Organization Analysis - Essay Example

In this paper, the vision and mission, and values of John Lewis will be evaluated and compared to the operations of the company to highlight areas of possible weaknesses. This is because a strong vision and mission have been associated with employee motivation and performance lead to enhanced organizational growth and employee satisfaction. The vision and mission of the organization define where eh company would like to be in a certain time frame and elaborates the steps necessary to get there.

 The mission statement in John Lewis plc reads as follows:

“Our purpose is 'the happiness of all our members, through their worthwhile, satisfying employment in a successful business, with success measured on our ability to sustain and enhance our position both as an outstanding retailer and as a thriving example of employee ownership. With this in mind, our strategy is based on three interdependent objectives Partners, customers, and profit” (John Lewis Partnership)

The mission is therefore aimed at being employee-focused and ensuring that employees are well satisfied and thriving as a leading retailer in a highly competitive market; the British market. To achieve this there are areas of improvement that John Lewis has to address to achieve these objectives as laid out in the mission.

John Lewis concentrates much on the London market and has not ventured to the larger British market (Davey, 2011), to capture the market that would make the objective of being an outstanding retailer to come true throughout the country. A vision is based on the current reality but is concerned with the future that is significantly different from the status quo. It requires leadership to take an organization through such path. If John Lewis would still hold its dominance as a retail business in the highly competitive market, it would be necessary to expand to the entire country in new markets that would ensure sustainable growth and profitability.

Vision establishes a standard of excellence and integrity, by providing them with a challenge that ensures that they work to their best. John Lewis a different business with an employee shareholding structure of ownership may ensure that those hardworking and innovative employees are offered more shares as compared to the others (Bloomberg Business, 2011). This will provide the entire employees with a challenge of innovating and formulating new ways of doing business that would result in competitive operations and innovative ideas that would boost the operations of the retail chains. This would be the best way to deal with retail giants such as Tesco, which threaten Waitrose’s market dominance at a high rate (Office of Fair Trading, 2006).

Vision deals with change, and helps the organization to achieve broad change, by offering a direction to employees that the organization has to follow to achieve this change efficiently. In order to improve profits and satisfy employees, John Lewis may diversify operations to other countries not only in franchising but also in Foreign Direct Investments. Taking advantage of a globalized world that presents a borderless market would enhance bother change and growth and ensure the above objectives have been met effectively as in the above mission statement.

The mission is the glue that holds together in times of change and offers effective guidance in decisions and choices regarding the future. The above mission statement reveals that John Lewis aims at being leading retail in the future as well as increase its profits. Currently, the future is slowly shifting towards the e-marketing segment. Though John Lewis has designed an e-marketing strategy and website, the website has been underperforming and is poorly designed (Kollewe, 2011). A poorly designed website with low speeds is an advantage to rival businesses such as Tesco and would make the mission statement ineffective. The management has to invest heavily to improve the online shops in John Lewis.

While vision indicates the expected position that the company aims to achieve in the future, the mission stamen indicates the relationship between factors that would aid in achieving these objectives by offering guidance in making decisions and choices. The values are the cultivated culture inherent in the organization that elaborates a set of actions and behaviors that are necessary to be implemented to ensure the company attains the above objectives. John Lewis’ mission statement broadly covers these three aspects. In addition, to following the visor to achieve a standard of excellence, it is through a vision that organizations can approach and attain a broad change in the current globalized market, which is dynamic. John Lewis through its mission statement has to initiate these changes and initiatives to accord to the globalized market, which includes online shopping, and diversification to other markets. It is through this that the retail chains will achieve the objective of satisfying their customer ownership, improving profits, and becoming leading retail outlets in the market.