Answer

Strategic Change: Case Study

There are several organizations that employ creative business practices. However, that does not qualify them to be regarded as creative global organizations. This essay aims at identifying one organization that could be regarded as creative based upon the criteria outlined in the course textbook Mastering Leadership. Using Amazon as an organization that I think can be regarded as a creative organization, I will, in this essay, determine whether the organization meets the criteria outlined in the textbook, discuss the opportunities available for its strategic change, and discuss the effect of the organization’s organizational culture as well as structure in those opportunities.

Amazon, according to Kantor and Streitfeld (2018), started out as an online bookstore before quickly diversifying by adding other products/items, like music, DVDs, video games, clothing, and electronics. The firm has the distinction of being among the first large organizations selling goods over online (Internet) platforms (Meyer, 2017). Presently, Amazon trades millions of goods online. Amazon has its multipurpose and flexible stock inventory that allows its millions of suppliers/vendors to provide it with products. The company has the capacity of meeting high volumes of demands, and the firm’s turnaround time has been proved to be second to no other (Alvesson, 2016).

Personally, I think Amazon can be regarded as a creative organization since Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and CEO, has established structures, cultures, and systems that have proved to be creatively distinct, which are among the creative characteristics that are listed in chapter 10 of the textbook. Further, in 1999, just about five years after Amazon was started, Bezos was recognized as the “Person of the Year” in the Time magazine, an achievement that was largely attributed to the organizational structure and cultures that he brought to Amazon.

Similarly, Amazon has successfully been able to create an environment of trust by being implementers of innovations, customers’ ideas and preferences. Amazon has shifted from one sector to another and successfully gentrified them, regardless of whether such moves implied breaking down its existing structure (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015). For instance, Amazon’s Music Unlimited, the latest music streaming service by Amazon, was developed upon the company’s Amazon MP3. The company’s fashion business, is currently the second-largest seller of clothing in the United States (U.S.), after budding from brand experiments in home goods (2008), outdoor furniture (2004), diapers (2014), electronic accessories (2009), and perishables like fair-trade-certified, organic coffee. This has been possible because Amazon has several creative staff with a lot of knowledge, skills, and ideas which are relevant to the company’s needs, and the skilled manpower has been attributed to the company’s environment of trust.

Amazon is also not fixed upon a tightly formulated designed environment of interlocking services and applications. To Amazon, innovation is a means towards achieving its strategic objectives and Amazon’s strategies are unique and relevant (Huhtala et al., 2015). In the recent past, Prime Video was made accessible to consumers in at least 200 territories and countries after the November unveiling of The Grand Tour. With its ability to reinvent its customer’s experiences, increase its customer selection, and reducing its prices, I think Amazon could be considered as a creative organization based on lessons learnt from Mastering Leadership textbook.

Amazon has an organizational culture that enables its commercial capacity to respond to its e-commerce marketplace’s demands. A company’s corporate and organizational culture sets out the values and traditions that influence staff’s behaviours. For instance, Amazon’s corporate culture compels its staff to go beyond their usual limits and conventions to develop bright solutions and ideas. As the world’s number one online retailer, Amazon continues to seek for fresh talents.

Amazon is well known for its corporate culture that functions to push its employees to explore various ideas as well as to take risk, a cultural condition that Bedarkar et al. (2018) note is responsible for Amazon’s capacity to seek for new openings to use data-intensive processes to give efficient online retail services. Amazon’s organizational culture has three main features. First is boldness.  Amazon encourages boldness among its employees, and this is seen in the manner in which the company pioneered to trade a range of items online, starting initially with books, through data-intensive information knowhow. In addition to encouraging its employees to take risks, by stressing boldness, Amazon facilitates openness to new ideas based upon the company’s organizational diversity policy. This characteristic of Amazon’s organizational culture enables it to recognize the best possible ways of solving problems or bettering the e-commerce business. 

Second is customer-centricity. Amazon’s vision statement states the centrality of clients in its commerce. This factor is as well included in Amazon’s organizational culture. For instance, Amazon buttresses employees’ focus upon customers’ demands and needs. The company, according to Kantor and Streitfeld (2018), continually strives to determine changes and trends in consumer preferences, and applies the preferences in its online retail as well as associated services. Through this feature of the company’s corporate culture, the company upholds its effectiveness in meeting customers as the e-business expands.

Third is peculiarity. Amazon’s organizational culture involves peculiarity, which essentially refers to the awareness of challenging conventions. For instance, Amazon encourages its workers to perceive themselves along with their work as distinct from conventional strategies of doing business. This is because the company holds the belief that conventions impose boundaries upon potential commercial growth.

To conclude, Amazon could be regarded as a creative organization since it meets the definition of a creative organization as defined in chapters 10 and 11 of Mastering leadership textbook. This is possible because of Amazon’s corporate culture, which functions to reinforce the company’s pioneering determinations in the online retail commerce, as espoused in Bezos’ vision.  The company’s cultural features have the strength of backing innovation. For instance, peculiarity and boldness directly enhance new ideas to better Amazon’s e-commerce business. Another strength of Amazon’s organizational culture is that it concentrates upon the customer, making sure that Amazon always meets its consumers’ preferences and expectations. Nonetheless, Amazon’s organizational culture imposes a stress and strain upon human resources, particularly in compelling workers to take peculiar and bold non-conventional strategies in doing their jobs.