Rachel Stanford - Revised Management Book Review

Rachel Stanford

ADPR 5910

Management Book Review, Revised Version

March 1, 2012

Grippo, Robert. Macy’s: The Store. The Star. The Story. Garden City Park, NY: Square One Publishers, 2009. Print.

Management at the Monumental Macy’s

“Way to shop!” This phrase is the slogan used for the largest department store retailer in the world. R.H. Macy & Co., Inc., or more commonly referred to as Macy’s, is broken down to the very core of existence in the book titled “Macy’s: The Store. The Star. The Story.” Not only does this book include a substantial amount of historical information, it also details the organizational skills and management techniques Macy’s has used to develop such a successful company.

Macy’s was founded by Rowland H. Macy in 1858. Located in New York City, it was originally called “R.H Macy Dry Goods.” Rowland Macy had previously opened four retail dry goods stores in Massachusetts that all failed. Fortunately, Macy learned from his mistakes and established a successful retail store that brought in approximately $85,000 worth of merchandise within the first year of business.

As business prevailed and time went on, Macy’s kept a founding family line of operation until 1896, where the Straus family then took control. By 1918, R.H. Macy & Co. was generating $36 million in annual sales. Yet, the prosperity of the retailer was never more apparent than when the company went public in 1922 and began to open regional stores and take over competing retailers. The Macy’s at Herald Square in New York City was deemed the “World’s Largest Store” with more than 1 million square feet of retail space.

Grippo, author of “Macy’s: The Store. The Star. The Story,” dives deeper into the company as he examines the fundamental techniques governed by Rowland Macy and also the existing management strategies in practice today. Macy's is known for several firsts that changed the retail industry. As early as the 1860s, women held very high positions in the store's management. Macy's was the first retailer to promote a woman, Margaret Getchell, to an executive position, making business history. Macy embodied equal rights and shunned any discriminatory manner in his stores. This was extremely important to the welfare and management of Macy’s, as he believed in a successful business based off of “equality and treating people in a respectable fashion.”

Grippo offered a valuable approach to management and leadership through the specific examples discussed in the book and the descriptions of important techniques that Macy’s has used throughout history. Based off Grippo’s management analysis in the book, I think Macy’s has used, and is still implementing today, the technique closely related to Organization Development. Because Organization Development has to do with the study of group dynamics, it ultimately applies behavioral science knowledge at various group levels to bring about planned change. As previously mentioned, Rowland Macy was no advocate of discrimination. Because Macy implemented his ethics into the company, the departments carried out much of their tasks in groups, which lead to a combination of all different people working together to succeed at a specific duty. Management can ultimately improve its productivity and efficiency this way. The technical and human aspects of groups are analyzed in Organization Development and Macy’s did a great job of executing this.

I would absolutely recommend this book to PR students as it does a great job of focusing on strategies and techniques that an aspiring business woman/man would want to acquire. Not only does it provide a vast amount of background information on the company, it also reveals a path to success in a way that certainly deals with communication skills. Grippo did an excellent job of sharing one man’s vision for success and how hard work, determination and treating people right can lead to accomplishing your dreams.