The revolution at Sears

Donald R. Katz. The Big Store.
New York: Viking, 1987. Pp. 590. $22.95.

This is a remarkable book. It is remarkable in the circumstances under which it was written. It gives a remarkably candid account of the inner workings of a large corporation. And it makes remarkably good reading.

The Big Store deals with a critical period of the history of Sears, Roebuck and Co., but it is a far cry from your standard business history. It was written at the author's, not the company's, initiative. Sears is noted for its close-mouthed policies but — for reasons never made clear — Edward R. Telling, then Sears' chief executive officer, granted Katz virtually unlimited access to the innermost affairs of the company. He was given any information he asked for, allowed to interview whomever he chose, permitted to go wherever he wished. He attended meetings at which significant issues were discussed and critical decisions made. He travelled with officers and senior executives in company planes where conversations were free and informal. Consequently, much of the book is written from first-hand knowledge, offering rich details that give a human dimension to life at the upper levels of a large company during a period of drastic internal change. It is obvious from the result that Katz enjoyed complete freedom in what he wrote.

For the better part of a century, Sears, Roebuck and Co. had been one of the great corporations of the western world, but by the mid-1970s the company was in serious trouble. Sales were slipping, profit margins eroding and upstart competitors cutting deeply into customary markets. In the face of adversity, internal dissension grew rife as disparate interests struggled for power. In 1978 Telling assumed command and with it the task of reuniting a faction-torn organization and setting it on the path toward renewed health and vitality. Katz tells the story of how this was done.

Telling's task was not an easy one. All organizations of any size are heavy with inertia, and Sears by this time was an $18 billion corporation employing over 450,000 people. The executive staff had grown up almost entirely from within, was well set in its ways and remained stubbornly resistant to change despite major shifts in the company's economic, social and technological environment. Only a strong man could take this huge organization in hand, streamline its operation and point it in new directions; only a maverick, someone not in thrall to the past, could view present problems and future prospects free of the distortions of legend. Telling was both. In the tasks before him he had able assistants, two of whom are notable: Edward A. Brennan and Phillip Purcell. Brennan (who in 1986 succeeded Telling as chief executive) breathed new life into a moribund merchandizing organization, and Purcell played a central role in identifying consumer financial and real estate services as Sears' most promising fields of new opportunity.

The freedom enjoyed by Katz enabled him to follow in detail the process by which Telling, Brennan, Purcell and other key players accomplished what Katz describes as the "revolution at Sears." Revolutions are never neat and always painpul, and this one was no exception. Katz relates the course of events, not in the abstract terms of management theory and business policy, but in a graphic account of the internal stresses and strains experienced by real people as the company struggled to come to grips with its problems. What distinguishes this book more than anything else is the clarity with which he makes the internal workings of a large corporation come alive. This history reads like a novel.

Parts of The Big Store are strangely moving, like the account of Telling's Hamlet-like brooding in the seclusion of his office, and the tender story of Brennan watching over and caring for an old antagonist in his last illness. Katz is often striking in his phraseology, as when he talks of Telling's "painful, reverberating sort of loneliness." His characterizations of people and events are vivid. In portraying individuals, he tells of personal tragedies, bruising rivalries, blasted ambitions, heady triumphs. In Katz's words, "The company contained the stuff of moral conflict and human drama."

I am sure that there are many at Sears who violently disagree with Katz' assessment of individuals and his interpretation of events. Telling himself may regret that he ever let Katz inside the door. But the same event looks different to the person directly involved than it does to the non-involved observer. Whatever Telling's motives may have been, and however pleased or displeased he may be at thwat Katz has written, the result is a milestone in corporate historiography.□

James Worthy is professor of management at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. His administrative experience includes 23 years with Sears, Roebuck and Co., including service as company vice president. He is the author of Shaping and American Institution: Robert E. Wood and Sears, Roebuck (University of Illinois Press, 1984).

April 1988 | Illinois Issues | 30