Change Management In Marks And Spencer: An Essay.

Describe a potential path for you to lead the company/business/organization to the answers it needs, incorporating specific references to innovation elements where it seems appropriate. 

Background of Change Management in Marks and Spenser

Change management should be perceived as a process that is essential for the renewal of the direction, structure as well as capabilities so that the ever changing requirements of external as well as the internal stakeholders can be served. This is one systematic approach that helps in dealing with change, both from the point of view of the company as well as on a singular basis. Moreover, the three important aspects of change management should also be mentioned. These are:

• Adapting to the impending changes
• Controlling the change mechanism
• Effecting the change

Change cannot be stopped in the atmosphere of growing organisational needs. Modern business domains are always susceptible to changes. Here the competition is of cut-throat level and the advancements in the technological as well as environmental contexts are beyond control or prediction. These are the basic change requirements and that is why change management have to be considered for any organisation if it aims at becoming successful.

For the purpose of this study, The Marks and Spenser Company have been selected. This is one of the most iconic as well as globally recognised chain stores of British origin in the UK. There are about 600 shops located all over UK as well as 240 shops all over the world as well as 219 franchise businesses, working in 34 countries. The number of employees is about 75000. The businesses include clothing retail, home products, and food groceries and so on.

The background of the change requirements have been considered in depth for the organisation Marks & Spenser. Further, systems have been involved for implementing change management models in order to ensure the ongoing changes in the company.

There can be various factors that emancipate changes in organisations like the M&S. As Hosking and Anderson (2018), opines, these issues make the organisation understand the need for change. The change can be both internal as well as external. There are some driving factors enlisted below:

Human resources are mostly required for success of the organisation. However, they are not at all constant and keep on changing. As per Eason (2014), this is how the atmosphere of change occurs in the business environment. There have been few of the cases in the company because of which the company had to come up with some exclusive structural changes. The main issue that surged them to make the change was an executive level labour’s turnover.

This can also be termed as a factor pertaining to managerial decision that would lead to change in the organisation. In the M&S company also, some big changes occurred owing some of the newly implies strategies that were passed by the executive managerial board of the company (Lozano, Nummert & Ceulemans, 2016).

At some points of time, the organisation comes to realise that the business culture of the company is facing acute changes. Other than Western Europe, in some other business domains, the company acutely followed this change.

The labour union of the M&S often makes demands for facilitating the employees to the management. In such instances, Ceulemans, Lozano & Alonso-Almeida, (2015), states that the upper management have to comprise with employees and thus some changes are introduced in the company. The company have also introduced some minor organisation structures when they needed to make their employees more loyal and focused at work.

Background analysis of change in the current economy

At the time when the company realises that the current mode of the operations of the company are inadequate in the context to the present technological environment, the organisational changes occur. This is a reality for all the companies here and M&S is also not different among them.

All the companies work in certain customer environments where it is compelled to follow the regulatory framework that is set by the authorised body of regulation there (Waddell et al. 2016). M&S is also liable to do the same.

This may be considered as one of the major forces of the company. The organisations in the current world are open to open to global changes and because of the fact that globalisation is setting up the platform for most of the changes, the M&S company also needs to go through many changes so that they can survive the highly competitive business atmosphere of the current world.

This is one important strength in the bureaucratic organisations. Major number of government controlled organisations have a bureaucratic structure because these organisations need to remain highly accountable (Blanco-Portela et al. 2017). In M&S also, there is an array of well-defined rights as responsibilities.

Owing to the fact that there is a well-defined hierarchy as well as processes that are carefully defined in the organisation, the mechanism of tactful control in evident in the company. That is why it is evident that effectiveness of control is effective feature in the organisation.

In the bureaucratic organisations, discipline is more evident compared to the companies with organic nature and because of the fact that discipline is a primary success factor, M&S always attempt to have discipline in their operations.

Stringent hierarchical structure is followed in the specialised bureaucratic organisations.  That is why all the processes of crucial decision making go through a predetermined path and leaves scope for no confusion (Jordan, Werner & Venter, 2015). The company, M&S also follows a highly organised hierarchy.

