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Leadership styles and effective leadership
Leadership styles and effective leadership
Review of empirical literature on leadership styles
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The Nordstrom department store empire has been one of the leading companies in the fashion market. They generated over 2.5 billion dollars in sales last year, yet they are facing several internal problems. While Nordstrom strives to have the best customer service in the industry, living by the “Nordstrom way” has caused some hardships on the companies’ employees. An in-depth analysis of the sales position at Nordstrom using the job characteristic model reveals that the job design may moderately increase employees intrinsic motivation, but it is lacking in several areas.
The job characteristics model is defined as, “An approach to job design that aims to identify characteristics that make jobs intrinsically more motivating and the consequences
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If an employee felt that they were selling confidence and not just clothes, and they may feel as if their task significance is higher. The differences in personality between the employees greatly influences their perceived level of task significance. The fourth aspect of the job characterization model is autonomy, or the degree to which a job allows an employee the freedom and interdependence to schedule work and decide how to carry it out. Nordie’s have very low autonomy, as they have to follow strict outlines, and do not have much say in how much and how often they work. Employees feared being given “off hours” in which their sales per hour would drop due to customer inactivity. Additionally, the employees are required to carry out their work in the Nordstrom stores, and the employees are even told to look a certain way. Cindy Nelson, a former Nordstrom employee, claims that becoming a Nordie requires one to acquire a “certain look”. If employees feel as if they must look a certain way to effectively do their job, this may result in added stress that can have a negative effect on their overall job performance. The last element of …show more content…
In order to make the position one that is more intrinsically motivating, the task identity would need to change, and more feedback would need to be given to the
Nordstrom is one of the top retailers in the United States. With a solid brand image and a sound financial situation, Nordstrom is relentless in their expansion in the US, and are beginning to expand into international markets. Nordstrom takes pleasure in providing state of the art client support and having experienced sales people. In order to hold their position as the most successful high-end retailer in the United States, Nordstrom must continue to figure out ways to improve their brand image and customer satisfaction. Nordstrom’s current business working strategy is successful but I believe there are a few ideal solutions that the organization could apply to further enhance the organization. Due to the aggressive characteristics of the fashion retail store market, it is crucial that Nordstrom preserves an aggressive advantage providing the highest level of customer support as possible.
On Thursday, September 17th, 2015 at approximately 1845 hours while working as a Loss Prevention Agent for Nordstrom store 626, located in Annapolis, Maryland, I, Michael Hugg observed via CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) an unknown male later identified as David James Jackson Jr. enter the Rail department. I began observation of Jackson due to the quick selection of one black Howe ‘White lie’ jacket followed by furtive eye movement.
Milestone Three consists of the following: identifying your market segment, targeting that segment, managing the CRM, and identifying new product development opportunities
Intrinsic and extrinsic types of motivation have been widely studied and the understanding of each has led to great changes in how organizations run their businesses. It is clear that hourly employees have many great extrinsic motivators but lack intrinsic motivation in their job assignments which is a characteristic of our work culture. Changing the culture is one of the keys to improving motivation at that level of the organization because the best motivation occurs when employees perform because they want to and not because they are being made to do so.
To be in a position to motivate people, it is key to understand what actually motivates them in
In fact, it is the culture of motivated and empowered entrepreneurial employees that makes Nordstrom’s culture unique (Spector & McCarthy, 2012). There are less rules and procedures for Nordstrom’s sales personnel than in other retail organizations. Their sales clerks also operate with a certain level of autonomy, running their departments almost as if they are private stores (Mello, 2015). This overall strategic approach to HR keeps training costs low, and consequently the cost of turnover is also minimized. This is important, as Nordstrom’s turnover, due to the level of internal competition and entrepreneurialism this type of retail strategy requires, is one of the highest in its market (Mello, 2015). The high turnover rate makes HR planning an important factor in ensuring a stable workforce that can create and maintain ongoing customer relationships (Spector & McCarthy, 2012).
Employee motivation is one of the keys to success in any business, especially in a retail sales environment. It is particularly important to understand how employee motivation can be impacted by the strengths and weaknesses of AT&T’s retail sales consultant position (RSC). A series of interviews and surveys were conducted over a two-week period with employees of AT&T in the RSC position as well as retail management positions to determine how the employees really feel about this position as well as internal strengths and weaknesses that contribute to employee motivation. Although there are a lot of positive factors that keep the employees motivated within AT&T, there are some weaknesses that can cause employees to become demotivated.
