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Hableta Petros
Kedja Mboin
Keise Larson
Shiva Doryani

Professor: Dr. Vince Lewis

Organizational Behavior
November 18, 2014

Table of Content
Company Overview.3
History of TJ.Maxx.3
Structure of the Organization.4
Mission Statement..5
Analysis
Job Satisfaction..6
Stress..7
Ability.8
Personality and Cultural Values.10
Teamwork11
Recommendations....12
Ability..13
Team Work...14
Maintaining Culture.15

After spending a few hours visiting T.J.MAXX, our team was able to observe how
the company handles their day-by-day businesses to better serve their customer. We also
learned a few important facts about the companys history, their structure and mission
statement. T.J.Maxx prides its ability to acquire their quality merchandize at very low
cost, and retails it to their customers at a discounted price. T.J.Maxx organizational

structure is based on functional structure where employees are grouped together by the
function they perform in the organization. T.J.Maxx has some strengthens and
weaknesses that can be improved in order for the company to expand even more, and that
is the purpose of our project, to offer TJMaxx some free recommendations to help them
develop a better working environment to their associates and offer better costumer
services to their clientele.
Company Overview
The History of TJ Maxx
TJ Maxx is a department store chain with more than a thousand store nationwide,
and 343 stores in Europe known as T.J.Maxx. T.J.Maxx was born under the leadership of
a young and talented merchant, Ben Cammarata, who had previously been a merchandise
manager of Marshalls, was offered an opportunity to build a new off-price chain. Under
his management, T.J.Maxx become so successful that it grew into The TJX Companies,
Inc., which today is the leading off-price retailer of apparel and home fashions in the
United States and worldwide, offering great fashion, quality, and brand names at
excellent values, every day. In 1977, T.J.Maxx opened their first stores in Auburn and
Worcester, Massachusetts, offering upscale and off-price appeal to middle-to uppermiddle-income shoppers, providing the perfect solution to the heightening demand for
quality fashions at reasonable prices with an ever-changing fresh assortment.
In 1990,TJX acquires Winners Apparel of Canada, a Toronto-based chain of five
off-price family apparel stores. TJX grows this chain into Canada's largest off-price
retailer of family apparel and home fashions, featuring off-price designer and brand
names at great values. In1992 TJX launches HomeGoods in the U.S., offering off-price

home fashions, with a broad, always-fresh array of giftware, home basics, accent
furniture, lamps, rugs, accessories, and seasonal merchandise for the home. In
1994,TJX launches T.K. Maxx, introducing the off-price concept to the U.K. and then to
Ireland. Over time, T.K. Maxx becomes Europe's largest off-price retailer. In 1995, TJX
acquires Marshalls, and together they formed the Marmaxx Group, the largest off-price
retailer in U.S.
Organizational structure
The T.J.Maxx company Governance Committee values each individual in the
framework of the Board as a whole, with the unbiased of recommending a group that the
committee considers can best maintain the success of their business. The TJ Maxx Board
of Directors represents stockholder comforts by exercising rigorous judgment using its
cooperative diversity of knowledge. The TJ Maxx lead by two of the four members of
their Audit Committee are audit committee financial experts, however the Chairman and
CEO positions are separate. Surprisingly eight of their Board Members are independent.
T.J.Maxxs corporate structure was very graded with board of directors at the top,
including Chairman of the Board Bernard Cammarata and President and CEO Carol
Meyrowitz. As we learn about the company, three of their ten Board Members are
women. Their Board represents a range of ethnicities, experiences and backgrounds and
board members are re-elected annually through a majority voting of shareholders.
Further more, the organizational structure of this specific store is broken down
into different teams: The store manager is the person who is responsible for all the
activities related to the store, such as completing store operational requirements by
scheduling and assigning employees jobs, maintaining store staff by recruiting, and

