Workplace Culture The Sears store I am familiar with has some cultural strengths and weaknesses. Communication flows in a top-down way, because few employees in the store have any real authority. The store has assistant managers and managers for each department, and the managers report to people above them, but real control is highly centralized. New policies are communicated via memos put in each employee's mail slot. For complicated new procedures, such as the use of a new cash register, is done in formal classes.

The store represents a broad range of people including males and females of all ages, gay and straight, including Caucasians, African-American, Hispanic, Caucasian, and Asian. In the lunchroom, the same people eat together each day, with ethnic divisions obvious. Certain groups join certain others, but particular groups rarely intermingle. Conversation is rarely about work, possibly because most people have jobs with limited responsibility.

The store has minimum dress requirements. No blue jeans or sneakers are allowed. Midriffs cannot show. Extreme makeup, hairstyles and jewelry aren't allowed. All people speak standard English with customers, but when on breaks, people typically use more slang, idioms that reflect their cultural heritage, etc.

Technology plays an important role in the jobs of sales floor personnel. Today's cash registers are complex computers. The printout of key codes, laminated in plastic and kept at the computer for reference, is long and extensive. Even with that cue card,...

Technology involves the merchandise itself as well. Higher-priced clothing sometimes has a magnetic tag sewn into a seam as a theft-deterrent device. Pricing requires programming into the main computer so registers automatically compute discounts during sales. When that isn't done properly, it's a real mess.
The biggest cultural problem this company has relates to the lack of influence most people feel, along with poor conflict management. Perhaps because many employees have no real authority, a lot of people tend to jockey for position in negative ways, and it seems to be tolerated by the lower level management. Higher levels may not be aware of it, but as many as 30% of the sales floor people show a fair amount of indifference and resentment when immediate supervisors give them instructions (Dwan, 2003). Every once in a while, a new person seems to be targeted for a kind of hazing. These people typically don't stay very long. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with their personality or skills. It's almost like a game.

Employees seem uninvolved with how well the store does because emphasis is all on total amount of sales each day. In addition, while immediate supervisors don't have much authority except to do things like straighten out cash register problems, it seems that they often are promoted based on who they are friend with rather than what skills they have (Namie, 2003).…