Autocratic And Participative Leadership Styles

Jeff Bezos, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Amazon said ¨I knew that if I failed, I would regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” This qoute tells us that if you do not pursue your ideas then you will never know if you will succeed. This is the philosophy that took Bezos’ vision to reality in creating Amazon. Jeff Bezos has greatly influenced the world through his multi-billion dollar company Amazon. Amazon gave birth to a new era of new technology that has greatly influenced the world.

As a company’s equipment reaches the end of its life cycle projects start to get organized to replace outdated equipment. As these projects are formed project managers are selected to manage all the complexities involved in replacing equipment. In some cases, managers or project managers are selected to manage turn around maintenance projects without taking into consideration any set of requirements (Obiajunwa, 2013). This means project managers may not have the right leadership style or set of skills to effectively manage and complete projects on time. Northhouse (2007) explained three leadership styles authoritarian, democratic and laissez-fair and their influences in his book Introduction to Leadership. Of those three I chose authoritarian and democratic for my research question. Is the authoritarian or democratic leadership style more effective for completing large-scale maintenance projects on time?

Grojean, Resick & Diskson (2004) suggest that leaders are responsible for facilitating their follower’s to become capable and guide them to improving their capabilities and strengths. Differentiating between different leadership styles can be done in a number of ways. It was determined that the traditional styles of leaders include authoritian (autocratic), democratic, permissive (laissez-faire) and bureaucratic (Viinamäki, 2009).

Organizations often encounter challenges and issues pertaining to the relationship between leadership styles and organizational culture. Whether the organization falls within the private, non-profit, or government sectors, similar concerns can many times afflict its operational success. This quantitative research study replicates the Kest study that suggested further research into the relationship

Leaders have a profound effect on employee performance because they shape workers’ perceptions of the working environment. Consequently, some leadership styles are more effective with meeting particular objectives. Although personal attributes dictate a leader’s natural leadership style, effective leaders recognize the benefits and limitations of each style, understand the impact a style will have on the organization’s environment, and are capable of developing and incorporating a variety of styles to ensure the desired outcome is achieved.

see Bezos as a leader “without a backbone” because he is not subjecting his workers to obey him.

The aim of this article is to explore different leadership styles and the way they influence their work outcome.

According to Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulter (2012, p. 606) the General Manager, Edward of 6 Steps & Rising has adopted an autocratic leadership style. The University of Iowa Studies identifies an autocratic leader as a leader that centralises authority, controls work methods and processes, makes independent decisions and restricts participation or feedback from employees (Robbins et al., 2012). He practices autocratic leadership styles when he centralises authority by disallowing Albert to see the chief executive officer regarding his request to transfer to other offices, controls creative processes that Teresa has put forward, makes independent decisions by implementing restrictive rules to govern employees and ignoring feedback

Jeff Bezos was the valedictorian of his high school class and a fiercely competitive leader at Princeton. He realized early on the advantages of mastering technology and had the ingenious idea that selling online meant avoiding taxes. He was right, but he's had to fight for it and still faces battles with some states who refuse to see things his way. That doesn't stop him. One of the most brilliant aspects of Bezos' leadership style is the way he prioritizes; once he's set a priority, nothing gets in the way of it.

Jeff Bezos is the fifty two year old Chief Executive Officer and founder Amazon, the largest United States based online retailer. A critical and innovative thinker, he created his online book sales company in his garage and has led Amazon to absolute market domination, technological innovation, and has become the third riches person in the world (BBC.com, 2016). His innovative ideas, demonstrated hard work and discipline, coupled with his ability to envision the future of online retail operations, positions his company at the forefront of the market. And behind the technology, the innovation and the drive to convert cash flows into opportunity, is the underlying commitment to the customer. Jeff Bezos demonstrates the leadership practices described by James Kouzes and Barry Posner’s as the five practices of exemplary leadership, model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart (Kouzes & Posner, 2012).

Many leaders who start pursuing leadership development are often trying to improve upon their organisations autocratic leadership style.

The presence of strong as well as effective leadership in today’s organization imposes a great responsibility to the organization’s team and management networks as leadership implies the overall capacity of the organization’s performance like for instance, in terms of operations and research development. It can be said that Amazon’s resources and capabilities can be divided in the management of the company specifically their leader which is Bezos, the ability of the management to effectively use strategic supply chain management and aligning it with their business process and information technology, their competitive advantage in the online market, and the financial resources that it gains through its successful approaches.

An effective leader influences their employees in a desired manner to achieve goals and objectives. Different leadership styles can affect an organization’s effectiveness and performance. The objective of this paper is to analyze the review of literature on various leadership styles over the past years and how effective and ineffective different leadership styles are in the workplace.

Common leadership traits of both Amazon and Starbucks successful and admired fortune 500 companies are their ability to adapt creatively and effectively to challenges and change. Strong and active coping skills is how they recover from setbacks, are open to opinions of other people around them and are ultimately aware of their strengths and shortcomings (cite).

Amazon ultimately has shown evidence of their willingness and ability to collaborate through their success. Amazon gives and receives critical feedback, through the company and outsiders, in order to better their business. Since 1994 when the first online bookseller came about to 2013 with the creation of Amazon coins, this information system structure has come a long way. Although we are not given inside information about day to day operations within Amazon, we can be sure that effective collaboration has taken place due to the current success story. As employees collaborate among each other, performance becomes more efficient and output becomes a substantial amount. The employees and staff members of this company are in an open atmosphere where all ideas and opinions are shared, collaborated, and altered to aid overall performance. If effective collaboration did not take place within Amazon, or any company for that matter, new ideas, progress, and output would be limited. An individual approach would be the focus of a non-collaborative company. Overall, this would have a negative impact on consumers and bring business growth to a decline. In contrast, Amazon’s growth over the past 20 years has been incredible and it is safe to assume successful collaboration will continue to take place within this corporation.