Executive summary

This basic aim of this report is to analyze the issues related with the management and leadership roles in in Marks and Spencer. The report contains the discussion about problems faced by Marks and Spencer in 90’s and explains that how those problems were resolved. Different management and leadership styles in Marks and Spencer, over a period of time are discussed in the report. The assessment of external and internal business environment of Marks and Spencer is also the part of this report. At the end, recommendations for getting competitive edge by Marks and Spencer are made.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table of Contents

1.    Introduction. 3

2.    Company’s profile: Marks and Spencer 3

3.    New organisational structure of Marks and Spencer 3

3.1.     Need of change at Marks and Spencer 3

3.2.     New Organizational structure of Marks & Spencer 4

4.    The planning processes used in the M&S. 5

5.    Leadership styles within Marks and Spencer 6

6.    Conclusion. 7

References. 8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.Introduction

UK is considered to be one of the highly developed regions in the world. There are large number of business concerns operating in UK including manufacturing firms, automobiles, tourism etc. the textile and garment industry in UK is highly developed and number of firms are operating in the regions. Recently, a decline has been observed in the textile business of UK. But the corporations have tried hard to cope up with the decline issues by meeting the customer’s demands and earning profitability (McAdam and McClelland, 2002).

2.Company’s profile: Marks and Spencer

Marks and Spencer is considered to be one of the main retailers operating in UK. This corporation sells different types of products including clothing, food etc. under its brand name in more than 30 nations across the world (Bevan, 2007). Marks and Spencer is operating at the international level so it has to focus on the external environment (Marks and Spencer plc. 2016). The brand image and reputation of Marks and Spencer is very high, and has a competitive advantage over rivalry in terms of quality of products as well as wide range of goods and services.

3.New organisational structure of Marks and Spencer

3.1.Need of change at Marks and Spencer

Different management styles are adopted by the managers of corporations as per their personality traits and needs (Campbell, 1989). According to the case study, Marks and Spencer depended greatly on the traditional and old management as well as leadership styles. Likewise, the management style adopted by Marks & Spencer was not useful just like the values and beliefs. During 90’s, the managers at Marks and Spencer focused on the management styles and guidelines set by the founder of company and his son, named Michael Marks and Simon Mark, respectively. Both of them focused on the traditional bureaucratic management style. Simon Mark showed an aggressive attitude towards innovative ideas and implemented his own ideas and strategies for the business. The idea generation amongst supervisors and workers was not encouraged, and the workforce was afraid to show innovative ideas for business. High degree of control as well as strict hierarchy was present inside Marks and Spencer. The organizational structure adopted by M&S in past had many layers which caused problems in communication and knowledge transferring system. The top management had authority of making decision and then delegating the tasks to managers and lower staff.  The organizational activities were designed and controlled by the top management. The autocratic management style defined by (Scandura et.al, 1986) as a style of management in which the authority of decision making lies with the top management, was one of the factors for failure of Marks and Spencer in late 90’s. The customer’s needs were not catered and no researches regarding the market were done. It happened because of poor decision making skills and neglecting the innovative ideas of staff. The customers started buying the products of competitors because M&S focused on the old formula of manufacturing conservative dressing of high quality. Due to autocratic management style, Marks and Spencer failed to get the views of staff working at the outlets, interacting with the customers and knowing their needs. When the crises increased in late 90’s then the decisions regarding the change in management style and culture of M&S was taken by the top management. Different management style was needed to manage the resources, systems and procedures of Marks and Spencer. In 2000, Luc Vandervelde focused on a new management style and culture for M&S. He understood the need of implementing change in the organization, reducing the unnecessary layers in the structure and focusing on effective management style, but not bureaucratic one. Introduction of new management outside the company resulted fruitful for Marks and Spencer. Vandervelde came up with innovative ideas and reduced the cultural barriers against organizational change in M&S. The workforce at M&S was resistant to change and didn’t consider it useful. But, Vandervelde encouraged the managers and workforce towards implementing the change, and considered “change in management and organizational structure” as the only way of getting successful in the market.

3.2.New Organizational structure of Marks & Spencer

M&S focuses on flat organizational structure by eliminating unnecessary layers. Such kind of organizational structure emphasize on few levels of management between managerial level and lower level workers. M&S is following this structure to motivate staffs to give their ideas in decision making procedure. Management is focusing on this structure to reduce bureaucracy and make workers more capable by sanctioning them to take decisions. Because of presence of less management levels, the dissemination of knowledge and communication has become easy, leading towards quick problem resolution process (Ellen and Dana, 2009). The employees and workers in M&S can make rapid decisions at the time of need and simply explain their decisions. Thus, responsibility is increased but the managerial roles are being efficiently performed by the employees.  

Advantages

According to (Porter and Lawler, 1976), the flatter organization structure and management style has different to the companies. Advantages for M&S are:

1. Due to less middle management, there is less resistance and the entire organization work at ease
2. Flat structure has reduced the expenditure of M&S by eliminating the cost of middle men cost and reduction the communication obstacles
3. The responsibilities and burden over management are reduced by eliminating middle managers, because the lower and upper managers can perform the activities of middle manager too.

