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Please provide me with a teardown for Amazon including, how the company is structured, what the overall leadership structure looks like, how the business units are organized and who the leaders are of each of the business units.
Hello! Thank you for your request to provide you with a tear down for Amazon, including how the company is structured, what the overall leadership structure looks like, how the business units are organized, and who the leaders are of each of the business units. The short answer is Amazon uses a global hierarchical organizational structure comprised of geographical divisions to quickly implement managerial directives and facilitate operations in specific regions. A deep dive of my findings is below and I have included the details of Amazon's organizational chart on an attached Google doc.
Methodology
To begin my research, I looked for public reports that listed Amazon officers and board members. This information was easy to find, as it is reported in Amazon's annual reports and SEC filings. This allowed me to find the corporate officers and board members. From there, I searched for pre-compiled Amazon hierarchical organization charts, which resulted in a three-tiered chart from The Official Board. Names for the first tier are provided for free, but a fee is required to reveal the names for the second and third tiers. Fortunately, The Official Board provides the initials of each person, so I could perform a Google x-ray search of LinkedIn to identify most of these employees.
I created a Google doc that provides the organizational hierarchy through the General Manager level. I used The Official Board to find which positions reported to whom and LinkedIn to identify the people.
In addition, I searched for general information on how Amazon is structured, which led me to an analysis of its organizational structure and hierarchy. I provided you with a summary of the salient points of this analysis in the "Results" section of this brief.
Limitations
As you mention in your request, Amazon is a fairly private organization. As such, it does not publish much about its corporate organization. I was able to find quite a bit of information from third parties, but nothing that is official except for a list of officers and board members from its public filings.
Although I attempted to find the names of the leaders for each business unit, I am fairly sure I did not find all of them. Despite the fact that Amazon lists only three main business segments, there are many, many units that fall under these segments. In fact, The Official Board indicates there are 495 executives and 40 subsidiaries of Amazon. Even if you exclude the subsidiaries, there are still more executives than can be listed in a standard three-hour Wonder assignment. I listed the executives I was able to find using LinkedIn and various news reports, but if you would like more names, please submit another request.
While most of the employees listed on The Official Board hierarchy chart were readily found on LinkedIn, some were not. If I could not find a name of a person listed on The Official Board according to their initials, I located the person on LinkedIn with the title that most closely matched that of the person listed on The Official Board.
I did not provide a description of what each person's responsibilities are for each position identified because this information was not readily available and further research would have pushed your request out of scope. We would be happy to dig into this deeper for you if you submit another request
I provided as much of the hierarchy structures for the three main business segments identified by Amazon in its annual report as was possible. In most cases, this means I was able to identify the employees through four levels of Amazon's hierarchy. There were only three employees I was unable to identify: Vice President, International Sellers Services (reports to Russell Grandinetti — Senior Vice President International Consumer), Vice President Amazon Logistics Europe (reports to Xavier Garambois — Managing Director, Europe), and Vice President Amazon Marketplace Europe (reports to Xavier Garambois — Managing Director, Europe). Again, there are still several other units for which I did not provide information, as doing so would have pushed your request far out of the scope of a single Wonder assignment. If you would like us to identify the employees for the following business units as listed on The Official Board, please submit another request:
A9.com
AbeBooks
Alexa Internet
Amazon China
Amazon Media Grou
Amazon Robotics
Amazon Studios
Amazon Web Services APAC
Amazon Web Services EMEA
Cloudian
Elemental Technologies
Colis Prive
Amazon.it
Amazon.co.jp
Amazon.in
Audible
ComiXology
CreateSpace
DPReview
Fabric.com
Goodreads
Imdb
Junglee.com
Lab126
Liquavista
Prime Now
Quidsi
Shopbop
Souq.com
Twitch
Woot
Zappos
General Organizational Structure
According to Panmore Institute's analysis of Amazon's organizational structure characteristics, Amazon has what is known as a functional organizational structure. This means it focuses on business functions as the foundation for determining how positions interact with the components of the organization. The main characteristics of Amazon's structure is that it has global function-based groups, a global hierarchy, and geographic divisions.
Each function-based group has a dedicated team that includes a senior manager. This enables Amazon to facilitate the management of a giant e-commerce operation throughout the entire organization. This structure allows Amazon to continue its global expansion into new international markets with relative ease. There are eight major function-based groups in Amazon's organizational structure:
Amazon's global hierarchy structure is traditional in that there is a "global system of vertical lines of command," which means that senior managements' "directives are applied throughout the organization." The main reason for this type of hierarchy is to "facilitate managerial control of Amazon's entire organization."
In addition to this global hierarchy, Amazon utilizes geographic divisions to facilitate the management of e-commerce business based on economic conditions of specific regions. The main reason Amazon uses these divisions is to allow the organization to address issues or problems related to each geographic region, taking into account the regional differences between divisions. In 2015, Amazon simplified its geographic divisions and now only has two:
Of course, there are subdivisions under each major division, particularly for the International segment. According to The Official Board, the International business segment is subdivided into four main international geographic divisions:
Europe is further divided into four country divisions:
The North America business segment does include a separate geographic division for Canada and Mexico to go along with its United States operations.
ADVANTAGES
The benefits to Amazon's current more-traditional organizational structure is that it supports rapid global growth. It enables the organization to quickly and effectively implement managerial directives across the structure. In addition, geographic divisions are beneficial for global e-commerce companies because they can isolate issues that come up for particular regions without affecting other divisions.
DISADVANTAGES
The main disadvantage of Amazon's preferred organizational structure is that it limits flexibility and responsiveness. Each role has defined responsibilities, making it challenging to quickly respond to issues that arise in the e-commerce industry. Increasing the empowerment and autonomy of local and regional offices can help ease the rigidity of this type of structure.
Results
BASIC STRUCTURE
Level 1: CEO
Level 2: Senior Vice Presidents that report to the CEO
Level 3: A mix of Vice Presidents and Directors that report to the Senior Vice Presidents
Level 4: A mix of Directors, Heads, Managing Directors, General Managers, and Senior Managers that report to the Vice Presidents and Level 2 Directors
On the attached Google doc, I have listed all the names I could find through four levels of the Amazon corporate hierarchy. I have bolded the CEO and Senior Vice President positions so you can find them more quickly. I have also linked each person's LinkedIn page to his or her name so that you can quickly access this information.
OFFICERS
DIRECTORS
Conclusion
To wrap it up, Amazon has a traditional vertical global hierarchy for its organizational corporate structure. The CEO is at top, followed by Senior Vice Presidents, Vice Presidents, Directors, Heads, Managing Directors, General Managers, and Senior Managers. The company uses this global hierarchy to quickly implement managerial directives and geographical divisions to facilitate operations in specific regions. I have provided the first four levels of Amazon's hierarchy on the attached Google doc.
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