Health Information Technology

Nordstrom is a company that was founded in 1901 as a shoe store. Today it is a leading retailer of fashion and specialty apparel. The company is known for its superior customer service, large selection of merchandise. The company has been very successful and it has catered to upper and upper middle class. The article talks about strategic management at Nordstrom, pay scales of their employees and commission structure as well as their struggles in recent years. I have shopped at Nordstrom as they have sizes that I usually can’t find anywhere else. They have shoe sizes up to 15 in stock at any time. This is the only reason I would go to this store. I am willing to pay that extra dollar to be able to try and buy the shoes size 15 that I can’t buy anywhere else. But the time of Nordstrom reign is coming to an end. With internet shopping taking over, economy in recession and employees that are paid on such commissions scale Nordstrom is losing its competitive advantage that it had some 10 years ago. Their profit margins are huge so are the prices and consumer is willing to spend more time searching and waiting for a cheaper product. I can’t imagine their sales force being happy with that. According to their commissions structure I would think it is very hard to be successful at the job where one may have to compete with many more sales representatives for a lot fewer customers. The scale in which they get paid is unfair as it naturally selects only those that are able to make money on commissions. The system excludes those employees that have fewer sales per hour. Additionally, managers never said to their employees to work overtime but employees did and never got paid for it. The manager’s duty should be to prevent employees to work overtime, they should have been instructed not to work off the clock. This is a labor practice under which any employer should be penalized. Frequent turnover and employees that are under stress can’t really result in a productive and happy system. A company that makes such margins and one that posts so many years of record profits should value their sales force more than they do. Every employee should be paid for hours worked and also they should have incentives such as commission. In Nordstrom’s instance they should be able to still offer aggressive commissions and build sales force that can serve their loyal clientele, as customers are not loyal only to the company but to their sales person as well.