training new employees, and maintain inventory. The assistant manager is responsible for
making sure that the floor runs efficiently, serves customers as need, and manages
deliveries. The customer service manager ensures that the needs of customers are being
fulfilled, and he is also responsible for handling face-to face enquiries from customers.
Another group that makes part of the structure of this store is the associates group. This
group consists of cashiers, sales associates, stock room, loss prevention officer who also
serves as a security guard. When put together as one team, this store operates under a
functional structure where employees are grouped by their functions.
Mission Statement
According to the store manager at T.J.Maxx, their mission statement changes
daily, but their goal is to always deliver an exciting, creative and fast changing assortment
of brand-name merchandise at great values to meet their customers expectations.
T.J.Maxx is very proud of their buying strategy, and low expensive structure, which gives
them the potency to offer great everyday savings on name brand and designer family
clothing, and home fashions, making them the number one off-price retailer in the United
States and Canada. According to the mission statement presented below, T.J.Maxx is
committed not only to their costumers, but also to the well being of their associates who
seem to be committed to the organization.
At T.J.Maxx, we stand for great customer services, the best brands and
exceptional values. We pride ourselves on creating a friendly, clean, organized shopping
experience that creates intense loyalty from our customers. We offer an environment of
respect and open communication for our associates and customers. We are committed to
meeting these standards everyday ensuring all customers and associates share in the

T.J.Maxx experience.
Analysis
Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction represents how a person feels and thinks about its job. During our
first visit to T.J.Maxx as group, we spent over two hours speaking to the store manager,
whom presumed to be highly satisfied with his role as a store manager at T.J.Maxx. He
expressed a positive attitude when talking about his responsibilities, and the values that
the company offers its employees. T.J.Maxx offers their managers health insurance,
retirement plans, performance bonus, paid vacation, paid holidays, sick days, and
professional support. The manager compared his benefits to the benefits he used to have
when he worked at Wal-Mart, and said that he was very pleased with not only his
benefits, but also the vacation packages that the company rewards their managers every
year. He expressed a high level of satisfaction towards his own supervisor, whom he
described as a polite, and charismatic person. The manager himself was very caring and
considerate with his associates, and, the employees who were working that particular day
transmitted a positive attitude towards him and the responsibilities that were assigned to
them. It was also noticed that the communication between the store manager and his
associates was very open and pleasant. Every time an employee walked into his office, he
would greet them with a joke, or a funny comment allowing his associates to work in a
fun and relaxed environment. As a store manager, he has been given the power to
promote employee based on their ability to accomplish a task, and also on their
motivation to grow professionally, and also help the company become more profitable.
He promoted a cashier to a shift manager, whom now covers his days off.

Stress
T.J.Maxx is a well-known off-price retailer with an excellent reputation among
their costumers. It is a company that truly satisfies their customers by offering namebrand merchandise at a low cost, and providing exceptional customer service, and in
order to maintain those expectations, their employees must work together to ensure that
all activities are completed as required by management. The lack of management and
communication between team members can create a stressful situation that can cause
negative consequences in the work environment.
Working in an environment where employees have to deal with hindrance
stressors such as role overload can be overwhelming when the demand role exceed the
persons ability to perform the required tasks effectively, which it hurts not only the
individual performing the task, but the organization as a whole. During our visit to
T.J.Maxx, it was observed that the person, who was running the fitting room, was also in
charged of managing the jewelry department as well putting unwanted clothes back in the
racks. This work hindrance stressor leads into work complexity, which refers to the
inability of performing the job due to the lack of knowledge, skills and ability. Having to
run three different departments at the same time requires a fast pace ability in order to
guarantee that all customers that come to any of those departments are properly assisted.
Dealing with the stressor of running three departments at the same time can easily result
in psychological strain known as burnout, which refers to the emotional, mental, and
physical exultation due to stressful demand.
Ability

The principal ability at T.J Maxx is the cognitive ability. As we observed this
ability appears in customer service, jewelry department and fitting room. Customer
service is important to T.J. Maxx because it is a way that customer has a direct contact
with the company to satisfy their needs. The customer experience manager, as managers
are referred to at T.J. Maxx, presented the ability to communicate courteously with
customers by watching the store to see everything is going well as well as by phone and
resolve any problem by transferring the call to the individual department. Verbal ability is
the most important part of every job when it comes to the effectiveness of understanding
and communicating ideas with their consumers. Sales associates are responsible to
properly communicate to customers with greeting and smile when they are completing
the transaction. Sales associates make sure that customers found what they were looking
for and offer customers for T.J.Max credit card. Every cashier is required to learn to work
with register system and know the quantitative ability, which is basic math skill to
calculate the total payment. Based on quantitative ability every employee is capable to
refer her/his numeric and mathematical reasoning ability. Though, cashiers receive
payment apart from the TJ MAXX credit card they accept by check, master cards debit
card, or cash. It was observed that the associates should be able to count the money to
confirm that amounts are correct, then issue receipts, ask for signing if needed and offer
wrapping and bagging customers purchases, and thanks to customer. Some customers in
line had some items for return and exchange; cashiers had the knowledge to processes the
merchandise return and exchange with selecting the right method to refunds in credits,
debits or cash. It was observed that employees were using reasoning ability specifically
deductive reasoning. The ability, which includes the diverse set of abilities, connected

