Understanding and Leading Change in Primark: An Analysis of Leadership Models and Change Management Theories

This report analyzes the impact of changes on Primark's organizational strategies, leadership, individuals, and team behavior. It also discusses various leadership models and change management theories, including situational leadership and Lewin's change management model.

Understanding and Leading
Change

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Part 1................................................................................................................................................3
1. Overview of primark:...............................................................................................................3
2. PEST/SWOT analysis of primark:...........................................................................................3
3. Evolution and impact of changes on organization strategies:..................................................4
4. How changes will affect the leadership, Individuals and team behaviour:..............................5
5. How to minimize the negative impact of changes: .................................................................6
6. Long term impact of changes on organization:........................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
PART 2............................................................................................................................................7
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................7
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................7
Analysing various leadership models for change management for Primark company................7
Analysing force field analysis for Primark organisation to highlight support and opposition....9
Analysing force field to use recommendations for meeting the objectives of Primark...............9
Analysing different change barriers and their impact on decision-making and leadership of
Primark.......................................................................................................................................10
Analysing the change implemented and the success rate for Primark organization..................10
Analysing the advantage and disadvantage of various leadership approaches..........................11
Critical evaluation of various leadership approaches and change management models to
implement changes.....................................................................................................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
Understanding and leading changes are very essential for the organization of
management. It refers to prepare the worker to face the problem which after the implementation
the change. Primark is an international retailing company which deal with fashion and beauty.
Primark offers the range of product, menswear, women wear, footwear, beauty products, etc.
later this report will discuss the primark changes leads into offline to online technology, its
marketing strategies, and changes impact on the leadership and team.
Part 1
1. Overview of primark:
Primark is a multinational company in retail industry. It was founded in 1969 in Dublin.
It is renowned fashion retailer in clothing, footwear, and accessories. Primark is a successful
company reached at top because of low cost repartition and it maintains a fashion trends. Its
mission statement is to provide customers with high quality, fashion at value for money prices.
Primark's vision is emerged as a popular brand and expand the new stores overall worlds while
ensuring sustainability environment. Its main 2010 motto is look good, pay less. Its Headquarter
of primark at Mayfair, London, UK. Retail stores would open in Spain, Poland, France and
America. Primark is competing with well-known brands. The core value of company include the
ethics, diversify, and protecting environment. Primark company specially focus on the
environment care, it plans to focus on sustain fabric and recycling method which help to
maintain better environment. It also works for creating the friendly place for staff and customers.
Employees work in primark around the 80,000 people and it believes in growing talent no matter
about the experience. Now a day, it plans to focus on the offline retailing to online retailing
strategy and forecast that leading changes in the technologies. In advance technology will lead to
provide the both types of shopping experience to the customer (Xydia,2019).
2. PEST/SWOT analysis of primark:
PEST analysis:
PEST analysis stands for political, economic, social, and technological. The PEST model
describe the trend and requirement of customers, which understand what is going on outside of
the business environment, it will help to implement changes more quickly and effectively.

Political factor: Political factor relate to government control and influence over industry and it
factors include the government policy, taxation, etc. UK maintains great power, with
considerable influence the political affairs, scientific and cultural.
Economic factor: In UK, the global lock-down destroyed many business and retail industry
across the countries, so primark should access retail physical to online. It must be consisted
reasonable price, easy shopping, clear and easy shopping.
Social factor: In developing world, social factor assist in trend and growing continuously as
education, heath so, social factor that influence the technology adoption.
Technological factor: Now a day, every person have an electronic gadgets and many more
people use the social network so primark should be started e-commerce trend and it helps to
achieve the target of the company (Eisenberg,2019).
SWOT analysis:
Swot analysis of primark retail industry — to see how online shopping is placed for the future
and how it will help to grow for the primark company.
Strength: Primark is a premium retail chain and it has an extensive range of products including
menswear, women wear, and footwear, etc. Buyers will easily purchase products from the
comfort of their home, at whatever times and the online shopping with lower cost will directly
seller interact the customers.
Weaknesses: Primark may lead to inconsistencies in quality. In competition the premium
fashion segment means the limited market share growth. It may lead to time in market share
trends.
Opportunities: Online shopping industry is growing market and it is the biggest opportunities
for the primark. There are number of uses who use social media platforms, so primark can use
the social following to promote the online technologies.
Threats: e-commerce industry is strong but facing some problems and treats like competition,
fraud, data concerns and monopolies.
3. Evolution and impact of changes on organization strategies:
In digital technologies, consumer can buy online from the stores directly. The main aim
of the e-commerce retail is to manage the online payments, purchasing, product and customers
detail. It able to convenience the every customer over the world and helps to Primark company in

