This book offers a thoroughly researched and accessibly written account of the John Lewis Partnership. It describes what the JLP is, how it works, and what other businesses can learn from it. The US/UK model of the firm, with its emphasis on shareholder value and its openness to the market in the buying and selling of businesses, is prone to a number of problematic consequences for employees, suppliers, and sometimes share-holders. The JLP represents a contrast to this model - one that has implications beyond the small niche of mutually-owned firms. The JLP has lessons for organizations that are unlikely to move towards the Partnership's distinctive shared ownership. This book identifies these lessons. The key questions addressed include: how does the JLP work in practice? What is the link between co-ownership, the JLP employment model, and the performance of the businesses? What is the role of management in the success of John Lewis and Waitrose? Are mutuality, co-ownership and business performance at odds? What is the significance of democracy within the JLP? And probably most significantly: what are the implications, for policy-makers and for economic agents of the JLP? This book is based on detailed knowledge of the JLP and its constituent business gathered by the authors over a fifteen year period. Their conclusion: that the JLP is more complex, even more impressive, and more interesting than its admirers realise.

This book offers a thoroughly researched and accessible account of the John Lewis Partnership. It describes what the JLP is, how it works, and what other businesses can learn from it.

This book is based on a longitudinal study of the John Lewis Partnership (JLP), a major UK retailer operating eponymous department stores and an upmarket supermarket chain (Waitrose). It comes from two of that country's foremost strategy and human resource management academics, Graeme Salaman and John Storey. The book is a highly readable, timely and thought-provoking contribution to scholarship and practice in the fields of leadership, people management and corporate governance.Overall, this book offers some deep and fresh perspectives on strategy, corporate governance and people management and is highly recommended to scholars, students and practitioners alike.