Analysis of Sainsbury's Management Practices

This assignment requires a comprehensive analysis of Sainsbury's business operations, including their management practices, market orientation, and sustainability efforts. It involves reviewing various articles and research papers to understand the company's vision, leadership style, and strategies for success. The analysis will provide insights into how Sainsbury's approaches business management and what can be learned from their experiences.

Context of business

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
1.Brief history and summary of Sainsbury.................................................................................3
2. The vision, leadership style and management practices of the organisation..........................4
3. Analysis of achievement and implementation of vision, leadership styles, management
practices and strategy..................................................................................................................5
4. Recommendation for the Sainsbury........................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
The context of business is a major aspect of the business that analysis the business
environment and helps to run business for the long term(vom Brocke, Zelt and Schmiedel, 2016).
Present study is based on Sainsbury that is third largest supermarket in UK. Its headquartered in
London, UK. It was founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Dury Lane,
London. Sainsbury has over 1400 shops with more than 161,000 employees. Sainsbury provides
good working condition to the employees so that they work in the effective manner.
The report will include the overview of the company as well as rationale to choose the
Sainsbury. It will explain the vision, leadership style and management practices of the
organisation. It will also analysis the achievement and implementation of the vision, leadership
style, management practices and the strategy of the organisation. Furthermore, the report will
provide various recommendations to the company depends on their present leadership style and
management practices.
MAIN BODY
1.Brief history and summary of Sainsbury
Company profile:-
Sainsbury is the retail sector industry, headquartered in London, UK. It is the third largest
chain of supermarket in UK. It holds 16.9% share of the supermarket. It is founded in 1869 by
John James Sainsbury. It has 1415 stops with 1,86,900 employees at number of locations. It
mainly deals in grocery products. Its products are hypermarket, supermarket and convenience
shop etc. Sainsbury's bank, Sainsbury's supermarket, Argos, habitat and Nectar are the
subsidiaries of the Sainsbury. It is listed in London stock exchange. Sainsbury started as the
retailer of the fresh food and later expanded their business into packaged groceries. They provide
high quality with low price products. It was incorporated as a private company later when they
expanded their business in grocery market and became the largest supermarket in UK and
convert as public limited company. Its revenue is £28.456 billion in 2018(Mizdrak and et.al,
2017).
Rationale

The reason of selecting Sainsbury is several such as Sainsbury is faced many ups and
come to reach on the position that they have in present, the third largest chain of supermarket in
UK. One more reason is its attractive business strategy that helps to bit their competitors. This
strategy is their high quality product at low price. Sainsbury contributes in CSR activities such as
the power of its stores by converting food waste into bio- methane gas to generate electricity. Its
management style and participative leadership style also a reason to choose Sainsbury because
that shows their effectiveness in productivity as well as their growth(Rohwer and Topić, 2019).
2. The vision, leadership style and management practices of the organisation
The leader and management makes vision, leadership style, management practices and
strategies for the organisation's growth.
Vision of the Sainsbury:-
Sainsbury's vision is “ to become a most trusted retailer where customers and employees
are loved to shop and work. Sainsbury will do this by putting all the affects to fulfil the demands
of the customers and investing in their stores, colleagues and channels to offer the best shopping
experience”(Sorrentino and et.al., 2018).
Leadership style of the Sainsbury:-
The leaders of Sainsbury is followed participative leadership style. Participative
leadership style means involving employees in decision-making process of the organisation. In
this leadership workers invest their time and ties their fate to the organisation. There is an
opportunity for the workers to participate in decision-making process of the organisation. The
communication between management and employees are improved(Aluko and Knight, 2017).
This leadership style helps Sainsbury in achieving success to the organisation because
with the help of participative leadership style, leader involves employees in decision making
process and any other important decision that help to maintain good relation with the employees
and employees feel that they are important for an organisation. Employees works effectively that
enhance the productivity of the organisation as well as profitability. This leadership style helps to
make company a market leaders.
Management practices of the Sainsbury:-
There are some management practices that is followed by Sainsbury:

