ABSTRACT
This chapter examines changes in the company's human resource strategy beginning in the mid-1960s and their impact on employment opportunities. The years after World War II saw a burst of consumer spending, the result of both pent-up demand and the rapid rise in income associated with the new prosperity. Godfrey Lebhar estimated that between 1939 and 1958 the share of general merchandise sales captured by chains with four or more establishments grew from 47 to 68 percent of the industry's total. Bamberger's was the first division to break away from the old "merchant prince" system when in 1963 it introduced the orbit system. The separation between merchandising and store management introduced a more complex sharing of responsibilities for profits and losses than before, with buyers controlling merchandising expenses and store managers controlling selling expenses but with neither having control over both.
