Answered Questions

Hello!

You do the most interesting research. Interesting, but nor easy!

I've spent quite a bit of time researching Carmax and continuous improvement and haven't found any clear winners in terms of sources. It will be a matter of piecing together information and drawing conclusions from a variety of sources. I suggest you start with the Business LibGuide, as before.

On the articles tab, I chose ABI/Inform. I searched carmax AND "continuous improvement" with no luck, then carmax AND leadership. Then I went to just plain carmax. There's a lot of clutter, so I limited the results to the last 10 years using the right side toolbar and also limited by Source Type to look for Scholarly Journals. There is one article that might have value, Powell, S. (2006). Spotlight on George Stalk. Management Decision, 44(9), 1305-1310. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00251740610707749 .

Then I "X"ed out of the scholarly journal selection (the same place - source type - in the right toolbar that I originally selected it) and clicked on Reports, also under Source Type. I chose the first report, CarMax, inc. : Retail - company profile, SWOT & financial report. (2014). The rest are redundant and not really useful.

Next I went back to the guide and clicked on Business Source Complete. Here, as before, the productive search term was just carmax. I limited my results to the last 10 years. The first thing I grabbed for review was the most recent SWOT analysis. It will contain some different information than the other. Then I checked the left toolbar, under Subject Thesaurus Term, click on Show More, and selected terms I thought might be relevant. such as Business Planning, Corporate Culture, Exectuives, and Management - Employee Participation. This provided 15 articles from trade publications.

I also searched Science Direct (from the LibGuide list) using the term carmax. There were 25 articles, and one ot two might be useful. Look for the articles that have the green striped box or the red striped box at the end of the title. You have immediate access to the full text of these.

Then I searched MarketLine Advantage, also linked in the guide. MarketLine has an excellent industry analysis and an excellent company analysis that may address forces of change and the company's leadership.

Then I went to Google, located the company's web site, and went to the Company Information section, About Carmax. The culture and values section includes a PDF of the Code of Conduct, the embodiment of the company values including continuous improvement.

I also Googled carmax "continuous improvement" site:.edu. Paste in the search for the best results. You may find information here. This result might be of use.

And just for the record, I searched our books, both print and online, exhaustively but found nothing.

So, this is a lot of searching without direct hits, but I think you can pull out enough information to accomplish the task.