Disadvantages

1. Expenditure is required to recruit the efficient employees that can make effective decisions at their own
2. Training of new and current employees is required for developing managerial skills, decision making skills etc. thus, needing resources like time, money etc.

4.The planning processes used in the M&S

Different types of resources are required by the business concerns for effective operations. Marks and Spencer focus on various resources including human resources, time, and financial resources etc. for managing its operations and to get the competitive edge over rivalry (Klien, 2002). It is discussed in the case study that M&S did not efficiently use its resources to perform different activities and hence led towards failure. The core strategy adopted by newly adopted chairman of M&S, named Vandeveld was to focus on the future rather than past. He planned to move the business closer to the customers. It means providing the customer what he/she actually wants. For this, the highly effective information flows were focused. For this purpose, activities including restoring overseas profitability as well as and establishing financial services were focused. For this, the management of M&S used the financial services effectively and by hiring the skilled staff. The plan regarding simplifying the management structures and attracting the customers is performed by making purchasing and marketing teams. The resources including the information from marketing research, data base of customers and previous sales records were used by the management to plan the marketing processes. M&S adopted new marketing and advertising strategies to attract the new customers and regain the new ones. The entire marketing strategy was changed along with the variety of products. M&S focused on providing innovative and stylish clothing to the customers for which it used different raw material, purchased from highly efficient suppliers of UK. The range of products offered to the customers was changed to satisfy the customers and to remain competitive in the market. Some changes in the product placement was made by M&S by introducing the new range of clothing and eliminating the previous one. The HR processes were also changed by the new chairman. According to (Williamson and Cooke, 2004), strategy should be made on the basis of analysis of business strengths and weaknesses. The most competitive workforce was hired for different outlets for understanding the needs of customers in better way, and to provide them what they want. The financial resources were used in an effective manner to conduct the operations effectively. The change in the capital structure of M&S lead towards profitability and this happened because of adopting highly effective operations. The operations regarding the international and overseas business were closed and the entire focus was given to the domestic clothing. This helped the company in becoming competitive, and was possible through efficient use of resources.

5.Leadership styles within Marks and Spencer

Leadership is considered to be a phenomenon of affecting a business concern in its struggles to attain the core objective, and hence thus, a leader is personnel who have influencing traits (Johnson et.al, 2008). Leaders play an important role in change management process.  Different leaders at Marks and Spencer focused on different management and leadership styles. 

As per case study, The owner of M&S and his son Simon Mark focused on bureaucratic management style as well as instrumental leadership. The behavior of Simon was aggressive towards the new ideas and he liked to give orders, controlled the organization and solely made decisions. This was not useful leadership style for the company. The strategic leaders are concerned about strategy making of the business to attain the objectives (Grant, 2005). Another leadership style observed in M&S is autocratic leadership style by Richard Greenbury. Although, Greenbury focused on day to day activities rather than long term strategy but took decisions at his own and decision making role was solely played by him. In addition, charismatic leadership is also observed in M&S and was focused by Salsbury in 1998. He implemented a different management style from previous leaders and focused on the customers. He tried to eliminate the bureaucratic structure and motivated the workforce to implement the reorganization strategy. Furthermore, Luc Vandervelde focused on a unique leadership style for Marks and Spencer. he focused on an idea of restructuring the company and applying change. He had a proactive approach and focused on future rather than past. He focused on transformational leadership.

6.Conclusion

It can be concluded that management and leadership is highly useful for every business concern. Marks and Spencer faced problems in past due to ineffective leadership, bureaucratic structure as well as and inefficient management styles. Marks and Spencer can regain its position in the market by focusing on innovation and hiring the most skilled employees. The management and leaders should give importance to the ideas as well as opinions of the workforce to make the operations effective and to get the competitive edge over rivalry ((Schermerhorn and Holbrook, 2005).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Bevan, J., 2007. The Rise and Fall of Marks & Spencer: And how it Rose Again. US: Profile Books Limited.

Campbell, A., 1989. Does your organisation need a mission? Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 10(3), pp.3-9

Ellen, G. & Dana, L., 2009 Essentials of Business Communication, US: Cengage Learning

Grant, R., 2005. Contemporary strategy analysis, US: Wiley-Blackwell.

Johnson, G., Scholes, K. and Whittington, R., 2008. Exploring corporate strategy: Text and case, UK: Pearson Education.

Klein, J., 2002. Beyond competitive advantage, Strategic Change, 11(6), pp.317-327

McAdam, R. and McClelland, J., 2002. Sources of new product ideas and creativity practices in the UK textile industry, Technovation, 22(2), pp.113-121

Marks and Spencer Plc. M&S. [Online], Available at: http://www.marksandspencer.com, [Accessed: February 21, 2016].

Porter, L.W. and Lawler III, E.E., 1976. The effects of ‘tall’versus ‘flat’organization structures on managerial job satisfaction, UK: Palgrave Macmillan

Schermerhorn, J. & Holbrook, R., 2005, Management, London: John Wiley

Scandura, T.A., Graen, G.B. and Novak, M.A., 1986. When managers decide not to decide autocratically: An investigation of leader–member exchange and decision influence Journal of applied psychology, 71(4), p.579

Williamson, D. and Cooke, P., 2004. Strategic management and business analysis. US: Routledge