JC Penney Case Summary

In March of 2012 Steve Parkland was hired as the new president at Charles Chocolates. He was immediately faced with numerous decisions about the future of the company. The board of directors had tasked Parkland with doubling or tripling the size of the company over the next decade, but the board and the senior management team had different opinions about the strategy that would accomplish this goal. The main issues that Parkland faced were how to increase the company’s operations while maintaining the traditional culture and support of the board.

In the retail industry, it is hard for a business to abandon all its previous strategies, such as locations and advertising strategies to make a fresh start. However, that is precisely what JCPenney and has been able to accomplish numerous times. Founded over a hundred years ago, the firm has undergone mass renovations with each change in leadership. Moreover, recently, JCPenney, has been reinvented once more, under the leadership of President Michael Francis and CEO Ron Johnson.

Earlier in his career, Jim was a controversial figure among investors and financial analysts on Wall Street. They blamed Jim for being too generous towards Costco’s employees and not bringing immediate profit to the shareholders1. But after weathering the recession and retaining a return rate of over 10 percent, Jim Sinegal is now revered on Wall Street. His ideology of building a long-lasting company has been successful. Additionally, during the recession, unlike other CEO’s, Jim implemented policies that prevented lay-offs and, in the process, managed to keep Costco’s balance statement in the black. He used strategies such as establishing a strong identity for their private-label offerings. For example, after the economic meltdown, Kirkland Signatures (Costco’s private label) was able to provide customers with a low cost alternative while maintaining the quality they were accustomed to.

The definition of exceeds authorized access provided in the CFAA does not suggest it applies to misuse, “[b]y its plain terms, this definition also speaks to access, not use.” JCBHoldings NY, LLC v. Pakter, 931 F. Supp.2d 514, 523 (S.D.N.Y. 2013). The Ninth Circuit fittingly adopted a narrow interpretation of the CFAA in Nosal. 676 F.3d at 863. There, the defendant (Nosal) resigned from his job and convinced some of his former colleagues to give him confidential information using their authorized access to help him start his own competing business. Id. at 856. Company policy forbade disclosure of confidential information. Id. The district court dismissed the claim, reasoning “[t]here is simply no way to read [the definition of ‘exceeds authorized access’] to incorporate corporate policies governing use of information unless the word alter is interpreted to mean misappropriate,” as “[s]uch an interpretation would defy the plain meaning of the word alter, as well as common sense.” Id.

In January 2012, newly appointed CEO, Ron Johnson introduced a plan to rebrand the department store chain into a 21st century retail powerhouse. Launching of the new J. C. Penney brand identity was set to occur over four years and would include a new logo, a new in-store experience featuring new and transformed brands, and most importantly, it would change the way that the company priced merchandise. Unfortunately, J. C. Penney suffered a 25% sales decline in the first year and Johnson was fired after only 17 months.

Kelley acquired employment as a mattress salesman at Bed-Mart in January 2000. Upon employment, all sales personnel must sign a convent which includes both confidentiality provision - not and non complete provisions. In July 2000, Kelly ended his employment at Bed-Mart and began to work at Sleep America.

A jury in a Chicago court awarded basketball legend, Michael Jordan, $8.9 million after he sued a grocery chain for using his identity to advertise their product without consent.

On Friday, October 13, at around 11:00 pm, RA Gabriella McDonald and RA Tyler Shaw were writing an incident report for a violation of quiet hours in room 216. While entering the names of the Otterbein students, they noticed that neither Resident Isabel Sentle nor Resident Sydney Young were present at the time of the incident. RA McDonald and RA Shaw contacted SHD Steve Palombo, who informed them that the two residents would need to be documented as well, despite not being present. RA McDonald went upstairs to see if they were in the room yet and to explain the situation, but the room was empty when she arrived. She slipped the red cards underneath the door. While writing the incident report, Resident Sentle stopped by the RA office to ask RAs

Target Corporation uses an interesting capital-budgeting system. Projects are proposed using Capital Project Requests (CPRs) and must be approved before money can be spent. The level of approval needed depends on the amount being requested. For projects requiring less than $100K, lower management can approve, but anything above this amount goes to the Capital Expenditure Committee (CEC) which is comprised of 5 executive officers. For projects requiring greater than $50 million, the Board of Directors must approve.

Wells Fargo was established in 1852 by Henry Wells and Williams Fargo who joined a group of other investors to form a transportation and banking company. In 1849, gold was discovered in California, which encouraged a huge demand for its cross country shipping and by 1852 Wells Fargo shipped its first consignment of gold. Wells Fargo also established merger deals with Pony expresses which made them one of the pioneers of pony transportation. This company later expanded to a company that offered not just pony and gold transportation services, but also offered banking services by purchasing gold and selling paper bank drafts as good as gold. In 1905, the banking branch of the company merged with the Nevada National Bank and established its new headquarters in San Francisco. ("Wells and Fargo start shipping and banking company", 2016).

JC Penney had to undergo and withstand several competitive issues to include changing of brand image, selling strategy and marketing strategy. JC Penney also had to account for Environmental Factors to include: a population that continued to age and also unemployment rates. JC Penney tried to influence customers by portraying an everlasting sale. No matter how hard JC Penney tried to market their products, if people didn’t

Those leaders resisted change and did not want to set organizational goals with measureable solutions. Sadly, the organization or department, in my case, did not preformed to the institutions standard and the leaders were dismissed. From personal experiences I have seen the importance of having a purpose. Leaders who have a purpose inform their organizations or educational systems about the vision for the organization or educational system. After informing them on the purpose, the leader use resources to hold individuals involved to

CEO John McDonough decided on making acquisition of Calphalon and Rubbermaid, which influent shareholders’ confidence.

During this Johnson Controls Sales Engineers where alongside sales engineers from competitors to design and estimate a solution for the project. The estimate is used by sales engineers to bid projects. The estimate includes the design of HVAC process, equipment and labor required to newly build or retrofit a HVAC project. This is all intricately calculated and value engineered to produce a competitive price when it comes to bid day. Moreover, after visiting the site, we took a trip to an engineering consulting firm to meet with an engineer to discuss the current system solution we had from our product line based on the central plant retrofit design specifications.

Unfortunately, the same issues that existed with the overall governance existed here. The company may have been acting as an exemplary corporate citizen, but with no overall strategy and minimal communication, there was no consistency or coordination, and the company was not getting the public relations benefits that they might have otherwise gained (Veleva, 2010).