Business Management Report: John Lewis History, Strategy, and Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of John Lewis, a prominent chain of high-end department stores. It begins with a historical overview of the company, tracing its origins and evolution. The core of the report examines John Lewis's vision, leadership style (democratic/participative), and management practices, including employee engagement and reward systems. It delves into the company's strategic approaches, such as the 4Ps marketing strategy and situational leadership theory. The analysis section evaluates the effectiveness of these practices, highlighting the benefits of democratic leadership, employee engagement techniques (360-degree feedback, right job assignment, and frequent engagement discussions), and their impact on employee morale, productivity, and customer satisfaction. Finally, the report offers recommendations for further improvements, focusing on enhancing customer value, leveraging digital marketing, and refining leadership approaches through reflection and recognition programs. The report aims to provide a detailed understanding of John Lewis's business management strategies and their implications for success in the retail sector.

Business Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
1. History and summary of John Lewis.......................................................................................1
2.Vision, leadership style and management practices and the various strategies........................2
3.Analysis of Leadership Style, Management Practices and Strategies adopted by John Lewis 3
4. Reccomendations.....................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Business management means managing the activities of the business getting people
together to complete the desired goals and objectives of the business effectively and efficiently.
Present study will be based on the John Lewis company is a chain of high-end
department stores. It was founded by John Lewis in 1864. Its headquarter was located at
London,SW United Kingdom (Hammer, 2015).
Report will include the history and summary of Tesco. It will also include about the
leadership style, management practices and its various strategies.
MAIN BODY
1. History and summary of John Lewis
John Lewis was founded in 1864.In 1905 Lewis acquired a second store, Peter Jones in
Sloane Square, London. His son John Spedan Lewis began the partnership in 1920. The
partnership firm was purchased in the London. Jessops re branded itself as John Lewis on 27
October 2002. Thee name of the partnership firm bought as Self ridge Provincial Stores. This
group consist of sixteen suburban and provincial department stores included Cole Brothers,
Sheffield and many more all of them continue to trade and then re-branded as John Lewis &
partners. Its branches in London named as Peter Jones, John Barnes, John Pound and Bon
Marche (Roseman and vom Brocke, 2015).The provincial branches were Robert Sayle of
Cambridge and Peter borough, Tyrrell & Green of Southampton and Lance & Lance of Weston-
super-Mare. They also had “silk shops” at Edinburgh.
The first John Lewis store was constructed as part of a shopping centre was relocated in
Nottingham. The announcement of an anchor tenant such as John Lewis contributes to the
certainty. John Lewis stores closed on Mondays allowed staff two day weekends. It is the first
department store in the UK that adopt central buying, the Jonell name for own brand
merchandise in 1937. The brand was replaced by John Lewis in 2001. It also provides Waitrose
own brand products such as cleaning materials and party stationery. Investment has been made
across the group in the twenty-first century. This is the largest branch in the partnership. The
complete building was completed in 2007. It also started its new 'Place to eat' restaurant and a
brasserie and bistro in the store. John Lewis food hall from Wait rose was opened in the
basement. John Lewis changes its brand name to become John Lewis & Partners. John Lewis &
partners is the eighth best private sector employees in the UK based on the reviews and ratings of
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the public in UK. John Lewis partnership is operated in the 52 John Lewis stores in the Great
Britain. 35 stores are the traditional department stores and 12 are 'John Lewis at home' stores.
They also started working from home and focus on electrical, home and technology products. In
2016 it planned to enter in the Irish market. It opened with a limited number of john Lewis
branded home furnishings (Doppelt, 2017). It opened five shop-in-shop branches in Myer
department stores in Australia. Rationale behind choosing this company is that it is the largest
chain of department stores operating in the United Kingdom under the retail sector.
2.Vision, leadership style and management practices and the various strategies
The vision of the John Lewis is to grow its business operations with full of opportunities
and by creating new ideas and innovation in the company so that the organizational goal can be
achieved.