 Engage workers:- Workers do not care about their work. They only focus on the pay
package. The first work that manager have to do is to engage their workers towards the
vision of the organisation(Bhattarai, Kwong and Tasavori, 2019). In Sainsbury, the
management is engaged their workers by providing the chance to participate in decision
making process of the organisation and give some power to the employees to take their
own decision about their work.
 Reward effort:- As mention in above point workers do not care about their job. They
only thing about the pay package(8 Best Practices in Business Management,2019). So,
the management of the Sainsbury takes initiative to involve their workers towards the
goal of the organisation such as give monetary rewards to the employees as well as non-
monetary like holiday trip etc. that help to motivate the employees and enhance the
productivity of the organisation.
 Stay committed:- When the workers do not trust on other employees as well as
management that may be enhance the conflict in the organisation. So, the management of
the Sainsbury enhances the informal communication in the organisation that help to
employees to create friendly relation at workplace(Bender and et.al, 2018).
 Create cultural cohesiveness:- It means a sense of shared value within the organisation
and respect them. The management of Sainsbury tries to create cultural environment at
workplace that help to enhance the productivity and efficiency of the organisation
because employees think that their culture is important for the organisation.
Management practices helps to Sainsbury in maintaining good relations with the employees as
well as enhance the efficiency and productivity of the organisation.
Strategies:-
Apart from the leadership styles and management practices, the leader and management
also develops the various strategies for the business such as differential strategy, cost effective
leadership strategy and distribution marketing strategy etc. that strategies help to the company to
accomplish their goals and also provide long term growth to the organisation. There main
business strategy of Sainsbury is cost effective and differentiate strategy. They follow both the
strategy for achieving their goals. They provide high quality with low price products to the

customers and that provides competitive advantages to the company(Mathivathanan, Kannan and
Haq, 2018).
3. Analysis of achievement and implementation of vision, leadership styles, management
practices and strategy
Analysis of achievement and implementation of vision:-
Sainsbury is able to implement their vision by showing their concern towards the
customers as well as employees. They produce products and services according to the needs and
demands of the customers and they also try to give their 100% to the customers that increase
customers loyalty towards the company and enhance the sells and profitability of the
organisation. Sainsbury also provide good working environment to their workers and includes
employees in decision-making process the helps to enhance employee satisfaction as well as
motivates them to work towards the organisation goals that all the initiative of the company
shows that the Sainsbury is able achieved the vision(Tidy, Wang and Hall, 2016).
Analysis of achievement and implementation of leadership style:-
Sainsbury's leader follows participative leadership style in the organisation. It is one of
the best leadership style of the leaders that help to manage good relationship within the
organisation as well as outside the organisation. The Sainsbury involves their employees in
decision-making process of the organisation and any other important decision. It also provides
some power to the employees to take decision their own level that motivates employees as well
as enhance the satisfaction level of the employees. This leadership creates the sense of
belongingness to the employees which enhance the employee retention in the organisation and
reduces the employee grievances that shows how company achieve their goals by implementing
the participative leadership style(Donate and de Pablo, 2015).
Analysis of achievement and implementation of management practices:-
There are four kinds of management practices that is implemented by Sainsbury. First
one is engage workers which is implemented in the organisation through involving employees in
decision making process and provide power to take decisions for their own work. Second one is
reward efforts which is implemented in the organisation through giving monetary and non-
monetary incentives to the employees that enhance the satisfaction level as well as employee
retention. Third one is stay committed which is implemented in the organisation through
organizing various informal programmes and group activities at workplace that helps to create

friendly relations between the employee and employee, management and employees(Bhutta and
et.al.,2017). The last one is Created cultural cohesiveness which is implemented in the
organisation through giving importance to cultures of the employees and respect them that all the
management practices helps to achieve enhance the productivity of the organisation as well as
efficiency of the employees. This help to the company by providing competitive advantage over
its competitors and enhance the capability to survive in the challenging environment.
Analysis of achievement and implementation of strategy:-
Sainsbury is undertaken differentiate and cost-leadership strategies and implement it in
the organisation. The company is implemented these strategies through producing high quality
products and services and enhance the production efficiency for reducing the cost of the
products. With the implementation of differentiate strategy, the organisation makes high
qualitative products according to customers demand that provides competitive advantage to the
company and differentiate their products with the competitors. With the implementation of the
cost leadership strategy, company provides products and services to the customers at lower
prices to their competitors that enhance their sells as well as profitability of the organisation and
contributes in achieving the targets of the organisation effectively(Anderson and Sun, 2017).
4. Recommendation for the Sainsbury
As the company operates their operations in global market. So, it is essential to adopt
various leadership style rather than following single style for all the situations because all the
situation can not be deal by one leadership style. Sainsbury's leader should adopt various
leadership styles such as transformational leadership style, charismatic leadership and many
more according to the situations in the organisation.
As the company has followed hierarchical organisational structure that creates so much
conflict situations in the organisation because of lack of communication between the
management and employees. So, the Sainsbury should adopt flatten organisational structure in
the organisation that help to enhance the communication between management and employees as
well as reduces the situations of the conflict.
Sainsbury should expand their operations globally because they have good financial
position as well as contributes in various CSR activities that helps to enhance their operation
globally that also helps in increasing the profitability of the organisation.

Sainsbury should enhance their contribution in non-profit organisation that helps to
enhance their brand value as well as goodwill of the company and also help to connect new
customers, suppliers as well as investors. Further, it also helps to create positive image of the
company to the customers.
Sainsbury should increase their management practices towards the employees that helps
to enhance employee satisfaction as well as reduces employees turnover, employee absenteeism
and employee grievances etc.
They should revise their marketing plan and budget that helps to identifying the
competitors market position and accordingly makes the plan that helps to get competitive
advantages.
Sainsbury should enhance training and development programs in the organisation that
helps to enhance skills and abilities of the employees that increase the efficiency of the workers
as well as productivity of the organisation. It indirectly enhances the sells and profitability of the
organisation.
They should enhance their investment for the marketing of their products through
advertisement, personal selling and social media etc. Sainsbury should provide discounted prices
to their customers that helps to attract existing as well as new customers and increase the profits.
Sainsbury should sell their products through online that helps to connect customers at global
level.
CONCLUSION
From the above study it has been summarised that context of the business plays an
important role in order to achieve organisations goals. It has been described the summary of the
Sainsbury and also explained why chosen this organisation. It has been explained the vision,
leadership style, management practices and strategies of the organisation. It is also explained the
achievements and implementation of the vision, leadership style, management practices and
strategies in the organisation. Furthermore, it has been suggested some recommendation for the
company regarding their vision, leadership style, management practices and strategies.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Aluko, O. and Knight, H., 2017. From corner store to superstore: a historical analysis of
Sainsbury’s co-evolution. Journal of Management History. 23(4). pp.423-435.
Anderson, M.H. and Sun, P.Y., 2017. Reviewing leadership styles: Overlaps and the need for a
new ‘full‐range’theory. International Journal of Management Reviews.19(1). pp.76-96.
Bender and et.al., 2018. Management practices, workforce selection, and productivity. Journal of
Labor Economics. 36(S1). pp.S371-S409.
Bhattarai, C.R., Kwong, C.C. and Tasavori, M., 2019. Market orientation, market disruptiveness
capability and social enterprise performance: An empirical study from the United
Kingdom. Journal of Business Research. 96. pp.47-60.
Bhutta and et.al., 2017. Survey of Lean management practices in Pakistani industrial sectors.
Donate, M.J. and de Pablo, J.D.S., 2015. The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in
knowledge management practices and innovation. Journal of Business Research.68(2).
pp.360-370.
Mathivathanan, D., Kannan, D. and Haq, A.N., 2018. Sustainable supply chain management
practices in Indian automotive industry: A multi-stakeholder view. Resources,
Conservation and Recycling. 128. pp.284-305.
Mizdrak and et.al., 2017. Using a UK Virtual Supermarket to Examine Purchasing Behavior
Across Different Income Groups in the United Kingdom: Development and Feasibility
Study. Journal of medical Internet research.19(10). p.e343.
Rohwer, L. and Topić, M., 2019. The communication of Corporate–NGO Partnerships: analysis
of Sainsbury’s collaboration with Comic Relief. Journal of Brand
Management.26(1).pp.35-48.
Sorrentino and et.al., 2018. Energy performance and profitability of biomass boilers in
commercial sector: the case study of Sainsbury’s stores in the UK. Energy Procedia.148.
pp.639-646.

Tidy, M., Wang, X. and Hall, M., 2016. The role of Supplier Relationship Management in
reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions from food supply chains: supplier engagement in the
UK supermarket sector. Journal of Cleaner Production.112. pp.3294-3305.
vom Brocke, J., Zelt, S. and Schmiedel, T., 2016. On the role of context in business process
management. International Journal of Information Management.36(3). pp.486-495.
Online
8 Best Practices in Business Management.2019[Online]. Available
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