Owing to hard regulations, any organisational process follows a predetermined path ad needs to fulfil all organisational formalities. This is what leads to delay in the Marks & Spenser Company.

Owing to the tall as well as well-defined structure as well as stringent rules and regulations, the organisations as a whole are quite reluctant to accept the changes. The changes actually do take place in the company. However, there is a long step to be followed before the cat implementation of the change takes place in the company. As an outcome, Farkas (2016), depicts that there is a high chance that the company would stay behind in the competition. There have been some instances in the company where the management have taken quite some time to take a decision in the M&S and thus they were delayed in accepting the new trends in the organisation and thus lost many competitive advantages.

Monotony in the work routine

Since the organisational boundaries are very specifically defined in the Marks & Spenser, the employees would not tend to go beyond the domain that is defined to them. This prevents them from learning new and transformational prospects. This is what makes a company monotonous as well as unproductive.

Strengths and weaknesses in Bureaucratic Organisations

The organisations of the current world are much complex as well as diversified. This is why the bureaucratic pattern of the organisation seems to be quite unsuitable for taking apt decisions to mitigate the modern problems that requires quick and prompt action (Doppelt, 2017). There are various business processing units in the M&S Company that are very complex in their organisational design and there is no place for bureaucracy. 

Modern companies generate work under a workplace environment that is highly susceptible to organisational changes. That is why one important asset of a company is its ability to manage change and thus gain sustainable competitive advantage. Organisational development can be well defined as one eminent application of behavioural sciences for a planned development as well as reinforcement of strategies, structures as well as the processes of the organisation for the enhancement of its effectiveness (Shaw, 2018).

So far as M&S is concerned, some of the few forms of organisational development have been concerned. These are as follows:

This is a company where candidates at all the levels, individuals as well as collective bodies are constantly leaned at enhancement of their productivity so that they can actually produce the results that they are concerned for. Systems thinking, mental models, sharing of vision, personal mastery as well as team learning are some of the key features of a learning organisation. The M&S Company have aligned to this strategy thoroughly. The company is free to welcome learning at any stage as well as level.

This is a process that is people dependent as it is very essential that the people in the organisation work together. This is a combination of management practices that is applicable throughout the company that ensures the consistency of meeting or exceeding customer requirements by the firm (Pollack & Pollack, 2015). The model strongly emphasises in measuring and controlling by means of continuous improvement. The company Marks and Spenser have strong belief in following the approach thoroughly since the company have a tendency to learn and adopt at any and every stage of the organisational level. This helps the company in ensuring new innovations, upgrading as well as quality control.

The strategic mind set under the Kaizen Model allows the company to give never ending efforts for bringing an improvement that involves everybody in the scope of the organisation, which implies managers as well as workers alike. As Hayes (2018) stands for, this model emphasises on the minute improvements that have the potential to drive to major organisational changes. The Marks and Spenser company strongly believes in making improvements in the line of the Kaizen Model. That is why the company have established various kinds of feedback mechanism only in order to collect valuable information from the customers’ end. Conclusively, Kaizen uses this model for development of the performance and there is no end to application of this model in the M&S.

This is a data driven framework that was originally implemented by the Motorola Company in USA in the year 1981. This is a strategy for business management that aims at elimination of defects in any organisational framework with which the company operates, ranging from manufacturing unit to the transaction desk and from the product development to servicing. Marks and Spenser implies a strategy that is measurement based emphasising on process improvement as well as reduction of variation by applying Six Sigma Improvement projects. Even, Hornstein (2015) asserts that The Six Sigma is the best model found so far for quality control as well as enhancement.

The BPR is a trait where extensive research work needs to be done as well as numerous methodologies needs to be churned out. This is an approach which aims at developing the efficiency as well as effectiveness of the businesses that exist in as well across various companies. The BPR model emphasises that the organisations should perceive the business processes from “clean-slate” perspective as well as determine how these processes can be vest constructed during conducting the business. The BPR model is implied by the company by the designing function.

