Alberto Ciani

Module Project
Global Leadership

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This is a report on the global leadership competencies of Jeff Bezos: entrepreneur,

founder and chief executive at Amazon. The first introductory chapter analyses Bezos
cultural leadership foundations that might arise from his younger years. We highlight how
his long-term view affects his businesses practices and cultural traits, including his
charismatic-value and team-oriented traits.

The following sections will evaluate each single leadership competency and how this has
been demonstrated in Jeff Bezos’s leadership: emotional and cultural intelligence, team
approach and developing leaders, integrity and authentic behavior, ethics and CSR. Our
findings will highlight the distinguishing traits of Bezos’s leadership style, including some
recommendations needed to be a more effective global leader. In fact, we argued that
Bezos should improve his communication, he should be more attentive with employees’
working conditions, and he should value more social and philanthropic themes.

The following research is limited to the information we could gather through the press,
magazines, and Bezos’ personal recorded interviews.

2. INTRODUCTION

Jeff Bezos is known for being the founder of Amazon.com. Back in 1995, at the early
stages of the internet, Bezos created his book store online, named Amazon.com. In a
couple of years, the company was ready to become one of the most known players of the
new economy. Today, Amazon is a whole-seller and led the trend of online e-commerce at
a global level. Jeff Bezos is also the founder and chief executive of Blue Origin, and he is
the unique owner of the Washington Post. He is also investor in several other ventures.
(Jeff Bezos, n. d.).

His step-father “Bezos”, a Cuban immigrant in the USA

Jeff was born Jorgensen as his father and mother married at the age of 17 years old; this
marriage lasted only one year, and Bezos’s mother re-married a few years later to Miguel
“Mike” Bezos, an immigrate who fled from Cuba in 1962 at the age of 15 years old
(Robinson, 2009). Bezos often declared that “Mike” was his only father, as he has never
met his natural father: he remembers Mike as a hard-working man sustaining his family
and children (Sanchez, 2013). His relationship with his father might have forged his
cultural intelligence and it might have defined some of Bezos’s global leadership traits,
including attention to minorities, such as developing programs to provide instructions to
minorities, and an open attitude to immigration as diversity as a vehicle to growth. This is
evident in his charity “The Bezos Family Foundation” (Bezos family foundation, n. d.) to
improve education at all levels, and in Bezos supporting immigrations reforms together
with the other leaders of the new economy, and in his advocacy to recruit Latinos talents
at the Society of Hispanic Engineers (Sanchez, 2013).

Long-term thinking: Amazon.com, Washington Post, Blue Origin, Bezos

Expeditions, and other ventures

To introduce Jeff Bezos global leadership, we should briefly review all his ventures as an
entrepreneur as an investor within his perspective of “long-term thinking”.

Firstly, we believe it is significative to include in this presentation his personal venture to

build a 10.000 years clock caved in the mountains in USA. The purpose of this “art and
engineering” work is to “build a Clock that ticks once a year, where the century hand
advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium” (10000
year Clock, n. d.), he further declares that “We're likely to need more long-term thinking”.
This project perfectly explains how Jeff Bezos value long-terms, and we will see how his
approach is highly influenced by this perspective.

Global leaders need to have a long vision and build the present according to long-term
standpoints (Mendenhall et al., 2013). According to Levy et al. (2001), there are some
common traits that make a global leader effective as a long-term thinker: incorporate
social and environmental goals in the strategic planning; educate to be frugal and
understand that resources will always be scarcer in the future; commit to customer service
by creating long-term solutions rather than week by week answers; valuing businesses out
of the executive committee to allow a long-time assessment to reduce risks of immediate
profit.

If we consider Washington Post acquisition, Bezos bought the company has unique
shareholder to avoid the risk of providing immediate economic and financial results, as it
would have been required with a public company: he required the time to understand the
future trends of the press industry, either traditional and online (Farhi, 2013). This long-
term view is thus essential when a global leader needs to value how a new acquisition
might be challenged by the global environment and how the same business might interfere
with the environment. What happened at the Washington Post after Bezos’ acquisition is
that he could learned and value how to make of this newspaper a modern and dynamic
media, and in fact he has changed the outlook of the newspaper and now its readership
has exploded making it suitable for the digital world. Bezos is not in charge with any
editorial issues, but he re-invented the Post as a media and technological company from a
business point of view (Kim, 2016).

