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JCP Case Study

J.C. Penney's was founded in 1902 as a conservative western store and incorporated in 1913, focusing on home goods, clothing, and cookware. In 1968, they focused on apparel to compete with stores like Sears and Montgomery Ward. For years, J.C. Penney's struggled with its identity in the changing retail market. In 2011, new CEO Ron Johnson drastically changed the company culture from a market focus to a hierarchy, laying off employees and lacking transparency. Johnson lacked leadership skills and compassion for employees. For success, I would recommend leadership training for Johnson, creating shared vision and goals through collaboration, and assigning teams SMART objectives to change the culture from a hierarchy to collaboration.

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Karen Ferrari
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244 views4 pages

JCP Case Study

J.C. Penney's was founded in 1902 as a conservative western store and incorporated in 1913, focusing on home goods, clothing, and cookware. In 1968, they focused on apparel to compete with stores like Sears and Montgomery Ward. For years, J.C. Penney's struggled with its identity in the changing retail market. In 2011, new CEO Ron Johnson drastically changed the company culture from a market focus to a hierarchy, laying off employees and lacking transparency. Johnson lacked leadership skills and compassion for employees. For success, I would recommend leadership training for Johnson, creating shared vision and goals through collaboration, and assigning teams SMART objectives to change the culture from a hierarchy to collaboration.

Uploaded by

Karen Ferrari
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Running head: M1 CASE STUDY 1

J.C. Penney's

Karen Ferrari

Empire State College


M1 CASE STUDY 2

J.C. Penney’s founded in 1902, and incorporated in 1913, was known originally as a very
conservative western store chain featuring home goods, clothing, jewelry, and cookware. In
1968 they reincorporated as J.C. Penney Co. and the company focused on apparel so it would
be able to compete on a broader market with the likes of Sears, Roebuck and Co. and
Montgomery Ward and Co. For many years J.C. Penney’s suffered with identity problems by not
being exactly sure how to fit into the ever- changing retail world. By the early 2000’s they made
more changes to try and fit into a competitive retail clothing market and find their niche.

The company culture from the start in 1902 was more of a Market type with the focus mainly
being on the customer. The “Market structure has a strong external focus and values stability
and control” (Kreitner, p-70). With this type of culture employees are expected to work hard
and good customer service very much expected. After Ron Johnson came in 2011 the company
culture drastically changed as well. Johnson created a Hierarchy culture with total control but
lacked values. With layoffs, unknown future and being secretive to the whole work force they
showed no transparency within the organization and lost the employee commitment. “The
Hierarchy culture has an internal focus, which produces a more formalized and structured work
environment” (Kreitner, p-70)

With these types of organizational culture at J.C. Penney before and during this change in
leadership they not only showed the employees but also the customers the lack of value to
them. Even though Johnson had strong vision for the company, he lacked leadership skills that
showed he was a team player. He lacked compassion and quite frankly showed arrogance to his
work force by his extravagant spending while at the same time laying off many people. Not only
that but referring to the old work team as “DOPES or dumb old Penney employees” (Steffy,
2013) showed total lack of respect.

For a meeting with Mr. Johnson I would recommend a few ideas to change the culture. First, to
be successful I would recommend leadership training. Since Johnson didn’t care to include
anyone but his own management team, he needed to think through the whole process involved
M1 CASE STUDY 3

in changing the organization. If he included all employee's, started committees and created
broader teamwork it would help to create trusts, bring value to the employee’s positions and
value to the company.

Even though he had vision, he didn’t share appropriately. A shared Vision for changes would
need to be exactly that, shared. Motivational and uplifting messages to the employees as well.

I would also recommend SMART objectives for the teams. (Specific, measurable, attainable,
reaching and timely) Assign and delegate to management both vertically for decision making
and horizontal for coordinating and collaborate. Company involvement together too, not just
management.

Johnson could have had more success by not running a hierarchy but a team collaboration.
M1 CASE STUDY 4

References

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/principles-of-

management/creating-organizational-structure/the-organizational-process

Britannica, T. E. (2017, December 07). J.C. Penney Corporation, Inc. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/topic/JC-Penney-Corporation-Inc

JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY FOR CASE STUDIES. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.abacademies.org/articles/jiacsvol21no5.pdf

Paton, C. (2017, May 26). 5 Types of Corporate Culture: Which One is Your Company? Retrieved

from https://blog.enplug.com/corporate-culture

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