System in a company is an accomplishment of the various elements to work in combination for achieving a desired outcome. This system integrates a chain of input, processing as well as an outcome (Ramos et al. 2015). This has a defined boundary. However there may be various sub sections of this process.

Stakeholders to any organisation can be the people, groups, system or the organisation that are enticed in some way or are affected by the actions of the organisation. The primary stakeholders in the M&S Company is inclusive of their management board, customers, government, creditors, employees , suppliers, owners or shareholders as well as the extensive community from where the company extracts its majority of the resources (Domingues et al. 2017).

The change in the M&S Company that have been particularly emphasised up on here is the redesigning of the layout in the various stores of the company. The management of the company decided to give acute importance to the customers’ complaints and their feedback regarding the poor display in the M&S showrooms. This helped the management to perceive that they changing the outlook of the stores would have a high positive impact up on the customers as well as visitors. The new look of the outlets of M&S makes them brighter as well as filled with latest dazzle. The organisational stakeholders who are involved in the process of change are customers, employees as well as the stakeholders.

In the following section the

In the context of description of the change, the Learning Organisation as well as the Kaizen Model would be highlighted in the following section of the report.

This model aims to develop new ideas as well as debate issues and then introduce various innovative methods. Maximum big organisations have considered the importance as well as commercial significance of this learning Organisation Model. As Nancy Dixon puts it:

“The essence of Organisational Learning is the organisation’s ability to use the amazing mental capacity of all its members to create the kind of processes that will improve its own”

In the recent years, the M&S Company have went through some successive changes in management as well as corporate structure. Thereby, there have been a huge decline in the sales parity and this phenomenon started back in the 1990s (Blanco-Portela et al. 2017). Prior to that period, the company had unchallenged predominance. However, after that there emerged new organisations as Asda as well as Next Plc (in the clothing industry) and also Tesco (in the Food sector) and they damaged the leading place of the organisation. The company that have been having 11 million shoppers every week and also 75000 employees had no other option rather than adopting the strategy of organisational learning.

The company has also altered the marketing mix and then dropped as well as added some products, services as well as customers, downsized and then as an outcome made huge number of employees redundant in the company. Even after that the company could not retrace them to occupy the position of becoming the undisputed bestseller of the high streets. One main reason was the poor display position of the in the showrooms. Hence, the company needed a change. The contemporary position of the company showed that there was a need for development of one scientifically based strategy for the purpose of change management (Uvarova et al. 2016). Hence, M&S needed to undertake a successful change pattern as well as facilitate what is needed for the transformation of the company in to one learning organisation, by making prompt use of creation. Knowledge-ability as well as management.

This is a model that stands for continuous improvement and the primary philosophy on which the model is based is:

“Ask not what the organisation can do for you but what you can do for the organisation”.

A Kaizen group needs to be formed with about 10 to 15 people and they should meet frequently within the office premises and consider even the smallest of the change requirements in any and every aspects of the organisation. The conclusion that this group draws is being directly reflected to the higher management of the company. This enables the company to develop the quality and on the other side the employees perceive true involvement that is the primary factor of motivation that is the fundamental behind Kaizen (Verhulst & Lambrechts, 2015).

This model essentially emphasises on the higher needs of the workers of the company like involvement, self-actualization as well as involvement. However the management of the company have to be very attentive during the implementation of the Kaizen group and keep an eye on maintaining the healthy working atmosphere. The employees can celebrate the openness of the work culture and besides that, this model also emphasises the upwards communication. The employees are supposed to be looking up at the Kaizens in the instances where investments are almost negligible. An important and ardent follower of this Kaizen structure is the Toyota Company. In fact most Japanese companies have reaped the benefits of this model (Alrabiah & Drew, 2018). The structure of the upwards communications in the company is also not up to the market as well as there is the fact that the company also needs to reconsider about improving their quality and as it has been highlighted above, about changing the design of their outlets. Hence, it can be easily commented that the Kaizen model would emphatically help the M&S Company to change the dew segments of organisational design to ensure business improvement as well as yield sustainable competitive advantage.

