Sears Holding Merger

I, Marion Forbes the recently appointed senior human resources manager at Hallington Utilities Services (HUS), am facing with a dilemma; work out HR strategies with the Organizations mission and handle employee’s issues and concerns. HUS has made changes due external and internal factors encountered in the market as well as the new regulations happening within the sector. All are very complicated and my main issues are privatizing, downsizing, unionization, motivation, training and compensation. With the information collected, I need to figure out

The Hudson’s Bay and Sears offer similar products such as clothing, footwear, bedding furniture, jewellery, beauty products, electronics and housewares. The two retailers have different target market and customer service. Currently, Sears closed some stores in Toronto and they only have a few stores for pick up or outlet’s stores.

The following pages focus on providing a strategic analysis of Sears Holding Corporation. The introduction reveals the issues that the paper addresses. The Company Presentation section reveals important facts in Sears' evolution. The Strategy Debates Section discusses theoretical issues applied to the situation of Sears. This is followed by the Strategic Decisions section that provides a series of recommendations that can help Sears improve its situation. The Implementation Challenges section provides important issues that can be considered challenges of strategic implementation.

Wal-Mart operates fewer stores than Sears but is ahead in terms of total selling area by a ratio of 3.4:1. Between 1995 and 1997, Sears’ retail store revenue per selling square foot was not only lower than that of Wal-Mart but in decline.

Sears Holdings is a relatively new company, having only been created in November of 2004 (Barbash & Barbaro, 2004). At that time, Kmart Holdings purchased Sears, Roebuck, and Co. The corporation decided it would operate stores under both names, and the merger was officially completed in March of 2005. The shareholders voted to close the deal, or it would not have been able to take place. Now the company is called Sears Holdings, and it operates both Sears and Kmart stores (Barbash & Barbaro, 2004). The company also markets both brands without blending them or favoring one over the other. There were several reasons why the companies chose to combine.

Sears Holding Corporation is the fourth largest retailer in the United States and Canada. Its subsidiaries include Sears, Roebuck and Co. as well as K-Mart. The closing of the merger between Sears and K-Mart took place on March 24, 2005. Sears has more than 4,000 retail stores across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Sears offers products and services through over 2,700 branded and affiliated stores. Sears operates 894 broad-line stores and 1,354 specialty stores. Sears’ broad-line stores are mall-based locations. The specialty stores include Sears Hometown Stores that are mostly independently owned, Sears Home Appliance Showrooms, Sears Hardware Stores, Sears Auto Centers,

The company I’ve chosen to analyze is one with rich history in the eastern portion of Virginia. I’ve changed the name for anonymity’s sake but the information provided is based on the organization’s real strategic incentives and activities. JR Maintenance Group also known as “The Group” is one of the oldest Federal companies of its type that is still in business today (MARAD, n.d.). The activities of this company can be traced as far back as World War I (MARAD, n.d.). In its prime this organization was responsible for the maintenance and repair of approximately 800 items of equipment (MARAD, n.d.). Today, the company inventory has been reduced significantly to fewer than 35 pieces of equipment. Although the amount of inventory has changed the mission to “provide ready, reliable safe and efficient transportation in support of the nation’s security and national disaster relief missions is still the same,” (). The daily operations at the JR Maintenance Group cover a wide variety of functions to include administrative, management, logistics support, maintenance, training, environmental, and safety. I currently work as the program support assistant for this organization and my position within this company has exposed me to a broad range of activities and functions over the past few years. With that knowledge, the input of company management and Internet research it is my intent to discuss how human resource (HR) functions are used within the company, and provide an analysis of

Sears has been around in business ever since 1886. Sears also owns and operates Kmart. Over the past few years Sears has been struggling massively to stay in business. All the other successful retail stores such as: Target, Walmart, Amazon and are making it almost impossible for Sears to further expand and come back into the limelight. Home Depot seems to completely replace and almost prestigiously demolishing the most tradition icon store, Sears. Sears in the past year has lost about 60 million dollars forcing them to planning to close about 200 Kmarts and Sears stores. Sears has already closed 278 stores across the United States in just the past two stores. Stock rates for Sears has been down by nearly 40% as of 2017. The company isn't planning

Due to slow sales and less traffic at both Sears and Kmart, the two have decided to merge creating one entity named Sears Holdings. Kmart has agreed to buy Sears for $11 Billion. This puts Sears Holdings at the third largest retailer behind Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Although Wal-Mart is a direct competitor with Kmart, Sears Holdings goal is not to compete with Wal-Mart directly, but find areas that have been overlooked by other retailers, and take advantage of the expanded line of products the new company has to offer. Sears has had higher sales than Kmart, so hundreds of Kmart’s will be transformed into Sears stores. As of now, most of Sears 870 stores are only found in malls. The new strategy would be to open Sears stores in current

Sears Holdings Corporation is a company that came from two very well known organizations, Sears and Kmart. Both companies go back even farther than the 1900s and unfortunately both companies experienced financial difficulty at one point. With the merger Sears Holdings Corporation has the experience of both organizations as well as their different style of operating. Along with an improved customer base and a new outlook Sears Holdings Corporation is experiencing financial growth.

Sears was split into retailing, service, and credit businesses. The retailing segment consisted of the

The Home Depot bought more than 18 stores and Sears bought 45 for about $524 million. In that same year, Kmart Holding Corporation completed transactions to become a part of Sears, Roebuck and Company now known as Sears Holdings Corporation. Sears Holdings is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol SHLD. As of 2004 Kmart had 1,422 discount stores, 58 Kmart Supercenters totaling 1,480 stores. 1,323 of those stores were leased and 157 are company owned. Following the takeover, about 400 of Kmart's nearly 1,500 stores will be converted to Sears's outlets over the next three years.

Human Resource management has a high impact on the overall organization being managed. HR management makes certain that human talent is used successfully and resourcefully to accomplish organizational goals. As an organization core competency, human resources has distinctive competencies that generates high value and sets apart an organization from competitors in areas such as productivity, quality and service, employee skills, and innovative changes. HR management activities can be grouped into categories which include strategic HR management; equal employment opportunity; staffing and talent management; compensation and benefits; and employee and industry relations. This paper will

Whether an organization consists of five or 25,000 employees, human resources management is vital to the success of the organization. HR is important to all managers because it provides managers with the resources – the employees – necessary to produce the work for the managers and the organization. Beyond this role, HR is capable of becoming a strong strategic partner when it comes to “establishing the overall direction and objectives of key areas of human resource management in order to ensure that they not only are consistent with but also support the achievement of business goals.” (Massey, 1994, p. 27)

As we can see Sears owns different companies/products within its business. Another strength is that this company has many employees because it has so many different locations around the U.S. By having lots of locations you are going to have many employees, which is great. In one article I read I was able to see some of the weaknesses. As stated, “Sears Holdings spent $5.8 billion buying back shares from 2005 to 2010, draining the company 's capital. Now, it has a major cash flow problem” (Rittenhouse, 2017). This shows that this company has to buy back it shares because if it does not they will lose more money than they are even producing. Another weakness that I read was, “From allegedly rude employees to poor customer service, even loyal customers have lost trust in the company” (Rittenhouse, 2017).