JC Penney Business Analysis

James Cash Penney opened a dry-goods store in Kemmerer, WY in 1902, and this was the beginning of what is known as the JC Penney retail chain today. "J.C. Penney is executing a strategic Long Range Plan that consists of four integrated strategies aimed at building a deeper, more enduring relationship with our customers, increasing the engagement and retention of our Associates, and delivering industry leading financial performance to our shareholders”(Edwards, 2013). This is J.C. Penney’s current vision statement as J.C. Penney continues to struggle to get back on track.
A 19% decline in same store sales took place in the first quarter of 2012 for J.C. Penney; followed by 350 employee layoffs and the departure of President Michael Francis
When an organizational culture is already established, people must unlearn the old values, assumptions, and behaviors before they can learn the new ones. Executives must lead the change by changing their own behaviors. It is extremely important for executives to consistently support the change. Culture change depends on behavior change. Members of the organization must clearly understand what is expected of them, and must know how to actually do the new behaviors, once they have been defined. The culture of the change is that the sales have plummeted significantly, employee layoffs, and the departure of the president (Townsend, 2013). The role culture played in the change is that the economy changes and so do people and what they desire. What might have worked in the retail business one year might not work the
Involving internal and external strategic collaboration is a way to be able to plan everything out thoroughly (Palmer,2009). Outsourcing of activities in which the organization has no distinctive competence is very important to get rid of things that are not needed in the J.C. Penney vision. Empowerment is the introductions of mechanisms to provide employees with the authority, resources, and encouragement to take action. This recommendation keeps popping up but it is the most important thing with following through with a big change. Another recommendation is to reduce internal and external boundaries. This reduction helps to encourage communication and resource sharing (Palmer, 2009) as there wasn’t much communication going on at