Nordstrom Production and the Workforce

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Thank you for posting today. It is my goal to provide ideas, definitions, research help, and instructions on how you, the student, should approach the assignment.

As I see it, you have 3 distinct parts to this assignment. I would not try to write it as an integrated paper, but instead address it as three seperate papers. Having said that, I'll go thorugh each portion right now and give you my view on each point, and I'll try to give you some more references as appropriate.

Part One:
Identify the diversity that is seen in your retailer(s). As you see in Nordstrom Generation 2, they expanded out to include different products, namely apparel. By the late 1960s we have the current department store format in place that you see today.

I want to stop here for a second and evaluate the next set of questions as a group:

How can these initiatives benefit the company?
What challenges might this diversity create for the manager?
Do you see evidence of a team approach being used in the retailer(s)?
If so, identify the types of teams and describe the benefits and drawbacks of this approach.
If not, identify the type(s) of team(s) you would suggest, and explain the benefits and drawbacks if they were to implement your suggestion(s).
explain how the manager of this retail store can best motivate the various teams. Will one approach be best for all teams? Explain your answer, considering the various motivational theories.

I really get the feeling from this set of questions that we are looking at operations within 1 store, as opposed to the company as a whole. In which case, the link provided won't help much. I'm going to give you some links here to more information this topic:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Business-Strategy---Using-A-Nordstrom-Business-Strategy-Might-Be-The-Key-To-Your-Success&id=932727
www.etp.ca.gov/packet/Nordstrom130.pdf

You could take the position that in a department store, each department is a team, and each sales person in the department contributes to the success or decline of the product (shoes, petites, men's, etc). Let's look at some motivational theories:
"The incentive theory of motivation
A reward, tangible or intangible, is presented after the occurrence of an action (i.e. behavior) with the intent to cause the behavior to occur again. This is done by associating positive meaning to the behavior. Studies show that if the person receives the reward immediately, the effect would be greater, and decreases as duration lengthens. Repetitive action-reward combination can cause the action to become habit. Motivation comes from two sources: oneself, and other people. These two sources are called intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, respectively.

Applying proper motivational techniques can be much harder than it seems. Steven Kerr notes that when creating a reward system, it can be easy to reward A, while hoping for B, and in the process, reap harmful effects that can jeopardize your goals.[3]

A reinforcer is ...