Business Performance in the Retail Sector - the Experience of the John Lewis Partnership

The John Lewis Partnership, a major British retailing company, has been employee-owned and operated according to democratic principles since 1929. Conventional models of commercial success would predict that such an arrangement would be inefficient and that the firm would tend to underinvest. Using conventional performance criteria, the authors demonstrate that the Partnership is highly successful and that conventional methods to predict business performance are flawed. The authors feel that to understand why this firm has sustained its commercial prosperity over several decades, one must look to its distinctive emphasis on people.

`the book represents a most useful contribution to our understanding of what are increasingly important issues. The book is well written and the authors display their command of the broader theoretical and policy literature by skillfully integrating this with their discussion of the case of the JLP. The book is highly readable and written at a level that makes it accessible to a general audience.' Economic and Industrial Democracy `the book represents a most useful contribution to our understanding of what are increasingly important issues. The book is well written and the authors display their command of the broader theoretical and policy literature by skillfully integrating this with their discussion of the case of the JLP. The book is highly readable and written at a level that makes it accessible to a general audience.' Economic and Industrial Democracy `There are seven pages of highly relevant references and the book is presented to a standard that you would expect from the Clarendon Press in Oxford ... The approach and feel of the book is of a very serious attempt to analyse one of the country's unique retail establishments. There can be little questioning that this is a fascinating book. The chapters are always interesting and provoke the reader to think more deeply about the questions being raised ... an interesting and thought-provoking book which has set itself very difficult questions to answer ... The authors are to be congratulated on the start that they have made.' The Service Industries Journal `well-written book ... we must be grateful to Bradley and Taylor for sharing their research results with us in an informative and user-friendly way' Times Higher Education Supplement