During the recession, many retail and consumer businesses had to deal with a hit in profit and financial gains. Typically, mass retail giants cut down locations as well as employees, making it difficult for workers to get bonuses or raises, and possibly take losses in corporate offices as well. However, some big retail companies, like Home Depot, Best Buy, and Bain & Company were able to turn some of these downturns into positives and give more to their employees and continue to grow their companies. The behavior and attitude of management can drastically affect a company’s outcome during a recession, so being proactive and seeking out the positive is always the most effective during times of need. According to Shalom Schwartz, who created the theory of personal values in the workplace, there are values managers hold that can influence behavior unknowingly at work (Kreitner and Kinicki, 152). Amongst the ten values, Bain & Company, Home Depot, and Best Buy all hold on to universalism. Universalism, the “understanding, appreciation, tolerance and protection of the welfare of all people and of nature” in the workplace creates a positive work environment for everyone involved (153). Bain & Company’s CEO Steve Ellis took the proactive approach during the recession and added even more employees to his team. “This is an opportunity to grab very talented people,” Ellis stated, when talking about how many former consultants became stranded during the recession (176). He is giving them the opportunity to come back to work even though they left for whatever purpose, showing his understanding and appreciation for those that have once worked for him even amongst their decisions to leave. Home Depot used universalism in a different approach: “by boosting morale and setting realistic goals” (176). Chief Executive Frank Blake extended stock grants to assistant managers as an opportunity to increase earnings during the recession, realizing that some workers may be in a serious time of need and need any extra money they can get. He also lowered sales targets for retail store employees so they can still get bonuses, again, creating the idea that he appreciates and wants to protect the employees that are still with him during the economic downslide. This can also be seen as benevolence, another value included in Schwartz’s theory, as he is being both “helpful and forgiving” towards his employees when lowering goals and increasing opportunities (153). Best Buy’s executive vice president for human capital, John Pershing, expressed universalism through online surveys. “One way the company has also tried to keep employees engaged is by setting up online surveys to solicit ideas for cutting costs” (176). This allows employees that may not be on a higher level to feel like they are appreciated by management when their ideas are being asked for and taken into consideration. Self-direction and achievement are also strong values being seen with Steve Ellis at Bain & Company. According to Consulting Magazine, Bain & Company was ranked number one in best firms of 2010 survey (Consulting Mag, 2010). Ellis states: “We maintain this track record through a commitment to our people to not rest on our laurels or be complacent” (Consulting Mag). Clearly, he is actively achieving something with his employees and their consultants to continually achieve number one status out of more than 200 firms that are included in this survey (Consulting Mag). He’s also ambitious for aggressively hiring during the recession to build the talent pool in “hot-growth areas” and continuing to gain clientele during that time (Kreitner and Kinicki, 176). Most managers during the recession do not take this kind of control, rather they choose to downsize and limit spending wherever possible. But Ellis took his initiative and led it into a direction that would increase his team, increase clientele, and continue to grow as a business even during the downturn. As aforementioned, Schwartz’s values can create a certain type of behavior without even acknowledging it. Ellis holds strong, team-oriented yet goal driven values that increase his company’s power along with the growth of his employees. His affective attitude, or one that contains feelings or emotions about a given subject, were positive (158). Specifically in regards to the recession, he took this as a time to grow the hot-growth areas of his company rather than downsize and create bigger dilemmas. He felt that his team could grow and strengthen, and he did just that. As a CEO that consistently wins awards for educating his team and even his community, it shows that he finds opportunity in dark places (Krauss, Bain). He also has a cognitively positive attitude towards the recession, as he thinks that more people will want jobs, so he will be able to hire and expand his team. He thinks he is being productive by hiring because he aims for talent, which creates more clientele to support, in turn increasing profit. His behavioral component of attitude is another positive one. He doesn’t intend to respond to a negative economic time with cutting back or letting people he go. He intends to hire, according to Kreitner and Kinicki, as he more aggressively targeted former consultants who went to financial-services firms and are now “stranded,” showing he still had the intention to create more profit and get ahead of the other companies before the recession improved (176). Apart from Bain & Company, Home Depot and Best Buy both attempted to establish more employee involvement during the recession to improve morale, eventually leading to a more successful workplace and positivity. As already mentioned, Home Depot lowered sales and profit targets for hourly employees to increase the chance of earning bonuses. However, Home Depot’s executive vice president for US stores Marvin Ellison stated that “we still challenged people to hit some pretty tough numbers,” indicating they still had to work hard and stay involved with their work in order to meet and exceed their goals (176). However, this can create somewhat of a challenging work environment when individual employees are striving to reach sales, but according to Ellison, “the highest percentage ever of in-store employees got bonuses in the first half of the year” (176). This indicates that even with a more competitive environment due to more realistic goals, more were able to achieve so overall the most would benefit. Best Buy on the other hand aimed for ways to cut costs during the recession, looking to their retail employees to give them some