Nordstrom Case Study Essay

Answer 1 In the 1990s, Nordstrom had sixsome co-presidents who were six cousins belong to the familys fourth generation. All six cousins took findings jointly on major issues concerning the business. Thus, it was necessary that all six co-presidents agree on a decision or a plan for it to be acted upon. This was quite a elusive task as all of them often had differing opinions. Due to this many decisions were slow or met with resistance by one or the other member.These six co-presidents were compargond to a multi-headed hydra. Dismantling the hydra would prevent conflicts on future decisions and would as well as enable decisions to be taken quickly. It leave alone also vest the self- leave for the decisions onto one person. It will also enable a family member to be groomed for possibly leading the company one day. The possible disadvantages of dismantling the hydra is that the six co-presidents could endure all contributed their knowledge and experience and extradite arrive d at a better more informed decision. If equal authority is vested in six people at the top, it enables them to share the workload.Answer 2 Creating departments around products will create independent profit and loss units for individually product. The members of each department will have expertise on their products. They will know how to procure those products and effective sales and marketing techniques to sell those products better. This will narrow down their focus and they will concentrate only on the product that they are selling and will gain expertise on how to sell it best. The possible disadvantages of creating departments around products are that the employees will not have a complete picture of the entire business and where they stand. If in future, they are moved to another department, they will have to gain information to the highest degree that product from scratch.Answer 3 The following changes prompted the move from mechanistic to ingrained organization. In the 1990s, the company met with stiff competition from its competitors. Its sales began to plateau. Its net income flee 2% and sales edged up only 1.9%. In the stores that had been candid for a year, its sales dipped 1.1% after a 2.6% drop the precedent year. Nordstroms shares fell from a 1999 high of 44 3/16 to under 20 in February. The customers and outsiders complained that top executives spent more cartridge clip in seeking consensus of all co-presidents on issues and this was a reason for Nordstrom beingness slow in presenting new fashions for sales.Answer 4 In innovation an organization to come through change, an additional structural change that Mr. Whitacre should consider is to leave a competition among the departments. In this quarterly competition, the department that has the best sales and profits should be the winner and its members should be given some incentives. They should be asked to share the best practices with the other departments in order to help them man age change better. Employees should be rotated regularly from one department to another.