The Business Review

The Secret Behind Trader Joe’s Success: The Extraordinary Leadership of CEO John Shields

Virginia Gean, California Lutheran University, CA

Dr. Farrell Gean, Pepperdine University, CA

Dr. Fred Petro, Pepperdine University, CA

ABSTRACT

The literature is replete with articles and books setting forth good qualities of effective leadership. This paper is based in part on a review of the vast information available on leadership but also, and more importantly, on the personal interview of an individual who has applied these theoretical qualities of good leadership. John Shields used extraordinary leadership skills to develop the well know retail giant, Trader Joe’s, into a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. The reader will hear the exact words expressed by this legendary leader. We never outgrow our love for a good story, do we? There is something compelling, something magnetic, and something altogether unique about the best stories. They engage both our minds and our hearts. They allow us to empathize with the experiences of other human beings. They also create opportunities to learn from the lives of others. One can learn leadership qualities effectively by listening to the stories of those who have demonstrated successful leadership attributes in their careers. The story of how John Shields led the development of Trader Joe’s is one of those informative, inspiring and entertaining stories. What follows is an integration of those widely accepted critical leadership attributes into a single empirical example of how they worked in the case of John Shields leading Trader Joe’s. Shields spent his whole career in the retail sector, eventually leading the Trader Joe’s grocery chain from its meager beginnings of 6 stores and 700 employees to over 200 stores with sales exceeding $5 billion per year. During the interview as he reminisced, Shields explained that his entry as president and CEO of the company did not exactly begin smoothly. He described the somewhat rocky and unpredictable paths that lead him into this leadership role, which were quite interesting. Shields began his retirement after working for several large retail chains for more than 29 years. He retired at the age of 55.

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Sox Compliance: Where Are We Now?

Dr. Denise de la Rosa, Grand Valley State University, MI

Dennis C. Stovall, Grand Valley State University, MI

ABSTRACT

Implementation of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) has been costly in dollars and time. Due to these high costs and time commitments, it is important to understand the benefits of corporate compliance for investors. Five local corporations within West Michigan were interviewed with the intent of providing clarity to this problem. The results show a mixed bag of success, many additional costs, and a wide variety of attitudes about SOX. After 15 years of SOX compliance, it appears as if there will always be a battle between SOX costs and the value that it represents. Of the companies that were interviewed, the smaller corporations appear to have had the toughest task in following the SOX rules, including a higher than average appropriation of funds internally to cover the new expenses associated with compliance. Companies do not track or disclose SOX compliance costs. These costs are embedded in audit fees to CPA firms and charges to administrative costs for those internal compliance costs. In this study we use company interviews to assess initial compliance costs and examine changes in audit fees between 2005 and 2016. The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act is considered one of the most significant pronouncements in the recent history of U.S. accounting regulation. The act covers various issues from corporate governance to internal controls and financial disclosure. It is geared toward strengthening internal controls and imposes more responsibility on those who should be overseeing internal controls. Nevertheless, SOX has had some negative consequences which affected the introduction and acceptance of the act by the public. The practical and timely implementation of SOX by real-world firms has been hampered by challenges, such as costs, employee time restraints and expertise, and legal burdens. One of the biggest issues firms faced when implementing SOX was the associated cost. Companies who file annual reports with the SEC and who list on national stock exchanges in the United States had to comply with the SOX requirements.

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A Study of Motivation and Personal Characteristics Among Haitian Entrepreneurs

Facing “Obstacle” Variables in Small Business Arena

Dr. Maja Zelihic, Forbes School of Business and Technology, San Diego, CA

Clifford D. Wiliams, CEO, Aspera Group, Atlanta, GA

ABSTRACT

Successful entrepreneurship is of crucial importance in the developing world. Entrepreneurship makes a significant contribution to the economic landscape of Haiti. The purpose of this study is to explore and understand Haitian entrepreneurs’ motivational and personal characteristic variables through the case study of two separate businesses in Grand Goave region in the southwest of Haiti. The aim of the research is establishing connection between the motivation and personal characteristics of Haitian entrepreneurs and their effectiveness in the small business arena despite the severe obstacles small business owners encounter due to the devastation suffered in the 2010 earthquake and 2016 hurricane. Furthemore, this research attempts to develop a model to test the relationship between the motivation and personal characteristics of Haitian entrepreneurs to the entrepreneurship’ self-sufficiency, sustainability and success scale. While there appears to be an abundance of news coming out of Haiti, this region is very rarely highlighted as a success story in any industrial fields. Quite often, the only news one hears on Haiti is that of political turmoil, natural disasters, earthquakes poverty, riots, and health issues, Haiti and its people remain a mystery to the clear majority of the world. Yet, there are so many inspirational and powerful stories of Haitian entrepreneurs who are leading the efforts of rebuilding their country, overcoming the odds, persevering despite the multitude of obstacles while creating a sustainable business model many of their counterparts in other parts of the developed world can successfully follow. Researchers of this study aimed to discover if there is a specific set of motivational and personal characteristic variables making certain Haitian entrepreneurs more prone to succeed. If one can predict the success of a particular enterprise, based on the studied variables, similar progress can be made within the entrepreneurship sector under some very challenging economic conditions.