A similar long-term view is driving Blue Origin venture established in 2010 with the
purpose to travel the universe. The company has just made their first successful launch, it
is involved in researching and developing a free-emission engine to reduce CO2 in the air,
and recently, Nasa has agreed with Blue Origin a common developing program (Dillow,
2015). In this venture, Bezos is working on developing eco-sustainable travels to the
Space as a form of future tourism. Bezos was an investor in the embryonal stages of other
renowned and less known companies, to cite some of the most famous: Google, Air B and
B, Uber, and Twitter (Selected investments, n. d.). Bezos has often sacrificed his short-
term profits to look for long term bets and returns in future: already back in 1997, he
declared that “it is all about the long term” (The economist, 2012)
Cultural traits

Amazon is based on Bezos’s charismatic global leadership traits who seeks to inspire
his company providing an overall vision and defining the high standards that the whole
organization should perceive as a common goal; in this dimension, global leaders use their
core principles as the fuel to motivate and lead their company to the success (House et al.,
2002). Bezos core values on Amazon are clear and based on the following three
principles: “Long-term Thinking, Customer Obsession, and Willingness to invent”
(Lashinsky, 2017). His charisma leads small teams to continuously searching for new
trends to anticipate customers’ demands (Hartung, 2013): his customer centric philosophy
is based on providing to the client what they need, instead of waiting the client to ask what
they want. This change of attitude was disruptive in the retail market and this is Bezos
fundamental core value: looking at the future though the eyes of the customer (The man
who sells everything, 2015). One of the examples that it is worth citing is Kindle:
answering to the needs of the customer, Bezos anticipated the whole market with the
disruptive invention of the first “e-book” allowing millions of readers to read, purchase, and
carry books at low cost and weight. Another disruptive invention is allowing other retailers
to use Amazon as a retail channel for their products that, with affordable fees, they can
use the platform and its outstanding services. Bezos believes in experiencing customer
needs, thus his teams are required to attend a monthly two-hours training session at
Amazon’s call center to feel and comprehend customers’ needs (Frugal Entrepreneur,
2015): “the key is starting with customers, and working backwards”, Bezos argued on a
recent interview (Quinn, 2016).

Beside customer obsession, Bezos strives to achieve “long-term vision and willingness to
invent”. House et al. (2002) argue that one of the cultural dimension that identify a global
leader is the team-oriented dimension. Through this cultural dimension, Bezos effectively
instills a long-term vision and allows his teams to innovate. He empowers loyalty, pride
and collaboration, and his leadership is focused in recognizing misalignment in teams and
provide feedback to re-alignment (Lashinsky, 2017). Bezos’ team-oriented dimensions
grows in his listening to global teams: acting on advice and implementing good
recommendations; and in sharing credits with the same (Hewlett, 2016). Teams are
“explores” (Lashinsky, 2017), and Bezos, as also Banatugomez (2017) argue a global
leader should do, instills the organizational core values and acts consequently.

Global leaders should inspire and focus on improving the quality of life either of their
employees and of everyone that might be affected by their organization (Mendenhall et al.,
2013). At the US-INDIA B. C., Bezos declared (Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, receives the
2016 USIBC Global Leadership Award, 2016) that he focused on providing new initiatives
in India that could merge with Prime Minister’s plan to sustain India’s growth. He explained
that Amazon’s plans in India will help “Digital India” helping small businesses to sell their
products online through his platform; Amazon would support employment as he will make
of India the second world hub for software development, and Amazon new 9.000 pick-up
points in rural areas will provide new jobs and allow a new post service; finally “learning
program” developed by the minister of instruction will be empowered by the new
technological hub that will also deliver training schools. Global leadership should be
connected to the well-being of the planet and collaborating with governments or other
organization shows engagement in a sustainable approach to business. It is throughout
this approach that MNEs might assist social growth helping governments with their
developing agendas, building trust and leading to modify practices and rules toward the
positive impact of an industry in the society (Lacy, Haines & Hayward, 2012)

