. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
4. Some technical questions can also be asked from topics like OOPs.

Leadership analysis

Amazon organizational structure can be classified as hierarchical. Senior management team include two CEOs, three Senior Vice Presidents and one Worldwide Controller, who are responsible for various vital aspects of the business reporting directly to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. There are seven segments such as information technology, human resources and legal operations and heads of segments also report to Amazon CEO.

Hierarchical structure at Amazon has developed due to the immense size of the business. The largest internet retailer in the world by revenue employs 560,000 people worldwide[1] and it has more than 300 million customers globally.[2] Amazon organizational structure integrates many small teams that deal with various aspects of the business. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is credited with the introduction of ‘two pizza rule”. According to this rule, meetings should be held in teams small enough that could be all fed with only two pizzas.

The figure below illustrates Amazon organizational structure:

Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive SVP & VP Technical Officer Corporate Development Jeff Blackburn Advisor to CEo Jeff Helbling SVP CEO Worldwide International Consumer Retail Jeff Wilke Diego Piacentini Corporate Affairs Global SVP & CFO Financial Corporate Affairs Administration Brian Olsavsky Jay Carney SVP Human Amazon Devices Resources HR Digital Management Dave Limp Administration Beth Galetti СЕО Amazon SVP & General Counsel, Legal David Zapolsky Web Services Andy Jassy

Real Estate Control China CEO Jaray Ran Europe Director Trema Rycer CTO India Director Business Seller Services Development Wiam Gordon eCommerce Director hn Rrown Operations Plalforrn Director Tem Al International Retail Toys, Sport, etc. Amazon Director North American Publishirg Retail Director Jan Aubanstain Web Services Music & Video Director Digital Media Amazon S3 Paka Staresar Director Ali Mania Database Legal & Secretary Services Kindle Director Wireless Products Services Blake Kkonan Kindle Product Development & Sludies Europe Operations Global Advertising Sales Computing Services

THE C.E.O (CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER)

Being the founder of Amazon.com, the chief executive officer has the following roles and responsibilities:

1. Leading, guiding and evaluating the work of the company directors and other employees.
2. Leading and advising the board toward the achievement of the company’s strategy.
3. Acting as an interface between the board and the employees.
4. Leading the company in the achievement of both short and long term goals according to the company’s strategy.
5. Sitting in committees of the board as determined by the board.
6. Evaluating the success of the company.

THE C.F.O (CHIEF FINANCE OFFICER)

1. Monitoring and directing the committee on the implementation of strategic plans.
2. Overseeing the issuance of financial information of the company.
3. Reporting all finance results and providing analysis to the board of directors regarding the company’s results.
4. Maintaining the appropriate insurance coverage for the company.
5. Investing funds of the company into viable business opportunities.
6. GRAC

Desired Results

• Serving new and existing customers satisfactorily with products and services at the lowest feasible price.
• Solving client problems within the shortest time possible.
• Maintaining quality and convenient prices of online products than what industrial competitors offer.

Guidelines

• Combined effort to work together to serve customer needs.
• Employees report to the chief executive officer who is also answerable to customer requests.

Resources

• A dedicated team of experts that can be addressed when the need arises.

Accountability

• Ensuring that products are delivered to the customers desired location.
• Responding to every customer requests

Consequences

Positive

• Every solved problem increases the level of experience for the staff.
• The company grows due to profit increase.
• Better recommendation for all employees who give consistent positive reports to the management.

Negative

• Consistent lack of productivity leads to job termination.
• A stern talking all the time to keep employees working to achieve positive results.