Company Description
Gap Inc. is an American global company founded by Donald Fisher and Doris Fisher in the year 1969 and is headquartered in San Francisco in California. Gap Inc. is the largest cloth retailer, having specialized its operations into several SBU’s based on the market segments they target (Pike 5). Based on the product category specifications, the company has segmented its market into six segments. The company has also established six divisions that target the satisfaction of each market segment. The six operational divisions include; Gap, old navy, banana republic, Athleta, and Hill City.
Analysis of the Company
The company is the largest specialty retailer in the US and among the largest in the world. While it has a going-global strategy, most of its operations are in the US (Pike 6). Gap Inc. has employed over fifteen thousand employees globally who work in its over four thousand stores, of which over two thousand four hundred are based in the local US market.
Theory
In managing human resources, the company believes in the theory-y that employees are resourceful beings who do not need close supervision but should be allowed to contribute to decision making. The bottom-up approach of decision making is applied where the junior employees propose decisions before implementations are made. Diversity and inclusion of different categories of employees are also considered in making decisions at different management levels.
Ethics
Gap inc. CEO Wendy Liebmann believes in ethics as the foundation of transforming the organization to prepare for a competitive future. The employees’ unions and labor organizations are pushing for better terms of service (Pike 7). The modern laws and government regulations and Environment management institutions have increased pressure on the organization to respond to the Triple bottom line: economic, environmental, and social issues surrounding the organization (Nadanyiova and Das 120). This has made the CEO incorporate corporate social responsibility strategies in their planning.
Planning
Gap Inc.’s planning is enshrined in its mission and vision statements. The planning helps keep all the employees at different geographical locations informed on the organization’s growth strategies. The company vision has a long history and was established by the founders to improve the customer shopping experience by offering differentiated clothing categories to its customers (Pike 10). When establishing the company, the clothing industry had a poor customer experience gap that the competitors did not focus on for investment. The company’s planning bore fruits in the American market before the company developed strategies of going international to service customers in other parts of the world. The company had plans to go online to keep integrated communication with its customers in different parts of the country and communicate with its employees at different retail stores.
Strategy
Among the strategies commonly employed by the organization include going online, SWOT analysis, and CSR strategies. Going online makes the company present in the digital world, enabling the different stakeholders to access services at the comfort of their residents (Nadanyiova and Das 122). SWOT enables the company to analyze the market before determining the growth, marketing, or pricing decisions to get implemented (Kinicki 112). CSR strategies address the issues that do not directly contribute to the company’s success, such as environmental, economic, and social issues of concern among the community, who are the company’s key stakeholders.
Decision Making
The Company management must make decisions on the best management decisions to streamline the company’s activities. The entity faces increased operational expenses and the need for product expansion and differentiation to meet the customer needs in the ever-changing market. There is also reported poor distribution of resources among the six divisions of the firm. The relationship between the management and the employees’ labor organization is deteriorating, which necessitates the company to make long-lasting decisions of managing the employee’s welfare.
References
Kinicki, Angelo, et al. Management: A practical introduction. McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2020.
Nadanyiova, Margareta, and Subhankar Das. “Millennials as a Target Segment of Socially Responsible Communication within the Business Strategy.” Littera Scripta, vol. 13, no.1, 2020, pp. 119-134.
Pike, Kelly. “Impacts on the Shop Floor: An Evaluation of the Better Work–Gap Inc.” 2020.