The leadership style followed by the John Lewis is democratic leadership style that is also
known as participative leadership style. In this leadership style the members of the group are
more participative and take part in the decision making process. If employees are not involving
in the decision making process they are not aware about the company's policies and regulations.
So in John Lewis the decision is being taken by the leaders as well as the employees. Through
this leadership style employees also feels that they are the part of the company. This helps in
achieving the goals and objectives of the company (Derr and DeLong, 2018). Due to this style
the employees take initiative in doing work effectively and efficiently. As in John Lewis the
leader is friendly to its subordinates so that they can share the problem facing by them. It also
helps in building the good relation between the leader and its subordinates. This style helps in
creating the job satisfaction among the employees. Greater participation of employees in the
company's decision helps in getting more creative ideas to solve the problems of the company.
Management practice followed by John Lewis is employee engagement activity. It involves that
employees will be engaged in the company so that they can't feel alone and stressed. John Lewis
is conducting the employee engagement activities to improve the performance and productivity
of employees. If employees are not known to each other the working environment of the
company may affect the productivity of employees. As they are not feeling good and secure in
the company. Employee engagement activity helps in growth of the employees as well for the
company. By using this management practice John Lewis can improve the productivity of
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employees. Due to this job satisfaction is also increased and the retention is higher that leads to
lower employee turnover in John Lewis (Holten and Brenner, 2015)
Another management practice is giving reward. Reward is giving to the employees based on
their performance. If the employee is performing good then it will be given reward of it. By
using this practice John Lewis enhance the motivation of its employees. As they are motivated to
achieve more and build the loyalty for the company.
John Lewis used the 4Ps marketing strategy in the company. It believes that providing quality
product helps in achieving the customer satisfactions. It said that price is the heart of the
business. It adopts the competitive pricing strategy that helps in keeping the quality and value in
mind. This strategy helps in achieving the goals of the company. John Lewis uses this strategy to
enhance the marketing of its products in the market. It helps in bringing some new ideas and
innovation that leads to the growth of the company.
The situational theory of leadership is used to analyze the result in the John Lewis. In this theory
the action is taken based on the situation of the company. As if the subordinates are skilled then
democratic style of leadership is being used by the company depend on the situation.
For John Lewis transformational leadership style is more appropriate as in this style changes are
brought that will lead to the success in the future. The changes brings new innovative ideas that
enhances the growth of the company (Iqbal, Anwar and Haider, 2015).
3.Analysis of Leadership Style, Management Practices and Strategies adopted by John Lewis
John Lewis adopted the democratic style in which leaders of John Lewis builds the
relationship with their employees in order to know about them and their strengthen relations with
them. They conduct various surveys on employee satisfaction to get to know about their
employees. Then they find out the problems that are facing by the employees and work to solve
their problems. They also implement various quality management techniques that help them to
reduce their problems, improves efficiency and boost the employee morale. They push
employees to think innovative and motivate them to identify their own areas of development and
help them to achieve their goals. Leaders of John Lewis implement democratic style which is
beneficial for the company in many ways such as gaining loyal employees, better work
environment,increasing the employee satisfaction and coordination between the team members.
This will increase the efficiency and work style (Regina, Joseph and Daniel, 2016).The
employees become more productive and try to give their best to the company that can help to
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achieve the target of the company. It also helps in earning profit and due to it employees are
given rewards. This helps in motivating the employees to perform better in the future.
John Lewis used employee engagement practice. It uses various techniques to implement this
practice. These techniques such as:-
360 Degree Feedback:- It the procees in which employees of John Lewis get feedback from the
other employees, their subordinates and peers that are working with them. This helps in know
about the performance, strength, weaknesses of the employee. This helps in making employee
more effective.
For the implementation of this technique HR department of John Lewis conduct the interview of
the employees regarding the views for other employees to measure the performance. In the
interview HR ask some questions to the employees. On the basis of it measure the performance.
They follow the Key Performance Indicator(KPI) to measure the performance. Through this they
measure the employees performance and give feedback to them so that they improve the
performance on the basis of the reviews given by the employees (Day, Gu and Sammons, 2016).
