Marks & Spencer Case Study
With close to 400 shops, 11 million customers a week and 66,000 workers, Marks and Spencer is a respected organization and one of the High Street’s most recognized brands. Nevertheless the days when M&S was uncontested have long gone as clothing sales have come under stress from other high street brands like Topman and River Island and food revenue has been hit by Tesco. Over the last 15 years, Marks and Spencer have experienced a succession of changes in management and organizational culture following a massive decline in sales. What used to be a leading store in excellence food and clothing retailer has now become an out-of-date, passive company fighting to survive in a very aggressive market. Below the organizational culture of M&S will be discussed and how that culture needed to change to allow M&S remain competitive.
Organizational culture refers to the collective way of life within a company. Edger Schein a famous and respected theorists dealing with organizational culture says that the definition of organizational culture has to be wide-ranging, or else part of what makes up that cooperate cultures gets eliminated from the get-go. He has described organizational culture as: “A pattern of shared basic assumptions " invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration" that have worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems”. Norms might be described as traditions, structure of authority, or routines. Another more straightforward way of looking at organizational culture is to see it as a group’s broad response to a certain situation. An organizational culture is a group of people who have been taught, or who simply have learned by those around them, how to react to a given circumstances. In this way, corporate culture functions just as any public culture
Organizational culture refers to the collective way of life within a company. Edger Schein a famous and respected theorists dealing with organizational culture says that the definition of organizational culture has to be wide-ranging, or else part of what makes up that cooperate cultures gets eliminated from the get-go. He has described organizational culture as: “A pattern of shared basic assumptions " invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration" that have worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems”. Norms might be described as traditions, structure of authority, or routines. Another more straightforward way of looking at organizational culture is to see it as a group’s broad response to a certain situation. An organizational culture is a group of people who have been taught, or who simply have learned by those around them, how to react to a given circumstances. In this way, corporate culture functions just as any public culture
References: Schein, E.H. (1992), Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View, 2nd ed., Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Johnson, Gerry (1988) "Rethinking Incrementalism", Strategic Management Journal Vol 9 pp75-91 http://plana.marksandspencer.com/media/pdf/how_we-do_business_report_2011.pdf Marks & Spencer case study http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/companies/marks-and-spencer.php http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/A43825629