Sustainable business means attention and love to the environment. Environmental

issues should permeate in a global organization and a global leader is in charge to infuse
and promote environmental practices and processes. Bezos global leadership is highly
related to reduce waste within Amazon’s delivery process and packages. He has
established a Kaizen program with small teams working to identify waste and streamline
processes reducing general waste and work processes (About Amazon – Kaizen, n.d.).
Bezos sustainable programs include a power wind plant in Texas and solar systems with
the purpose to reach a 100% clean energy used in all Amazon’s global infrastructures
footprint (Sustainability, n. d.). Bezos sustains the Paris agreements on climate change
(The White House, 2015) and he is a vivid sustainer of the most important organizations,
private, non governmental organizations, or governmental institutions, operating in
reducing the effect of climate change (Sustainability external engagement). Global leaders
should innovate responsibly, and Blue Origin approaches business with a strong
environmental consciousness: the low carbon emissions program has produced a new
engine that uses only liquefied natural gas and oxygen (Dillow, 2015). Recycle papers are
only used in Amazon (Peterson, 2015).

3. EMOTIONAL & CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE

Ovans (2015) defines Emotional Intelligence as a must-have trait for a global leader: it
helps to understand and perceive others, perceive your own emotions, control your
behaviors, and feel the signals that other behaviors and emotions send. A self-assessment
is therefore necessary as a first step to enhance E.I. (Hess and Baciga Lupo, 2013).
Goleman (2004) coined five components of emotional intelligence that affect leadership:

- Self-awareness: have full understanding of one own strengths and weaknesses; a

leader should understand the limits of his/her personality and learn how to improve
or reduce the impact of his/her weaknesses;
- Self-regulation: control behaviors and feelings in the decision-making process;
- Motivation: the power of doing something beyond the material of money and status
quo;
- Empathy: understand the drivers and sentiments of the people you are in relation;
- Social-skills: and relationship skills including ability to reduce conflict and to
communicate effectively. Especially in the workplace, social-skills are an essential
component of Emotional Intelligence because the ability to perceive others
(empathy) and communicating correctly instills energy, as Copper(1997) suggests
this combination creates an empowering alchemy.
Jeff Bezos showed Emotional Intelligence in many circumstances, but one in particular is
worth citing. When The New York Times published a strong critique on the rigorous
employee standard and harsh working conditions at Amazon, Bezos found himself in a
difficult position to respond. Instead of fighting back, he politely turned the disapproval
around addressing the concerns that have been raised and delivering the change that the
employees desired (Soper & Bishop, 2016). In this event, Bezos showed a strong self-
awareness and empathy, and with his social skills could make the best of a difficult
situation. Emotional intelligence enables a leader to emerge from others (Goldman, 2004).
According to White (n. d.), Bezos enhance his emotional intelligence with his humble
humor that he uses to make others feel comfortable; and this is partially one of his
communication strategies.

Despite these positive examples, Bezos required the assistance of a personal coach that
he hired to learn how to be more empathic and how to avoid severe comments or wrong
behaviors especially toward his direct managers (Business Insider, 2014). He learned how
to enhance emotional intelligence as this was not an innate trait. This is a principle of
emotional intelligence: self-awareness, therefore it further shows that Bezos is working on
enhancing his leadership style.

Emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence are necessary together to better

understand the challenges of the global environment. Cultural Intelligence is the ability to
understand other cultures and be empathic toward their customs and cultural traits;
leaders can enhance their own cultural intelligence through experience, self-assessment,
and education (Alon and Higgins, 2005).

Bezos cultural intelligence might be instilled in the younger years with his father being a
Cuban immigrant. In opening in other nations, Bezos has often valued the social
sustainable impact of his ventures, and he showed an attentive cultural intelligence when
opening his Indian Amazon subsidiaries (Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, receives the 2016
USIBC Global Leadership Award, 2016).