In spite of the fact that there are various models of implementation, here there have been made use of the Lewis’s three step model by the researcher. This model of implementation have been developed by a German-American psychologist, Zadek Lewin who proposed the three step model concerning the traits like change, unfreezing as well as refreezing.

This is a fundamental as well as one of the most important steps in the three step model. Until some agency is not adapted for the change or even feel the necessity for the change in the outlook in the showrooms, the process of organisational change would not be initiated. People in the company needs to understand how the change process would actually benefit them. The company should feel the need to challenge their present needs values as well as attitudes as well as behaviours along with making everybody adapted to accept the change. As Van der Voet, Kuipers & Groeneveld (2016) opines, through the usage of the earning organisation or the Kaizen Model, the Marks and Spenser company can easily get all the information related to the dissatisfaction among the stakeholders regarding the present organisational position like the faults in the display outlets and conclusively its impact on the denomination of the sales volume. Once the company have recognised their zone of discomfort, they would attempt to promptly move forward a c.

People after perceiving the change requirements generally tend to begin things in a absolutely newly proposed manner to shift from the span of uncertainty or satisfaction. However, any consolidated organisational change do not take place in a drastic way. There is a transitory phase for any sort of change implementation. There are two vital prospects like time and communication. The company have to be convicted about the change requirements and the success aspect during the transition period. Learning mode, information accumulation, group discussions, development of Kaizens, quality circles as well as implementation of innovative ways to develop the most feasible, lucrative and appealing look at the outlets in order to attract the customers of high street as well as others.   

The outward sign in the refreeze phase of the company is added stability, followed by appreciation of the new look as well as a subtle rise in the brand loyalty which would conclusively gear up the business index. After such a position has been reached, the company would be ready to enter the refreeze phase. At such a position, the organisation as well as the employees would feel much more comfortable as well as confident in engaging in to the business activities with the renewed set up. This is a fact that change is always an ongoing process. However, the employees should not be facing any more change very soon.

There are a large number of change outcomes that the organisation might expect after the successful implementation of the change management that have been reflected herein. Fore mostly, this would allow the Marks and Spenser Company a great opportunity for the application of the much appreciated as well as one scientific change management theory. Moreover the developed culture of change management would allow the company to develop one sound habit of implementation and rendition of these innovative change methodologies in the future span of the company. In addition to that, the company would also experience some additional outcomes. These are:

• New, dazzling as well as much comfortable working environment for the employees
• A designed as well as attractive place for the visiting of the customers, chief guests as well as other potential visitors
• Enhance the probable sales volume of the Marks and Spenser Company and ensure that the company is also able to fetch maximum profit in the business endeavours like they used to do before the 1990s.
• This would also make a guaranteed enhancement of the employee loyalty since they would be much more integrated and involved through an alleviation of their willingness of work
• The new workspace design would also boost the confidence of the employees and they would feel highly involved in the business
• The employees would also be able to suffice their needs of self-actualisation by pitching their level of motivation
• This would in turn ensure high organisational productivity for the company as well as ensure aggravated employee benefits also
• The brand image of the company as a lading as well as successful organisation of the business domain where they operate is of utmost necessity.
• The external as well as all internal stakeholders would feel contended as well as satisfied. 

Conclusion

In the course of this assignment, mention have been made of the change requirements as well as the change management of the Marks and Spenser Company. The company needed to properly understand the needs to the future changes as well as understand how they can successfully implement the change. Various organisational developmental structures like bureaucracy as well as others have been compared against each other. After finding out the appropriate change requirements in the company, some organisational models that the company might follow in order to restructure the change, have been suggested. The two frameworks like Kaizen Model and the Learning Organisation model have been deemed the most important for the change proposed in this research study. In the next stage, that is the implementation phase, the famous Lewin’s three step model have been considered. The company is in a struggling position today with its objective to restore the highest market volume in the high street market. It seems that the suggested organisational change would enable the company to ride its path to glory. 

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