27Patterns of Excellence
people, mold them into the Nordstrom way from early in their careers, and promote only those who
closely reect the core ideology. Nordstrom imposes a severe tightness of t—employees that t
the Nordstrom way receive lots of positive reinforcement (pay, awards, recognition)—and those
who don’t t get negative reinforcement (being left behind, penalties, black marks). Nordstrom
also draws clear boundaries between who is inside and who is outside the organization and how it
portrays being inside as being part of something special and elite—again, a common practice of
cults. Indeed, the very term Nordie has a cultish feel to it. We found no evidence that Melville, the
corresponding comparison company, cultivated and ma ...