with identifying and explaining problems using awareness, rules, and logic. For example
there was a challenging time when a customer had some items for return, but she did not
have her receipt, at this point the associate based on return policy customer should show a
valid ID to cashier for confirmation the customer, and cashier gives the customer store
credit card for next shopping and reminding her to keep the receipt to make the return
process faster and easier for next time.
In jewelry department associate communicate with customer by phone or face-toface. Sales associates actively listen to each customer by using their cognitive ability to
suggest and select wide range of related products based on customer needs and desires.
Customers might need advice and information on different types of silver, gold, or
gemstones to make their decisions to buy products, and sales person explains to customer
to hold the merchandise if the customer needed more time to decide. Since the sales
associate has the basic understanding of math, he or she could provide checkout for
customer, run the register system like the cashiers in customer service, also able to return
the jewelry merchandise at jewelry counter not in customer service.
In fitting room sales associate interact with a customer in a respectful manner,
although the sales associate patiently listens and provide information when a customer
asks questions about color, size, style or else. Sales associate gives advice to the
consumer about the style and the fashion. Since the assistant saw how many clothes that
the customer wants to try or buy, we observed that the associate gives a numbered card to
the customer able control how many clothes they are taking. All in all, we observed that
all associates have to know how to use their cognitive ability towards to their job

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performance. They should to be able to explain verbally, know basic math, and how to
reasoning to solve any type of problems.
Personality and Cultural Values
The company culture at T.J.Maxx was exactly family-like and had an open-door
strategy. Since T.J.Maxx was established on the principal values of integrity and handling
people with respect and honesty, it was observed that the associates relay on the
companys business conduct and ethics. The T.J.Maxx culture encourages differences for
each specific job performance, which was obvious from its philosophy of, reminisce
Everyone Affects Customer Happiness (REACH). This highlights the companys
commitment to providing customers, salespersons, and co-workers with a level of helpful
beyond what is predictable. As it was observed, the employees prioritized their working
time by refreshing their ability to share his or her lookout and the company open-door
policy to ensured that all T.J. MAXX standpoints to be heard and valued.
The advantage of leveraging variances, diversity, and fairness was given serious
thought and significance at this location. T.J. MAXX Company controlling the growth of
the business, so the company offers courses about how to be a good leader and be able to
lead teams. It was observed that the idea of giving feedback talked how to manage the
differences among associates. This team did develop programs that addressed differences
that could impact customers as they worked together. In addition, it is made-to-order
programs related to take advantage on the differences and diversity culture on their job
performance.
Teamwork

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Teams are used in all types of industries to accomplish all types of work necessary
to make organizational run effectively. An organization like T.J.Maxx decided to adopt
the teamwork concept to accomplish it common goal. In this particular T.J. Maxx store
that we visited there is two types of team. The first team is the work team, which
regroups ten associates. They are designed to provide services to customer, to maintain
neat the store and to inspect each others work. They are also required to be relatively
flexible and permanent. The teamwork tends to engage in routine task that are less
complex. The second team is the management team, which includes the associates
manager, sales manager and the store manager. The management teams is focus on the
accomplishment of service task, responsible for coordinating the activities of the store
and help the store to achieve its long term goals. They basically engage in work thats
complex and knowledge intensive.
The organization used the pooled interdependence as a task interdependence type
to represent the teams output. There is a comprehensive interdependence among work
team employees because of the highest level of interaction and coordination. This
interaction can be explained by the following action where a cashier in the line A was in
need while the cashier in line C was unoccupied, the cashier in the line C moved in the
line A to help his coworker. The mission statement of the store is hold by the store
manager and the different section managers. In this case the goal interdependence of
teamwork employees is different from the management team. The work team member
executed what their managers ask them to do. It was observing low outcome
interdependence in different teams because members received reward and punishment on
the basis of their own performance of the team.

