Jerome Bruner, a cognitive psychologist, created a theory of development based upon the idea that the goal of education should be intellectual development. Bruner believed development does not consist of discrete stages but is a continuous process. He also believed language is a cause and not a consequence of learning. In this theory, he identified three modes of representation: enactive, which is the representation of knowledge through actions; iconic, which is the visual summarization of images; and symbolic representation, which is the use of words and other symbols to describe experiences. Bruner`s learning theory has direct implications for teaching practices. For example, being aware of the learners` learning modes (enactive, iconic, and symbolic) will help you plan and prepare appropriate materials for instruction according to the difficulty that matches learners` level.
This amalgamation of different leadership styles influence HRM practices in many different ways, but the heart of the HR strategy are values set known as “powered by our principles (PbOP). They can broadly be divided into soft HRM and hard HRM practices (Guest, 1987). John Lewis ‘training and development’ program or ‘profit share’ can be seen as soft HRM practices, where the focus is to gain employees commitment. This is accurately aligning with a transactional constituent of the leadership style.
However, the introduction of ‘4P’s (Performance, Productivity, Pay, Progression) manifesto in 2015 (JLP, 2016) can be interpreted as a Hard practice because the emphasize on achieving organizational goals using people as a resource, the employee has no choice but to progress into new role or up in the partnership with the expectation that no partner shouldn’t be underperforming more than a year, this can be referred as a transactional element of the leadership style.
However, this can be reasoned looking at the following table from Partner Survey 2016 that these relational psychological contract (intrinsic) changes with a change in the transactional psychological contract (extrinsic). The relational psychological contract was higher previously with annual higher bonus, but it would also be worth pointing out that the interpretation of a psychological contract can differ from one employee to another (Rousseau and Wade‐Benzoni, 1994).
Variables 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 2015/16
Partnership bonus 14% 17% 15% 11% 10%
I would recommend the Partnership as a great place to work 84% 82% 87% 87% 81%
I value the range of benefits available to me n/a 95% 94% 95% 92%
We create real influence over our working lives 75% 74% 76% 76% 74%
It is fair to say that John Lewis is able to influence partners psychological contract through their HRM practices positively but they need to be careful about the transactional psychological contract (extrinsic) of their employees and continue to improve in order to keep their competitive advantage during difficult financial times.