A category for job satisfaction is the motivators/satisfiers. Factors such as recognition, responsibility meaningful and interesting work, opportunities for advancement, and personal growth are desirable traits that employees look for. Whereas, hygiene factors are the causes for job dissatisfaction. They are based off of working conditions, relationships between co-workers, policies, supervisor behaviour, job security, wages and benefits.
This theory implicates a logical illustration that if the nature of a job sufficed and met the five core characteristics, the employee would feel a sense of fulfillment that would result in excellent work performance (Armstrong, 2017). The job design prefigures the significant relationship of the five core dimensions as to how a worker perceives the three vital psychological states – meaningfulness of work, responsibility and knowledge of outcomes – that would eventually contribute to a sense of general job satisfaction, personal growth, increased motivation and effectiveness of work (DeVaro, Li, Brookshire, 2007). There is a dynamic suggestion in JCM that acclaims the correlation of positive feelings with an excellent performance, and negative feelings with poor performance (Mukul, Rayhan, Hoque, & Islam,
The five job attributes of job characteristics are skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. It is suggested that with using the job characteristic model in the workplace setting, it will increase motivation and job satisfaction. Skill variety requires the employee to use different abilities and required skills to perform the job function. A nurse is a job that requires an individual to have many skills because they administer medication, patient charting, obtaining vital signs, knowledge of anatomy, computer programs, and communication skills. Task identity is a job that requires multiple steps that need to be performed before the job is complete.
It is important for manager to understand that what motivates the individuals. There are different kinds of motivation theories which reveal that individuals are motivated by different factors. For example there is extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1993). Extrinsic motivation refers to the motivation that one has for the extrinsic rewards such as pay, status, power, etc. Then there are intrinsic motivating factors such as the chance to exercise one’s skills, the opportunity to learn and personal development. Research suggests that various factors motivate employees in a different degree depending on their nature. It would therefore be important for the manager to understand that what are the motivating factors for individual employees and then provide them incentives accordingly so that they can work in a more productive fashion. Once the individuals work with greater excitement and vigour it would automatically lead to better performance.
Job satisfaction is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences. It has been treated both as a general attitude and satisfaction with five specific dimensions of the job: pay, the work itself, promotion opportunities, supervision, and coworkers. Challenging work, valued rewards, opportunities for advancement, competent supervision, and supportive coworkers are dimensions of the job that can lead to satisfaction (Nelson & Quick, 2013, pg. 58-59).
In daily life, we need motivation to improve our performance in our job or in studies. Motivation is an internal force, dependent on the needs that drive a person to achieve. In the other words, motivation is a consequence of expectations of the future while satisfaction is a consequence of past events (Carr, 2005). We need to give reward to our self when we did correctly or we has achieve our target. Reward is something that we are given because we have behaved well, worked hard, or provided a service to the community. Theories of motivation can be used to explain the behavior and attitude of employees (Rowley, 1996; Weaver, 1998). The theories include content theories, based on assumptions that people have individual needs, which motivate their action. Meanwhile according to Robbins (2001), motivation is a needs-satisfying process, which means that when a person's needs are satisfied by certain factors, the person will exert superior effort toward attaining organizational goals. Schulze and Steyn (2003) affirmed that in order to understand people’s behavior at work, managers or supervisors must be aware of the concept of needs or motives which will help “move” their employees to act.Theories such as Maslow (1954), McClelland (1961), Herzberg (1966) and Alderfer (1969) are renowned for their works in this field. The intrinsic reward or also be known as motivators factors is the part of Herzberg motivation theory. Motivators are involve factors built into the job or the studies itself such as achievement, recognition, responsibility and advancement. Hygiene factors are extrinsic to the job such as interpersonal relationship, salary, supervision and company policy (Herzberg, 1966. There have two factors that are called hygiene fac...
Motivation is the force that transforms and uplifts people to be productive and perform in their jobs. Maximizing employee’s motivation is a necessary and vital to successfully accomplish the organization’s targets and objectives. However, this is a considerable challenge to any organizations managers, due to the complexity of motivation and the fact that, there is no ready made solution or an answer to what motivates people to work well (Mullins,2002).
Motivation can be one of the greatest and most important aspects inside a workplace, as it enables employees to find their incentive to work harder and achieve different types of goals. Motivation can be identified and accomplished by elaborating a job design that helps keep employees happy considering the different environmental factors of the integrative framework when applying organizational behavior. A formal definition states that job design “refers to any set of activities that involve the alteration of specific jobs or interdependent systems of jobs with the intent of improving the quality of employee job experience and their on-the-job productivity” (Kinicki 168). Job designs help structure jobs and the different tasks needed to accomplish