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Social Media and Tourism: A Literature Review

Dr. Teresa Borges-Tiago, University of the Azores, Portugal

Dr. Flavio Tiago, University of the Azores, Portugal

ABSTRACT

Social media is attracting a great deal of interest—some of it effectively, some misguided in the most distinctive contexts and fields. When crosschecking social media with tourism, the work of Kaplan and Haenlein published in the Business Horizons is a common reference. As social media became an active part of the tourist experience researchers have spent much effort in examining and exploring how tourism can enhance, improve and engage efficiently in social media with tourists. However, this is a continuous task, since technology keeps evolving at a fast rate and tourism is taking advantage of this ingoing progress. The aim of this study is to systematically review the current literature of social media in the tourism context, having as baseline the work of the most cited authors on social media. To this end, with the review of 212 articles citing the work of Kaplan and Haenlein, this study provides an overview of the main themes and trends covered. Social media is attracting a great deal of interest—some of it effectively, some misguided. Being one of the trends that most impact consumer behavior, it’s quite understandable that both researchers and firms aim to ride it. The extension on which it impacts consumer behavior is enlarged in what concerns tourism: since the early eighties the tourism and hospitality industry has been one of the most affect by technology (Frew, 2000; Neuhofer, Buhalis, & Ladkin, 2014). Social media in tourism focuses on value creation and sharing experiences, as well as taking advantage of the pre-existing and new technological conditions to promote and share unique tourism experiences. In an early period, technology was utilized to enhance processes and delivery systems. Most recently, a shift change as occurred, following the web evolution, becoming a common end-user tool (F Amaral, Tiago, Tiago, & Kavoura, 2015). Tourists search, purchase and share their tourism experiences online, empowered by 24/7 update sources of information create by other tourists, trade operators and DMOs.

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The Analysis and Evaluation of Training Needs - Demonstrate How Training Needs of Different

Categories of Workers will be Determined and Outline the Factors that will Influence the Approach

Hsien-Mi Lin, Director, Human Resource Office, Cardinal Tien Hospital, Taiwan R.O.C.

ABSTRACT

"Training" is the planned learning experiences and activities that aim to influence the ability and motivation of individual employees through the obtainment of new education, such as knowledge, skills, beliefs, values and attitudes. Furthermore, training can be carried out to improve the employees’ worth to their employer and to themselves. On the other hand, the aim of training is to help the organization achieve its objectives, and, moreover, the diagnostic phase of setting training objectives is to determine trainig needs (Cowling and Mailers’ research, 1998). In other words, training is the foundation for improved performance and productivity. “A training need is a need for human performance improvement that can best be met by training of some kind” (Peterson, 1998, p8). Decisions about whether or not to provide training programmes for employees, and what type of training should be provided for different categories of workers, such as manual and clerical workers, have typically been based on the determination of training need within an organization. This study will focus on the analysis and evaluation of training needs. Firstly, I shall demonstrate how training needs of different categories of workers will be determined. Then, I will outline the factors that will influence the approach and explain the reasons. Finally, a conclusion will be produced. On the basis of Cowling and Mailers’ research (1998), the aim of training is to help the organization achieve its objectives, and, furthermore, the diagnostic phase of setting training objectives is to determine training needs. It is important to identify areas in which training can make a real contribution to organization success. This refers to a method of gap analysis, which is aimed at determining the difference between required and actual human performance. In the same way, Robinson (1998), Truelove (1997) and Tyson and York (1996) also define training needs as the gap which exists between the present capabilities of the incumbent and the true requirements of a given job.

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Like and Share: Disclosing Users Behavior on Social Media

Dr. Flavio Tiago, University of the Azores

Carla Cosme, University of the Azores

Dr. Teresa Borges-Tiago, University of the Azores

ABSTRACT

The fact that electronic word of mouth activity and overall Internet use have shaped the way individuals communicate has been subject to a rather intense and frequent debate in the academic community. With the intensified use of social media applications, viral digital phenomena have started to emerge, firms saw it as potentially good and rather inexpensive ways to enhance a company’s awareness. As such, studies that try to unveil what aspects of content and social structures may help enhance virality, have also started to appear. However, little research has focused on the individual state of mind and its relationship with information diffusion in a social media setting. This works attempts to unveil the main drivers behind individuals’ participation on social network sites. For this purpose, a survey was conducted online, and participants were required to complete a questionnaire package comprising internet usage scale (time, motivation dimensions), susceptibility to peer influence scale, opinion leadership and information seeking scale and need for cognition and emotion scale. Since web 2.0 a new communication paradigm has emerged, with users being able to read, create and share content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014). The effects of these communication processes went over the mere information flows, and become ground for new social and emotional interactions, which evolve over time becoming real and virtual extensions of people bounds and relationships. Thus, social networks have become an essential activity in people’s lives. In earliest web 2.0 years, Efthymios Constantinides and Fountain (2007) described that the way people communicate, make decisions, socialize, interact, entertain themselves and shop has changed, as a consequence of the rise of social media applications (Eysenbach, 2008). Efthymios Constantinides and Fountain (2007) noticed that people have become increasingly influenced by peer effects and collective intelligence digitally-driven. Several studies have illustrated that these new users know better, due to online access to a massive amount of information and knowledge; feel empowered, due to the capacity of becoming user content generator and knowing being a click away from finding substitute products and services that better suit their needs (Rakic & Rakic, 2017). But above all, they are more demanding, expecting firms to over a full experience, with emotions attached.

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