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.