Give everyone right job:- John Lewis appoints everyone on right roles according to their
qualification, knowledge, experience, skills and qualities. This make employees comfortable and
engage in their work.
For this company hire freshers, describe about the job and give him training. After that
they give a basic roles and responsibilities with a little challenging tasks for completion. Then
after sometime, they evaluate the performance of the employees. On the basis of its
performance ,they give a right job according to its qualification and certification.
For example:- An employee who wants to become sales manager in John Lewis. Firstly,
employee have to complete the sales target given by sales manager of the company. On the basis
of his performance they will give the promotion and then it becomes the sales manager by
fulfilling the roles and responsibilities by completing the task assigned to it (Sanzo, 2016).
Frequently discuss engagement:- Managers of the company uses transparent approach in that
they involve their employees in decision making or problem solving process. This approach is
valuable for the company and they retain for longer period in the company.
For implementing this approach John Lewis conduct weekly team meeting in which employees,
managers and leaders come together and discuss the issues plans of the company regarding
employees, departments, activities and strategies.
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By using this management practice, company get effective and satisfied employees that helps
company to get innovative and qualitative products at low cost that lead consumers to consume
qualitative products at low price (What is business management, 2019). This helps company in
making more profit and increase in the market share
4. Reccomendations
For the improvement company can add more customer value in the products and bring
innovative products that can help customers to improve their lifestyles and comfort ability. This
will bring more customer base to the company. It can also involve the customers and make them
their central by using digital marketing. For that company have to make account on the digital
platforms. After that, company can use various strategies such as discounts or shout-outs etc.
Company can also tag their customers in the post. This will make customer engagement in
business strong.
Leaders of the company can use reflection to improve the leadership style. Reflection allows
leader to understand that what is important and what can be done differently. After
understanding these two aspects, leaders can change their style for the betterment of employees.
Also, leaders can listen to their employees with open mind and allow them to participate in every
decision making process. Company can use recognition approach for the improvement in
employee engagement process. Giving recognition can boost the employees' confident and
motivate him/her to do better performance in the future. This will help in increment of
satisfaction level of employee and he/she will retain in John Lewis.
CONCLUSION
From the above study it can be concluded that leadership style, management practices
and strategies plays an important role in the company. Maintaining the coordination between all
these practices helps in achieving the goal of the company. As participative leadership style
helps in involving all the subordinates of the group to take part in the decision making process
that helps company in getting new ideas and solutions from it. Wrong implementation of
strategies or wrong adoption of style can lead to failure of business. It can be observed from the
above study that leadership style plays a vital role in the company.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Day, C., Gu, Q. and Sammons, P., 2016. The impact of leadership on student outcomes: How
successful school leaders use transformational and instructional strategies to make a
difference. Educational Administration Quarterly.52(2).pp.221-258.
Derr, C.B. and DeLong, T.J., 2018. What business management can teach schools. In The
Management of Educational Institutions (pp. 137-148). Routledge.
Doppelt, B., 2017. Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for
business, government and civil society. Routledge.
Hammer, M., 2015. What is business process management?. In Handbook on business process
management 1 (pp. 3-16). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Holten, A.L. and Brenner, S.O., 2015. Leadership style and the process of organizational
change. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.36(1).pp.2-16.
Iqbal, N., Anwar, S. and Haider, N., 2015. Effect of leadership style on employee
performance. Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review.5(5)pp.1-6.
Regina, M.O., Joseph, H.W. and Daniel, J.R., 2016. Teacher classroom management practices:
Effects on disruptive or aggressive student behavior.
Rosemann, M. and vom Brocke, J., 2015. The six core elements of business process
management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer,
Berlin, Heidelberg.
Sanzo, K.L., 2016. Strategies for developing and supporting school leaders: Stepping stones to
great leadership. Routledge.
Online
What is business management.2019.[Online].Available
through<https://www.collegechoice.net/faq/what-is-business-management/>
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