4. TEAM APPROACH AND DEVELOPING LEADERS WITHIN THE

ORGANIZATION

One of the qualities that would positively or negatively affect the performance of a global
leader is his/her aptitude to form winning global teams and develop other leaders within
his/her organization. (Zenger and Folkman, 2016). A global leader developing individuals
to become leaders themselves would find sponsors and would form great performers that
would also enhance his/her leadership (Hewlett, 2016). A team approach should be based
on a solid corporate culture, organizational values, and common agreed objectives (House
at al., 2002). According to Goldsmith (2009) the purpose of a global leader should be to
develop like-minded people within the organization.

In this view, Bezos shows widespread qualities of global leadership. According to Mc Ginn
(2013), Bezos leadership style is catching in a way that many leaders within his
organization tend to think as he does as they have internalized the way Bezos thinks.
Other leaders in Amazon run their own departments, and Bezos invites to have
“Backbone”, meaning to feel free to engage the status quo and provide new ideas and
proposals. Amazon’s employees admit that Bezos leadership style is intense, but also
innovative and exhilarating (Leadership qualities of Jeff Bezos, 2017). One of Bezos most
famous team practices is “the two-pizza rule”: if you can't feed your team with two large
pizzas in a meeting, you will never reach the point (Stack, 2016). In this team building
process, Bezos tries to create social interaction among a small number of peers, highly
selected to be participative and diverse in their expertise.
 5. INTEGRITY, TRANSPARENCY, AND AUTHENTIC BEHAVIOR

Integrity is a serious portion of global leadership: it drives the authority of the leader and it
is an important quality to obtain the commitment of your employees (Allen, 2001). Integrity
means that your behaviors, thoughts, and words all say the same thing. A leader needs to
be transparent and authentic to instill trust and commitment in his/her organization. Allen
(2001) argues that a leader’s integrity is valued by his/her own employees and the level of
trust and engagement is duly affected. When leaders show these traits, the organizational
culture is usually healthy and productive (Baltzley & Lawrence, 2015).

Bezos adopts a very transparent behavior: whatever he says and does have always a
meaning. Skeet (2015) suggests that one of the most ethical actions a leader should be
responsible for is to explain to your employees what is expected and how things are done.
Amazon’s organizational culture is based on a high integrity: Bezos views are always long-
term, and employees know where the company wants to go and how they are trying to
achieve these goals. Bezos is also very attentive to find people in his organization that fits
the company, thus employees know what they are expecting and the “fit” is easy due to
the transparency that it is spread throughout the company.

6. ETHICAL APPROACHES, CSR AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT

Corporate Social Responsibility in a connected environment might follow three different

approaches depending on the following environment: national, global or transnational
(Meldenhall, 2013). It is evident that a global company cannot simply manifest attention to
its local stakeholders, but it should be responsible and ethical on a global perspective. The
ethical approach should contribute to the triple bottom line (Gergen and Vanourek, 2008)
to be financial, social, and environmental sustainable.

In this purpose, Bezos has been often criticized for his business practices and for the weak
CSR practices (Frank, 2015). We can argue that CSR practices are quite recent in
Amazon culture if we account that only in 2015 Bezos has hired a director of social
responsibility and only after the company has been invested by a series of complains and
interviews of past employees manifesting their disappointment for the work environment.
(Frank, 2015). Recently, Postrel (2017) has anticipated how Amazon is working to redefine
its corporate social responsibility as they urge a change to become a more solidary
organization that embraces social causes and provides a better environment for their
employee and for the community. It is interesting that Bezos is challenged by the same
critics in a transnational environment as also in other countries he is facing the same
issues, as the recent case in Italy (La Repubblica, 2017)

On the other hand, Bezos seems attentive when working on frugal innovations. As we
mentioned before, Bezos in India has established Amazon the second software hub in the
world and he tied his projects to the developing program of the prime minister. As an
entrepreneur is has the duty to improve the conditions of the emerging country, often
transforming the same in accordance with the local governments and organizations
(MManyaka Boshielo, 2017). Bezos is working in India toward the improvement and
developing of the local life conditions, as Dees (1998) suggests that the purpose of a
social entrepreneur is to lead to “community transformation”. Jeff Bezos is not a social
entrepreneur, but he is anyway attentive to the local regulations and cultures when doing
business in the emerging economies.