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The atmosphere of the store seemed to have the mix of knowledge, skills, and
abilities. Work teams members were capable of performing their role responsibilities
effectively, cooperated and got along fairly together. In the cashier line its observe that
the cashiers were comfortable working, skill in performing the duties and involve in their
specific roles. The associates managers, which are part of the management team, were
the team builder because they were the harmonizer, the encourager and the compromiser
of the store that day. They were the one that step in to resolve difference among team and
praise the work of teammates.
At a glance the surface level of the teams characteristic can be perceived easily.
It is characterize by the difference among teams members such as age, gender and
ethnicity. However, the deep level diversity, which is the difference among members
attitudes, beliefs and values, are not easily detectable. Another aspect that I want to point
out is the diversity in team structure. At T&J MASS the team composition refers to the
degree to which employees are different to each other in term of age, gender, ethnicity
and expertise. Once in the store, it was observe that the diversity of ethnicity (Hispanic,
African American, Caucasian, Asian etc) and age among employees has a positive
impact in job performance, organizational flexibility, creativity and problem solving.
Regarding the gender side, there is more female than man and this small number man can
be explain by the fact that 85% of customers was female while visiting the store. In fact
the similarity attraction approach among employees seem to be in this store because
employees tend to be more attracted to others who are perceived as more similar.
Recommendations
Ability

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Return and exchange policies are essential part of customer service in the United
States in particular, and customers pay a lot of attention to how this process is done. It
would be to the stores benefit if the returns/exchange lines were separated from the line
of purchase, as it would speed up the flow of the lines. This may also be more convenient
for the employees because it gives them an idea of the customers particular need in
advance depending on which line they are servicing. The overall result of this
combination is a better and faster customer service. Therefore, customers would be much
more satisfied and more likely to bring business back to the store.
Team Work
Support excellence teamwork by rewarding their good performance and galvanize
employees to work well as a team by offering praise and issuing some word of
encouragement will see the outcome interdependence improve. It will be good to give the
team publicity for its work. Such a gesture instills a sense of meaning and value into the
nature of the job. Improve teamwork abilities by outlining clear task for each of the
members. Before the project start, work with the members to draw skill sets and deadline
charts. Define responsibilities according to ability. Talk with the group concerning the
possibility of the listed tasks as well, which will reduce possible stress arising from
complex work. Teamwork is improved when workers know each other and are
comfortable discussing a variety of issues. Construct this sense of friendship by
formulating team actions. These events could be informal, such as meeting together over
coffee at the nearby caf, or the team-building event may be more elaborate by taking
place in a small town. Give comprehensive instructions on how to remedy conflict that
arise among team members, which improve teamwork by empowering members to

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resolve issues efficiently and fast. Teach group members how to handle or talk directly
with the person creating any negative effects. Encourage the group to provide clear
documentation of any problems and give a distinct guideline for how to improve the
situation. Instead of creating a culture of blame, encourage an attitude of being proactive
and solution oriented.
Maintaining Culture
During our observation at T.J.Maxx, we noticed that the store manager was
thinking how and when to grow their business. This is one of the many difficult decisions
to consider when one manages a business is the concept of growth the extension. When
growing a business one must take into account many different factors such as time,
money, effort, and the route the company should take. This seems easily controllable
with the accurate knowledge and expertise, but it is easier to get off track than one may
consider.
One of the CEO of T.J.Maxx, an ambitious woman, has taken the controls and
begun to lead the company in a different direction in light of the ever-changing business
environment. Collaboration of the other retail stores resulted in the decision of creating
Marmax group a few years ago into something fresh and new to steer the company into
the future. Growth an expansion are inevitable when a company continues to be
successful and generate new business, but it is equally important not to lose sight of the
vision if the company or organization during the process.
A recommendation we offer for T.J.Maxx is to be careful about the direction their
plan to lead the company in the future. In todays society, it is easy to lose sight of the
mission, yet it is important to be competitive in their business. T.J.Maxxs desire to keep
the business like a close-knit family, regarding employees and their customers, needs to

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main a priority throughout their future. This will help maintain their culture of being
reliable, hardworking as one team, and excellent customer service.
Conclusion
Overall, our team GREY believes that T. J. Maxx has done an extraordinary job
thus far in same attitudes and behaviors of the personalities and teams within their
organization. T. J. Maxxs five main issues to focus on are job satisfaction, stress, ability,
personality and cultural values, and teamwork. Our team GREY has offered some great
recommendations to help further improve T.J. Maxx successfulness as a leading fashion
off-price retailer.

Responsibilities
Keise Larson- History, and mission statement of T.J.Maxx, Job Performance, and Stress.
Shiva Doryani- ability and recommendation
Hableta Pretos Organization Structure, Personality and Cultural Values,
recommendation on maintaining culture and conclusion.

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Kedja Mboin- Team work and recommendation.