Describe the main physical and technological resources

An explanation on the selected organisation in terms of its ownership, structure, location, size and product/service provision. John Lewis What does John Lewis do?

The John Lewis Partnership is one of the UK’s top ten retail businesses with 26 John Lewis department stores and 183 Waitrose supermarkets. It retails clothes, home furniture, electrical items, sports and leisure (art and craft, cameras). John Lewis is in the partnership with Waitrose and sell food.

The partnerships they have with suppliers from around the world help them to offer customers over 350,000 product lines in John Lewis, from fashion and furnishings to household goods, and around 18,000 high quality food products in Waitrose. Through their network of suppliers around the world, John Lewis aims to bring customers the best fashion, furnishings and household goods at competitive prices, from Scottish wool and Sheffield steel to Italian leather, American Maplewood and electronics from the Far East. Their buyers work with more than 4,000 suppliers in over 80 countries to find them.

They own one production unit in the north of England – Herbert Parkinson, which produces John Lewis’s own-brand duvets, pillows, furnishing fabrics and provides our made-to-measure curtain service. Waitrose and John Lewis head office is situated in London Victoria where they order all the stock and store it in an Essex warehouse. They deliver all the stock to the different John Lewis department stores and then after all that the stock goes into the storage room, from their employees put all of that stock onto different shelves.

John Lewis ownership John Lewis is a Partnership, have the chance to become larger than partnership business organizations. All 69,000 permanent staff as the Partners who own 27 John Lewis department stores, 198 Waitrose supermarkets. They all have equal share in the business and they all the equal bonuses from the company profit. John Lewis has their own unique ownership structure: it was a structure established via two trusts.

There are no employees who own shares in John Lewis Partnership; John Lewis ownership is wholly in trust, with profit distributed to their employees and partner when they do investment. A ‘Partners’ Counsellor’ acts as ‘guardian’ of the company’s constitution and co-ownership, with a Registrar in each of the main operating units.

• What is John Lewis organizational structure?

The governance system of the Partnership was created by their founder, John Spedan Lewis and is set out in the Company’s Constitution.

Their structure gives their management the freedom to be entrepreneurial and competitive in the way they run the business for long-term success, while giving the company’s owners, the Partners, the rights and responsibilities of ownership through active involvement in the business.

• What is its key business goal?

Their 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.

Their strategy is based on three interdependent objectives – Partners (employees), customers, profit – which together will make a successful business: * Their partners should gain personal satisfaction by being members of a co-owned enterprise in which they have worthwhile, secure and fulfilling employment and confidence in the way the Partnership conducts its business. * The Partnership should recruit and retain loyal customers through their continued trust and confidence in their reputation for value, choice, service and honesty and for behaving as good citizens.

The Partnership should make sufficient profit to sustain their commercial vitality and distinctive character, allow continued development and distribute a share of profits each year consistent with Partners’ reasonable expectations.

• What makes the Partnership different from any other retailer?

The Partnership Spirit defines what is truly important to the John Lewis Partnership. Ensuring the happiness of Partners is at the centre of everything we do.