HNC Business

Student Name: Claire Broughton
Student Number: 30272054

Unit Title: Business Environment (Unit 1)
Unit Leader: Nigel Groser

Understanding the Business Environment

Date of Submission: 15/11/2015
Word Count: 4342

Introduction
The purpose of this report is to demonstrate an understanding of the business environment. Research into the John Lewis Partnership PLC will be utilised to show an understanding of the organisational purposes of businesses and the nature of the national environment in which businesses operate. The report will also address the behaviour of organisations in their market environment as well showing the significance of the global factors that shape national business activities.

Section 1 1.1 Types of Organisation
The John Lewis Partnership was founded in 1929 by John Spedan Lewis; the eldest of two sons whose father, John Lewis, had opened the first John Lewis store in 1864 in Oxford. Spedan Lewis has a unique approach to business in that the happiness of the employees was at the centre of his mind. He began to set up new practices such as a third weeks paid holiday, shorter working days, a staff committee and an in-house magazine, the Gazette, which is still published today. By 1914, these rather dramatic and forward-thinking adjustments to the staff working conditions were causing conflict between Spedan Lewis and his father, who was alarmed at such changes. This conflict resulted in Spedan Lewis withdrawing his active involvement with the Oxford Street store in exchange for total control of Peter Jones; his father’s other store, in which his father had bought a controlling interest in 1906.

Following the death of his father in 1928, Spedan Lewis took sole ownership of both the John Lewis and Peter Jones department stores. The following year Spedan Lewis signed a deed of settlement which transferred shares in John Lewis