Q4) Assess the importance of organisational factors in the success of Marks and Spencer and how they may have contributed to subsequent difficulties.
Module Code: 02BSC680.
Module Title: Strategic Management.
(Individual Coursework Assignment).
Date submitted: 2nd June 2003.
Submitted by: Sannica Chua Boon Tian.
Student ID: A144562.
Word Count: 1700 .
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION 3.
THE CULTURAL WEB OF MARKS AND SPENCER 4.
SWOT ANALYSIS 5.
MICHAEL PORTER'S FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS 6.
THE CULTURAL WEB - DECONSTRUCTED 8.
CONCLUSION 10.
REFERENCES 11.
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INTRODUCTION.
This paper sets out to explore and analyze the management strategy of Marks and Spencer (M&S), and examine the organizational factors that contributed to its success as well as its decline in the 1990s. This paper will also analyze the difficulties they face in implementing changes due to its deeply entrenched organizational culture.
For the purpose of this case study, we have identified that the two key organizational factors that caused the rise and fall of M&S - namely its organizational culture and structure.
Organizational structure has been defined, as "the system of roles and responsibilities, and values, i.e., statements about what kinds of behaviors or end-states are preferable to others, in relationship to each other in order to understand organizational change.""1 Organizational culture is the personality of the organization and it includes the set of beliefs, behaviors, values, goals, technologies and practices that is shared by members of the organization.
Edgar's2 understanding of culture is like peeling away the layers of an onion the find the central paradigm - which is essentially the taken-for-granted assumptions about how an organization works (Fig. 1). As O'Reilly3 (1991) aptly puts it, "it's the way we do things around here.".
Fig. 1 CULTURE IN THREE LAYERS.
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1 Greenwood, R., C. R. Hinings. 1996. Understanding radical organizational change: Bringing together the old and the new institutionalism.