answers. Online surveys generally create a more useful resource for answers because there is generally the chance for anonymity, so answers will be more honest or truthful. In this case, employees that generally do not have a say towards what management does to help with costs had the opportunity to speak their mind and get involved. According to the Action Case Study, over 900 submissions were received after only 3 weeks of being available (176). Even though these companies were able to improve employee performance and involvement during the recession, many were struggling. Icek Azjan created the Theory of Planned Behavior, concluding that intentions were the key link between behavior and attitudes (160). The theory includes a subjective norm in which attitude towards that norm and perceived behavioral control are challenged. These will affect intentions, which will in turn affect the planned behavior. The subjective norm can be determined by normative beliefs, or the perceived beliefs of those that the behavior will be towards (UMASS). In terms of the recession, the attitude toward the planned behavior, which should be to promote employee performance, should be positive. Management should have the attitude that the workplace will perform, profit can still be made, and employees will stay involved. If they do not, then of course, the planned behavior will ultimately fail because the faith in such a behavior is not there. The best way for management to have a positive outlook towards employees performing well is allowing them to be involved and have more say in the company. Take what Best Buy did and allow employees to have a say in what should or shouldn’t be cut. Give workers the opportunity to express doubt or praise, and in turn show that you respect and appreciate their thoughts so they know that aren’t just being thrown in the wind. The subjective norm, in such a case as employee performance, is the pressure to keep employee performance high in the workplace because if not, consumers will not seek out their time from said workplace, leaving the workplace struggling to meet goals and financial needs. Consumers will pressure organizations and businesses to stay above the crumbling market in order to have their needs satisfied. The perceived behavioral control can be difficult to analyze because some companies may not have dealt with anything like the recession in the past, therefore they have nothing to base it on. But, taken from companies that have dealt with it, it should be perceived as possible to achieve such a planned behavior as employee performance. Other factors are taken into employee performance besides the employee themselves, including the willingness of consumers to pay for their service, the need for such a service, etc. In order to keep the planned behavior possible, management should change the perceptions of the consumers. There are several ways you can do so: by advertising your service in such a way as to promote quality, to prove that their employees can be productive and perform by showing past experiences, and by judging future obstacles like the pressure of layoffs and cutting costs. When management is positive in their attitude towards employee performance, understands that the social norm is to achieve the behavior in order to stay successful and gain profit, and is able to perceive the possibility of achieving such a behavior as possible even when considering the obstacles, they can be successful. Therefore, management’s intention to increase employee performance will turn into the actual planned behavior by the employees. It’s difficult for a company, especially during an economic depression, to achieve quality of service when employees feel useless and not accepted in the workplace. Management has to consider every employee down the ladder and try to create a system that supports each and everyone. Employee involvement is big in retail, it creates a positive environment that supports the consumer, which in turn increases profit, allowing the company to expand and more jobs to be made. During a recession, management can do such things as create surveys for employees to fill out to cut costs or decrease sales goals to make a more plausible goal to receive bonuses. On the other hand, some employees may feel that the surveys are not being looked at or that lowering individual sales goals will only increase competitiveness, meaning some workers will be left out. Creating area goals within a store may enhance team effort. Employees in those areas will work together to achieve those goals rather than work against each other. This may also promote cross-team work, meaning that employees in other store areas may try to help employees in other areas get a sale because they are not being challenged by them. Also, its management’s tendency to make employees feel like they are being involved and accepted by allowing them to give ideas, but giving the indication towards the employees that they are acknowledging such ideas may boost morale. When employees know they are being considered and respected, they will be more willing to stay involved and perform in the workplace. During a recession, it’s exceedingly difficult for companies to drive revenue and create a work environment that is positive and productive. Bain & Company, Home Depot, and Best Buy were able to achieve some sort of satisfaction amongst their employees by giving them a say in the company’s actions, giving bigger opportunities for bonuses, and increasing competitiveness in order to produce more clientele. Most companies will still hit a few downfalls due to economic downturns, but changing them into positive changes and being able to keep challenges in control allows management to produce a successful workplace while increasing employee involvement.

Works Cited

(2010, August 23). The 2010 Best Firms: 1. Bain & Company. Consulting Magazine. Retrieved on February 22, 2014 from http://www.consultingmag.com/article/ART649699?C=pXPcxe5dq46yg

Icek Ajzen: Theory of Planned Behavior. UMASS. Retrieved on February 22, 2014 from http://people.umass.edu/aizen/tpb.html

Krauss, Cheryl. (2011, May 10). Bain & Company’s Worldwide Managing Director, Steve Ellis, Receives Prestigious Award in Recognition of the Firm’s Commitment to Education. Bain. Retrieved on February 22, 2014 from http://www.bain.com/about/press/press-releases/bain-receives-city-year-award.aspx

Kreitner, Robert and Kinicki, Angelo. Organizational Behavior: 10th Edition. (2013). New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin