Introduction to Management

This document provides an introduction to management, discussing the process and activities involved in creating efficiency within organizations. It focuses on the case study of The Arcadia Group, a leading fashion retailer in the UK, and highlights the management and operational challenges faced by the company. The document covers topics such as staffing and HR, work culture, sustainability, and customer service quality.

Introduction to
Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................2
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................2
ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUAL PROBLEM...................................................................................2
Problem 1: Staffing & HR - Recruitment selection retention and training for high street stores
................................................................................................................................................2
Problem 2: The work culture at the Arcadia Group...............................................................2
Problem 3: Being a sustainable business in fast fashion (Sustainability)..............................2
Problem 4: Poor customer service quality in the stores in the South East Region.................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................2
REFRENCES...................................................................................................................................3
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INTRODUCTION
Management refers to the process and combination of activities performed by organisations
to create the highest level of efficiency possible within their operations. Management is a
fundamental phenomenon of converting raw materials and labours into to production services
that are efficient and providing maximum profit to the company. The management function
attempts to balance the cost and revenue of an organisation in order to achieve the highest level
of profits and develops cost efficient operations (Anderson and et. al., 2018). Management
handle various strategic issues and decisions of an entity which includes project management,
operation management, human resource Management and other respective segments. The report
is developed on the basis of the case study of The Arcadia Group. Arcadia group is a leading
fashion retailer in the UK which is headquartered in London and was established in 2002. The
key products and offerings of organisation is clothing shoes and accessories. The arcadia group
owns high Street clothing retailers and out of town chain outfit. The group has more than 2500
outlets all over the UK and serves to numerous consumers on a daily basis. The report highlights
on a set of Management and operational challenges faced by arcadia group. These problems are
related to staffing and HR department, the maintenance of work culture in high Street stores,
development of sustainable business in fast fashion and customer service quality in the South
Eastern region physical stores.The report covers purpose and justifying measures for all the four
problems which can help the arcadia group to resolve the following issues and enhance their
business practices and management level.
MAIN BODY
ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUAL PROBLEM
Problem 1: Staffing & HR - Recruitment selection retention and training for high street stores
The high Street fashion retailer arcadia group is experiencing several number of challenges
and issues in terms of recruiting and retaining good quality employees and experts in the
organisation especially while at the time of difficult trading and business conditions. The seven
stores are being shut down by the group and in such condition it is very difficult for the company
to attract and retain talented staff in the organisation (Bryson, 2017). In order to survive and
bring in best talented employees organisation has a online job search website which tries to
attract new people and make them work with the company in their stores. The online website is
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lacking and falling behind from its motive for attracting enough new Individual in favour of
company and the management is lacking in effectively managing the human resource existing in
the organisation.
HRM and Recruitment practices for the ArcadiaGroup, their advantages and disadvantages:
 External recruitment: Recruitment can be done by two ways internally and externally.
The arcadia group which to attract new talent and therefore it had to make use of external
recruitment practices.The external recruitment of staff will allow the organisation to bring
in in better talents holding new ideas which are creative and sustainable. The advantage
of external recruitment process for arcadia group is it allows the organisation to flourish
new ideas in the operations (Bullock, Haddow and Coppola, 2017). The Disadvantage of
external recruitment process the cost and investment associated with it along with the
long complex process.
 Performance appraisal: The arcadia group once recruits new staff the HR department of
the organisation should develop effective performance appraisal and reward techniques.
These rewards will help the organisation in motivating employees and retaining them for
a longer period in the organisation. The drawback of performance appraisal and rewards
is sometimes negative competitive thinking can be developed by employees which can
hinder the achievement of ultimate goal of the organisation.
 Diversification in human resource: the group produced a gender pay report that
highlights a gender pay gap in the payments because almost 80% of the staff present in
the organisation is females. Therefore the human resource department need to develop
effective HRM strategies while recruiting and selecting new people so that a balance can
be created and diversify staff can be appointed. Advantage of this HRM practice for the
arcadia group is it allows the organisation to maintain a balance in gender pay and reduce
the gap (Hislop, Bosua and Helms, 2018). The drawback of this practice is that the
organisation needs to conduct severing activities and processes to attract and bring in the
balance in the staff.
Problem 2: The work culture at the Arcadia Group
The work culture at the arcadia group is being hindered and negatively affected due to the
difficult reading conditions and falling in sales. The head of group adopted a aggressive
approach of Management which negatively impacted on the employees and some of the
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employees accused the management of harassment. The problem of bad working culture can
impose more negative impacts on the operations of organisation and therefore the arcadia group
need undertake specific measures that would help the company to resolve these issues.
Methods of enhancing the company culture:
 Offer flexibility: The arcadia group is facing problems in managing working culture in
the organisation as the head have taken aggressive approach of Management. As the store
manager the most efficient way for enhancing the company culture is of offering ability
to employees (Smith and Wong, 2016). This method allows the employees to work in a
flexible environment where they are motivated and encouraged to perform which their
best potentials. The disadvantage of this approach for arcadia group is sometimes staff
misuse is the flexibility provided to them by the leaders.
 Empower and encourage: As the store manager of arcadia group the roles and
responsibility highlights that a manager is responsible for keeping their staff motivated
and encouraged by different ways. Empowering in rupees is the best way to encourage
them and to provide them flexibility and give them satisfied with their job role. This
approach of enhancing company culture with help the organisation to keep the staff
motivated and empower them with positive factors.
 Employee relations: The first and foremost method of enhancing and enriching the
company culture is development of employee relations. It refers towards making efforts
by both employer and employees to develop a healthy relation that helps in improving the
working environment and motivation level of the people working in the company. The
arcadia group store manager can make use of employee relations practice for enhancing
their relationship and encouraging the employees (Wilton, 2016). The disadvantage of
this practice is sometimes managers are being overpowered by the staff under the
umbrella of employee relations and the decision making of manager is influenced.
Problem 3: Being a sustainable business in fast fashion (Sustainability)
Within the apparel industry fast fashion become the specific hot segment and the source of
growth for various clothing companies. In this context innovation is the most prominent way for
the apparel industry in order to keep them in pace with the acceleration of designing and
marketing (Averina, Avdeeva and Perevalova, 2018). Rapid fashion is now become a
sophisticated business which is recommended by Low Technology production system. By
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concerning the sustainable problem which is faced by Arcadia group is there sustainable business
which directly impact on the performance of business. In order to deal with this respective
company develop prominent sustainable development goals for it in order to reduce this problem
and growth and development within the industry.
Various goals that are opted by Arcadia Group:
 In this context in order to bring collaborative change company support good health and
wellbeing in terms of Charity towards their workers in order to support them by suffering
from mental and Physical health and wellbeing issues. In this context company offer
various services to their employees including workplace giving schemes Charity month
group partnership and so on.
 Another goal of company is decent work and economic growth under which company
adopt healthy working conditions bike and sending the legal and legislation law including
action collaboration and transformation which collect the representatives of trade unions
Retail Industry and government in order to analyze the issues in the wage system for
employees.
 In addition to this responsible consumption and production is another goal of company
in order to eliminate the impact of environment on their prominent products. In this
context their products team across all the brands get training to perform their job roles
which positively impact on the performance and production of company and leads to
eliminate the wastage of resources.
 Moreover the climate actions for the active member regarding the number of industry
group is the another objective of company in order to enhance the environmental impact
which is concerned with the fashion industry and under this they include several actions
like sustainable clothing Action Plan canopy relations for responsible Denim industry
acting on microfibers and so on (Mao and et. al., 2016).
Child Labor issue
Along with this it is also criticized that company hire children in order to work under their
organization. In this context children work at all the stages of the supply chain in the fashion
industry that can impact their health as well. In relation with this the prominent subject is about
the long working hours and the exposure of pesticides addition to the minimum wages that leads
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to exploit the children (Salic and Zelic, 2018). In this context the role of trade union is to make
workers aware regarding their rights and also know where and how to file complaint.
Problem 4: Poor customer service quality in the stores in the South East Region
By criticizing the current problem of the company is that they face poor customer service
quality with their stores especially in the south east region including London. In this context,
with the lack of skills of employees and inefficiency among them company faces dissatisfaction
from their customers (Frankel, Gelman and Pastor, 2018). In relation with this in order to
enhance their customer service and make it more qualitative Arcadia need to set prominent
benchmark score on the monthly basis concerning the survey and feedback from their customers
regarding the quality service which is provided by company. In relation with this regional
manager of Arcadia need to develop and adopt performance analysis methods in order to analyze
the performance of the employees and staff members after the performance and sales. In this
context the business manager need to review and access the performance of employees with the
help of various methods that are follows as under:
 Benchmarking: In relation with this the regional manager of company set prominent
standards in front of the customers regarding the enhancement of the performance. In this
context customers need to achieve the suitable standard in order to achieve success and
growth in their career and also leads to bring boost in the overall performance of
employees (Bullock, Haddow and Coppola, 2017).
 Measuring: In this context Arcadia adopt prominent performance measurement methods
in order to analyze and measure the overall performance of their customers. After all this
company need to take corrective action if they find any deviations will the performance
of employees in order to enhance and develop the performance of employees (Hislop,
Bosua and Helms, 2018). Therefore with the help of proper measurement employees are
able enough to perform at their level best and also offer extend customer service which is
useful in retaining customers for the longer period of time.
CONCLUSION
By analysing the overall discussion and determining the problems which are faced by
organisation it is evaluated that company adopt prominent methods and key proposals in order to
overcome these problems. For example by considering the sustainable problem of company they
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can set various goals in order to become them more sustainable for the long-term survival and
also eliminate the child labour as because of this factor company can face various legal actions
that can impact the overall reputation and image of company. Moreover company also face poor
customer service because of the lack of performance of their employees and inefficiency among
them. In relation with this, company need to adopt prominent measures in order to enhance the
performance of the employees including providing training and development to them. With the
help of proper training and development it becomes easy for employees to perform their specific
job role as training makes employees more confident and boost morale in them. Along with this
company also use benchmarking and measuring in order to boost up the performance of
subordinates.
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REFRENCES
Books and journals
Anderson, D.R and et. al., 2018. An introduction to management science: quantitative approach.
Cengage learning.
Averina, T., Avdeeva, E. and Perevalova, O., 2018. Introduction of management innovations in
the work of municipal organizations. In MATEC Web of Conferences (Vol. 170, p.
01121). EDP Sciences.
Bryson, J., 2017. Effective library and information centre management. Routledge.
Bullock, J.A., Haddow, G.D. and Coppola, D.P., 2017. Introduction to emergency management.
Butterworth-Heinemann.
Frankel, A.J., Gelman, S.R. and Pastor, D.K., 2018. Case management: An introduction to
concepts and skills. Oxford University Press.
Hislop, D., Bosua, R. and Helms, R., 2018. Knowledge management in organizations: A critical
introduction. Oxford University Press.
Mao, H and et. al., 2016, November. Resource management with deep reinforcement learning.
In Proceedings of the 15th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (pp. 50-56).
Salic, A. and Zelic, B., 2018. Introduction to environmental engineering. Physical Sciences
Reviews, 3.
Smith, L.C. and Wong, M.A. eds., 2016. Reference and Information Services: An Introduction:
An Introduction. ABC-CLIO.
Wilton, N., 2016. An introduction to human resource management. Sage.
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