Week 23: Jeff Bezo's Case study

Strategic Leadership

A person or an individual from an organization who is able to take full responsibility in performing or managing capital, labor or the parts of the firm is a strategic leader.

In simple words, strategic leadership is the ability that a leader must have to take decisions of an organization/ particular firm and produce great values over a period of time inspiringly as well as managing people and the form properly. There is one vital characteristic of strategic leadership i.e. the vision along with shared values that helps employees to decide without the necessity of monitoring and control mechanisms in a formal way. All and all it allows the leader to gain more time as well as higher aptitude to concentrate on any kind of firm issues.

Identify two interesting similarities and two differences between the 5 elements of successful and effective strategic leadership model and the transcendent leadership model.

5 elements of successful and effective strategic leadership model are listed below:

1.    . Developing and communicating the organizational purpose: One important job of a leader is to form an organizational purpose and deliver it to every part within an organization.
2.       Managing human resources and organizational decisions: Another important job of leader to encourage any employee in every possible way so that he or she will be able to perform wholeheartedly.
3.       Setting ethical standards: One responsibility of a leader to maintain the standards of CSR and monitoring ethical values of the firm properly.
4.       Defining and delivering to the stakeholders: A leaders should be able to preserve trust and comfort relationship within the organization as well beyond the organization.
5.       Sustaining competitive advantage over time: Based on this element, the competitive advantages as well as the main core plus point of the firm have to be safeguarded and preserved by the leader.

Transcendent leadership includes three elements which are as follows:

1.       Leadership of self: One should always be self-aware, self-regulated and develop positive human resource strengths which has a chance to improve the firm’s performance.
   2.      Leadership of others: The relationship between the leaders and the followers should be preserved by incorporating various leadership styles that fits in perfectly with the situation where the leader has to lead the follower in any possible manner.
   3.      Leadership of organization: It concentrated mainly on the elements that are non-human like strategy, rules, procedures, structures, etc. in order to encourage learning the firm closely.

Similarities between both models are listed below:

1.     The stakeholders takes advantage from both these models because they get everything from the organization’s side as listed in both the models.
2.       The daily changes that takes place in an environment is coped up and controlled by both the models by getting used to the changing environment  that encourages the firm to sustain their competitive advantage even under pressure periodically.

Now, the differences of these models are:

1.       The lynch model is very considerate regarding human resources to be in their most prioritized list and the customers are give the most attention with regards to the firm’s employees too. The model suggests that leader encourages any employee in every possible way so that he or she will be able to perform wholeheartedly. In the other hand, transcendent leadership model concentrates mainly on the elements that are non-human like strategy, rules, procedures, structures, etc. in order to encourage learning the firm closely.
2.       The lynch model focuses more on organization’s leadership while transcendent model focuses on organization’s leadership and also on self leadership.

 CASE STUDY- JEFF BEZOS

Personally, I believe Jeff Bezo’s strategic leadership to be more like a lynch model. Some reasons for my belief are stated below:

1.   It develops and communicates the organizational purpose. In the interview of Harvard Business Review, Bezo stated that he only interviews because his customers get an opportunity to understand the mechanism of their operation and also acknowledge them with the principles as well as who they are involved with.
2.  It manages human resources as well as organizational decisions. They are more human focused in nature. They always give the first priority to their customers and focuses on the customers as well as the employee’s well being.
3.  It sets ethical standards by conducting some price elasticity studies. They always have the most possible least price rate even though they result in increasing the price because they want to keep the customer charged. They have a clear vision on ways to advertise as they do meaningful things as Kindle, Amazon web services, etc. The last thing they would want to do is keep their customers on a dark side.
4.  It defines and delivers to the stakeholders, meaning they fully satisfy customers by forming a strong and loyal customer base. By which they gain the customer’s trust and consequently maximize the flow of free cash over a long term.
5. It sustains competitive advantages over time. They maintain themselves in a very secure position in a long run by doing what works best for the customers.
6. All the above evidences match perfectly with the characteristics of lynch model and does not match much with transcendent model.

Reference:

Lynch, R., (2009) Strategic Management, 5^th Edition, Prentice Hall, Chapter 16, pp619

Glen Rowe and Mehdi Hossein Nejad (2009) http://iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/leadership/strategic-leadership-short-term-stability-and-long-term-viability#.UsJUbvQW2bM, accessed on December, 2013

Crossan, M., Vera, D and Nanjad, L. (2008) Transcedent Leadership: strategic leadership in dynamic environments, The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 19, Issue 5, October 2008, Pages 569-581

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/strategic-leadership.html#ixzz2p1n88brs