The Organization Management (Essay Sample)

Organization Management
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Question 1
A network structure benefited Amazon in various ways of conducting its businesses. To begin with, Amazon was able to respond adaptively to some of the dynamic environments that are highly flexible. This is well illustrated when it was first launched as an online bookstore. It was then the most significant online bookstore of the time, which managed to offer more than one million to online buyers. At its inception, the most common or trending bookstores operated in the traditional realm, which was becoming obsolete in the new technology error. They relied on their physical inventories and warehouses, which required buyers to avail themselves physically (Pather, 2018). Amazon coming online with its platform of Amazon, unveiled the most flexible and convenient market place to buyers. This was due to the ability to avail of a mass of books to the online platform. This saw the company grow tremendously through huge revenues, and that posted good profits.
Following a network structure enabled Amazon to grow and expand rapidly into a global entity. That was achieved systematically from the year 1998 when Amazon diversified into businesses such as selling CDs, DVDs, videos, and other electronic products. Considering that Amazon trades online, that diversification meant getting into alliances that would bring other retailers and manufacturers of such products. These expansions were international, taking examples of opening up the German and the UK markets in the year 1999. Other markets were opened in France and Japan, respectively, in the year 2000. A primary instinct of growth was in the year 1999 when high demands were speculated for the Christmas holidays (Organizational management: Study text: Module 44-501424, 2019). Five distribution facilities, warehouses, and customer service centers were built to improve Amazon's order fulfillment capabilities.
Amazon enjoyed service fees and also a commission on sales resulting from merging with other merchants in forming a business network. In the year 1999, when Amazon decided to broaden its network structure, it changed from being just an internet retailer to a vast platform for commerce. The introduction of the feature enabled the company to incorporate other businesses like the Circuit City into their business network structure. This created a comprehensive platform of a customer base for both companies (Pather, 2018). Other contracts such as that with the Toys "R" We enabled the businesses to personalize their customer experience, which allowed the addition of customers and purchases and brought a connection to other consumers.
Question 2
The biggest challenge Amazon could face as a result of following a network structure is that their partners may gain access to its proprietary knowledge or technology or only their way of doing business. When Amazon decided to engage in a more traditional way of marketing arrangements like where the Amazon website was used as a marketing vehicle for other companies like Drugstore, Living, and others. This could create an opportunity for those companies to gain access to the Amazon business. This is because those companies were given access to the Amazon customer base, whereby which could create a conflict of interest between these partnerships (Sparkes, 2018). Even though an agreement was made for Amazon to charge placement and referral fees, the challenge of losing a whole market to a partner is much crucial.
It becomes conspicuous to manage lateral relations across autonomous organizations. This may lead to all of the partners in the network to be fined in case one of the partners goes against the law. For example, Amazon’s relationship with Toys "R" Us when retailers increased, the latter wanted to take advantage of the internet shopping trend and opened their own wesite-toysrus. That, however, did not go well with them as they failed to fill the many customer orders; hence many customer complaints were made. As a result, the Toy "R" Us was fined for violating telephone and mail order rules. Being an affiliate of the Amazon business network structure, that would raise confusion which could lead to a bad reputation of Amazon's image (Perry, 2015).
At times, sharing benefits and sustaining memberships in a network structure can be problematic. This arises when a member gives stringent measures that define their operations in the network after acquiring the copyrights. A member may also have made some other contracts with other businesses that make it challenging to accommodate all their activities in the single network structure (Organizational management: Study text: Module 44-501424, 2019). This was an aspect that Amazon needed to be strict on it, considering that their partners like the Circuit City and the Toys "R" Us were big companies.
Question 3
Although the product-centric structure focuses on the betterment of the product by either developing new products or through leveraging technology or specialized skills, it may not help the organization to attain a competitive advantage since it pays little attention to the customers. On the other hand, a customer-centric structure may be a good strategy for an organization to pursue because it helps the organization to a competitive advantage since it focuses much on building a positive customer relationship (Sparkes, 2018).
Amazon dot com could use several means to empower its partners to centralize their organizations based on the customer-centric structure. This, as said before, it would assist the organizations in developing a stable competitive advantage. One based way Amazon would use to empower their partners is through carrying out market analysis. This would include researching the organization's customers to determine the number of factors such as; customers' preferences, their social perceptions, their availability on the internet, and other factors. Knowing such aspects helps the company, for example, the Circuit City, to understand its customers hence possible to tailor both products and services that fit them (Pather, 2018). These researches are somehow lengthy; accordingly could only be handled by a developed company like Amazon.
Having a good understanding of the market, the Amazon was in a better position to empower its partners through providing the industry knowledge. This would enable companies like Toys "R" Us to have a good understanding of segmentation in their business centralization. Having good industry knowledge would also help the company to understand its competitors hence getting an insight into counter-attack measures (Organizational management: Study text: Module 44-501424, 2019). Amazon also had extensive coverage in several industries; therefore, it was simple for it to access market demand, which in turn would be used as an e