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“Leadership and Organizational Behavior”

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Jeffrey P.Bezos : An entrepreneur leader
Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and from an early age he showed his mechanical attitude developing intense and varied scientific interests. Considering this fact, his parents sent him to a special program for gifted children, where Jeff could develop his love for gadgets (Byers, 2006).
When his family moved to Florida, he discovered his ‘great passion’, computers, so he abandoned his studies in Physics and got a degree on Computer science and Electrical engineering (Sherman, 2001).
After his studies, Jeff Bezos started working for Bankers Trust, and at the age of 26 he became the youngest Vice President of the company (Byers, 2006). When he noticed in 1994 that internet usage was increasing by 2300% a year (Hämäläinen & Saarinen, 2007), he started planning his next step, which was Amazon.com.
Amazon made his appearance in 1995 with 3 micro stations in Bezos’ garage (Robinson, 2009) and its activity was to sell books. Today Amazon.com is one of the most preferable internet retail platform, where customers can find DVD’s, CD’s, MP3 downloads, books and toys. According to Economist (2000), Amazon.com is the most visited internet retail platform in USA and one of the top 3 in Germany, UK, France and Japan.

The impact of Amazon.com
Amazon.com is today the largest electronic retail worldwide (Anon., 2012). According to J. Bezos (Wired Magazine, December, 2011), Amazon is a cultural pioneer which lives to disrupt even its own business. It is recognized by 55% of conscious population, and it is part of today’s Western culture (Spector, 2002). The company spends almost 40% of its income on brand building (Margolis, 1999), and that is why Amazon.com is a trustable and a well-known brand name (Economist, 2000, Marketing, 1999). 70,000 people work today for Amazon, and the company turnover is 48 billion a

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