The co-owned / partnership is one of the prime element that gives John Lewis a competitive edge to build their HCA and JLP puts significant level of efforts in their rigorous recruitment and selection processes (Online tests, Application form, Video Interview, Assessment centre) to secure partnership behaviour from the beginning and hire candidates who are not only skilful and talented but also align overall with organizational cultural values. This approach is based on universalist / ‘best practices’ (Preffer, 1998), however, due to the rigorousness and length of the recruitment and selection process JLP incurs huge cost to hire people, hence, it is imperative for JLP to keep employee turnover low; one of the way they encounter this problem is to offer higher rate in comparison to industry’s pay rate.

It shouldn’t be a surprised that John Lewis also employs ‘best fit’ approach to generate human capital advantages (Pfeffer, 1998). JLP introduced an IT Apprenticeship with the Queen Mary University of London which will help apprentices to receive BSc (Hons) in IT while working in John Lewis’s IT department, which is aligned with business strategy to grow retail’s business through e-commerce in the digital world (JPL, 2016).

When it comes to partner’s development, it wouldn’t be an understatement that JLP is one of the best in retail’s industry, the partnership currently spends 56% more than similar organisations on partner development which is enshrined in Constitution (Rule No. 56) to encourage partners to fulfil their full potential and increase their career satisfaction.

The ‘Horizons’ training programme allows partners to choose their own development pathways and partners are allowed to work in any charity of their choice for six months fully paid (JLP, 2016). This example clearly shows JLP managed to blend beautifully both ‘best fit’ and ‘best practice’ approaches together for creating HCA (Pfeffer, 1998).

John Lewis has a very different approach when it comes to reward management system which is rare from the point of view that partners have involvement in formulating it. Partners (line managers and non-management staff) have the opportunity to come forward and put their ideas by engaging and looking at performance measures, pay-banding and appraisal system and have a real impact that how their performance should be appraised. This approach is very much in aligning with the organisational culture and partnership behaviour and unique way (‘best fit’) to motive partners and create HCA (Hutchinson and Purcell, 2007).