Target Corporation Case Analysis

Organizational Change

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Company’s Industry, Size, Employees, And History

Target Corporation at present is among the largest discount store retailer in the United states after Walmart by retail volumes and is a part of the S&P 500 index. The compony first opened its doors in 1962, upon being founded by George Dayton. Target has its headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it was first instituted. At the onset, the company remained focused on convenient shopping advantaging from its strategy of offering discount prices on various items making target particularly competitive. Today, the company remains dedicated to offering a one-stop shop experience for shoppers through their delivery of a differentiated products and an outstanding value working within its dedicated value statement of Expect More (Benn et al., 2014). Pay Less®.  Target is at present valued as a retailer with its website Target.com consistently being ranked as being among the most-visited retail Web sites in the country and globally.

Target has at present boasts of about 1,829 stores in the United States and another 39 distribution centers located across different places in the United States. Other parts of the store are located in global locations particularly India. The company employs above 350,000 people globally and focusses on having employees that are best developed to handle the busy retail environment (Brown & Harvey, 2011). Target has its shopper having a median age of 40 and a household income of approximately $64K with about 43% of the shoppers having children at home and about 57% having competed college (Brown & Harvey, 2011). In general, the industry is competitive given the low switching cost, thus high buyer bargaining power. However, Target has remained preferred by a good number of consumers given its delivery of an outstanding value, continuous innovation and an incomparable guest experience—constantly meeting its promise of Expect More. Pay Less®.

Current HR Practices that Needs Change

The company places considerable efforts to ensure the best practices in its management of its human resources. Respect for policies and applicable codes, the company refer to its Human resource practices as a fundamental part of its business following good standards and practices. Understanding that such dedication is not a stand-alone part of the business, the company demonstrates commitment to ensure continuous improvement is integrated all across various level of the company and its workplace in ensuring target achieve continuous development of its employees and position itself as a preferred employer (Benn et al., 2014). Further, the company expects its suppliers and vendors to join the wagon of ethical concern in upholding good standards of practice.

Nonetheless, there are certain gaps in the company’s Human Resource practices that must be looked into moving towards better operations. One key gap is the insufficiency in employee training compared to other competitors. Target does not invest much in ensuring continuous training and development of its employees. Various gaps in customer-employee relationship have demonstrated insufficiency in their abilities to satisfactorily address customer concerns (Kuratko et al., 2014). Secondly, Target does not carry out adequate follow up in each of the stores to ensure that compliance with ethical standards in each of these. Consequently, the company needs a review of its plans on employee training and development and practices in follow-up and feedback provision in ensuring compliance to ethical standards.

Reasons Supporting the Need for the Change Based on Current Change Management Theories.

In ensuring growth and profitability, Target would need to invest significantly in ensuring good practices in employee training and development and the needs to seek ethical compliance among its suppliers and vendors. Such needs would drive the company to a change process that could introduce further difficulties if not managed appropriately. From the various theories, change management does comprise transitioning people, groups, a company or project from one status to another (Kuratko et al., 2014). Applied to business processes or project, change management would comprise deliberate actions that can transition the project or business process in term of scope in ensuring the core objectives are realized.  

In the present case, changing the human resource practices of the company would be central in the realization of various purposes. First, employee training and development remains central to ensuring employee gain more interest in their roles as a way for advancing the company (Kuratko et al., 2014). Lack of suitable employee training as in the case of target leave employee with no suitable understanding of that which is expected of them and how to handle different situations within their work environment thus affecting the company’s excellence within its processes negatively (Cameron & Green, 2015). Secondly, the change is needed by target as a way of improving employee productivity and ensuring effective management across processes. Further, ensuring that the company’s suppliers and vendors are observant of ethical considerations in HR practices is central in shielding the company from unnecessary litigations.

Diagnostic Tools Useful in Determining an Organization’s Readiness for Change.

In diagnosing the change needs at Target, the first theme involved would be on service improvement and would rely on tools such as observation, which comprises the evaluations of various organizational metrics that are not being met as a result of the gap in human resource practices. Other domains in the organization that would be affected in the change would include staff engagement and consultation, culture, leadership development, and team development (Cameron & Green, 2015). Reviewing organizational metrics may comprise various attributes stretching to review of customer satisfaction and the manner in which different complaints are addressed by the employees.

Another tool useful in this situation could also be use of survey or questionnaire of staff and benchmarking exercises among others. The questionaries’ would involve asking employee and customer various question targeting the identified gaps or complains. Such would help the company in identify process gaps in its HR practices leading to the various undoing associated with Target. Focus groups, Burke - Litwin Model, Benchmarking exercises, the 6 Box Model. SWOT analysis and the 7S model are other possible diagnostic tools suitable for use.