Amazon transformation on CSR practices is quite evident tough, in fact the following
improvements have been highly advertised and launched since the new director of social
responsibilities has been hired in 2016 (In the Community, n. d. – Dudovskiy, 2017 –
Gunther, 2016):

- Feeding American initiative to donate excess food;

- Amazon plans to hire 25.000 new employees from veterans and military spouses;
- Kenya: digital library to serve 61 public libraries;
- Established “local love events” to provide help to no profits all over the US;
- Career choice programmes to sustain tuition fees for employees improvement;
- Virtual contact center to allow employees to contact the service center;
- Solar system have been implemented throughout Amazon’s head offices in settle;
- The purpose of the company is to reach the 50% of all energy consumed from solar
or wind powerlines;
- Help charitable organizations with Amazon Smile and Amazon Literary Partnership;
- Helped after natural disasters in Nepal earthquake in 2015, in the Philippines floods
in 2015, and in New Orleans after hurricane Catherine in 2012;

7. RECOMMENDATIONS

Jeff Bezos is a visionary leader. His long-term view is unique and assure stability and
purpose to his stakeholders. He deserves the title of one of the most successful global
leaders in the world, and he is a global leader in the terms we have review throughout this
essay. Nonetheless, Jeff Bezos might improve some of the traits that characterize a global
leader to be more effective and esteemed by more followers. He has a “stingy” reputation
(Robinson, 2017) as a philanthrope: among the many multimillionaires, he is the one with
the less amount of dominations and social causes served. As a leader in his organization
is often challenged by his employees for the working conditions at Amazon. Streitfeld and
Haughney (2013) reported a couple of case in which the working conditions at Amazon
are indeed harsh and difficult to sustain with unpaid working hour, excessive heat, and in
general low consideration of the base of the pyramid.

Therefore, the recommendation is to enhance his communication style and practices, and
be more attentive to the social needs of his employees and of the communities his
companies serve. Communication means to speak clearly to deliver a convincing
message, and in a global environment the cultural challenges might be an obstacle
(Hewlett, 2016). Bezos understood the need to hire a director of social responsibilities to
communicate and manage some of the issues that his style of leadership might not be
helpful to address. He should anyway consider that communication is considered one of
the three main competencies of a global leader (Giles, 2016) and most employees
complains are due for mis- or unclear communication (Solomon, 2015). He should listen
toward his base-line employee, act, and solve these issues to increase his reputation as
an ethical leader.
 8. CONCLUSION

Jeff Bezos is a charismatic leader with a long-term vision. His core traits seek to inspire his
company with a strong commitment to his values which can be summarized in “customer
obsession, long-term view, and willingness to invent”. This attitude has led Amazon to be
one of the most successful companies in the world. Bezos is not only Amazon. He has
invested in some of the most successful start-ups in the world starting from Google, to Air
BB, Uber or Twitter. He shows a terrific sense of business and proactivity toward
innovation.

He has a long-term view also on environmental sustainable practices: he is wiling to

reduce his companies carbon emission with a 100% wind and solar energy production; he
is investing in reducing carbon footprints; he is providing recycle only packages; he is
working on implementing a free CO2 emission engine for Blue Origin. He has showed
commitments to the sustainable growth of the emerging countries where Amazon is
investing, and he is agreeing with the local governments a common agenda. He has a
strong team approach and leads his companies with integrity and transparency.

Bezos can also improve an already outstanding leadership. In fact, he shows evident
weaknesses when dealing with communication, social themes, worker conditions, and
philanthropic subjects. Global leaders are expected to solve all of these issues as their
impact should value the common well-being.

As a conclusion, we might define Jeff Bezos as one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our
time: visionary, disruptive, and innovative. His leadership competencies are certainly
global, but he might enhance his skills to be further an example to follow besides his
business merits.
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