continuous growing. The e-commerce industry is highly competitive, without personal touch and
face to face interaction with various marketing strategies and engaging with customers online.
Impact of changes on organization:
More opportunities for selling: primark can offer a more information about a product like
customers reviews, demos videos, for helping to increase more buyers.
Customer tracking and analytics: With the help of SEO business can easily track the journey
of customers, user experience, and customer pricing strategy.
Product and price comparison: Evaluate and analysis the customer strategy and business can
compete on the price and reduce the profit margin, reducing the quality of products.
Lack of personal touch: In online shopping, lack of personal touch can occur the impact on the
selling of products and decrease the number of buyers (Rohim, M).
4. How changes will affect the leadership, Individuals and team behaviour:
Technology changes is the wide changes in the organization and it affects the business
leader, individual and team behaviour.
Leadership:
Positive affect: e-commerce leader can understand who their customers are, what they expect,
what they value, what define the positive and good online shopping experience for them. Leader
can inspire their team to follow changes and adapting to it (Borgholthaus,2021).
Negative affect: At online platform, it's difficult to manage the team and motivating them. It's
hard to manage the group of people to act toward achieving a goal and business target. Leader
can't easily influence the group of individual and team.
Individuals:
Positive affects: Online shopping will be easy and flexible for the individual person and changes
in environment can attract the customers and buyers easily.
Negative affects: Without any guidance it's hard to manage and understand the changes in the
organization. Individual must have the knowledge about the changes.
Team behaviour:
Positive affect: sometimes changes made motivate the team behaviour and enhance the team
effectiveness. Build a greater trust and better result. Changes lead the behaviour of team in an
excitement and joyful (Perišić,2018).

Negative affect: Changes in the organization may lead in the conflicts, confusion, and affect the
team attitudes toward the organization goals. All team members may be not agreed with the
changes and discard the organization changes and adopt it.
5. How to minimize the negative impact of changes:
Primark cooperation is a retail company and retail company is mainly occur the changes
in the company (Awoke,2020). The digital technological changes may be negative impact on the
organization and how to minimize it:
Ensure effective communication: Ensuring the transparency and oneness about the changes in
the organization and it can build the relationship between the company and stakeholders.
Involving stakeholders and manager in making the decision and challenging them to adapt the
changes. Ensures that people must be guides on the path to change.
Train all new hires: The impact of change in the company is affect the effective way of
members. So it's important to train the new and existing employees and create a team of
experienced employees.
Promote people: Promoting people within the organization can also minimize the impact of
changes. It helps to motivate and inspire them to adapt the changes in the company.
Preserves what matters: All changes are not positive. So think about the team building
activities, training programs, rewards, which help to minimize the impact of changes.
Set realistic time: Give team enough time to understand the process and help to guide them with
patiently and polity.
6. Long term impact of changes on organization:
Change in an organization leads a positive aspect that remaining relevant in the business
area, and lead to retain a competitive edge. Sometimes changes in the organization has positive
outcomes. If primark will switch into online retailing, it will help to keep relevant and building
customer base in competition time. Changes will encourage the innovation, develop staffs,
selling, lead to better business opportunities. E-commerce likely be long termed nature, now a
day the possibilities of new waves of epidemic, convenience of the new purchasing habits,
incentives for firms in new sales channel. Consumer shift to digital channels will remain after the
pandemic report. Customer ability o use online marketing tools to target new customers and
website analysis tools to gain customers (Kim,2015).

Potential of rapid growth: Digital marketing and selling will be sustained and it will impact he
rapid growth in the company sells.
Easy access to market: with the help of online retailing company can easy access to the world
market and sell products within a minute.
Reduced overheads: Online retailing can reduce the expensive retail and customer facing staff,
allowing investing in the better marketing on company e-commerce sites.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Primark is a success company in management and retailing industry.
Primark easily diversify, giving a competence in the market. As recommendations organisation
changes are unpredictable process that requires for the effective management and growth of the
company. Primark consider the offline retailing to online retailing business and it helps to target
the customer and trend.
PART 2
INTRODUCTION
Any organisation needs to bring timely changes in its organisational structure in order to
become more competitive and meet the growing demands of the customers. This reports will
illustrate the concept of changes made with use of change management theories such as
situational leadership and Lewin's change management model. Further the report will highlight
force field analysis to analyse the changes along with discussing the advantages and
disadvantages of various leadership approaches. The organization selected for this report is
Primark a fashion retailer organization which is planning to expand its services through online
business (Khan and Richards, 2021).
MAIN BODY
Analysing various leadership models for change management for Primark company
In order to become more competitive and meet with the growing demands of the
customers the Prim ark organization is planning to sell its products online in order to get on the
track and overcome the losses faced due to the lock-down (Molinillo and et.al., 2020). For this
change management is very important to bring effective changes within the organization with
various theories and models.

Situational leadership model : this model includes various approaches and leadership styles in
order to make the effective changes within the Prim ark organization (Al and Nurmayanti, 2018).
There are four styles according this model that are adopted by the leaders in the organization.
Delegating : according to this style the leaders and managers make decisions according to their
own reports. With this leadership style the employees within the Prim ark organisation can adapt
to the new changes made in the organisation according to their experience which will help them
in overcoming their weakness on how to operate the new software for online selling of products
and the leaders will be able to deploy tasks to the employees accordingly.
Participating and supporting : this leadership style will allow the leaders of the Prim ark
organisation to support and boost the confidence of the employees who already have experience
in online marketing but with total support from the managers will help them to run the new
strategies of online business more efficiently (Trevisol and et.al., 2019).
Selling and coaching : this style will encourage the managers of the Prim ark organization to
assign tasks to the employees for systematic running of the organization by adding value to the
performance of the employees giving them right training to adapt the new technology changes
and how to operate the new automated machineries for data analysation.
Telling and directing : with this style the managers of the Primark organisation will use right
strategies to assign the tasks by providing them right knowledge and instructions on the new
business strategies adopted by the organization which will help in completing the assigned tasks
on time.
Lewin's change management model : this model explains the importance of three steps that
plays a crucial role in bringing new changes and manage those changes effectively so that good
growth results are obtained for Prim ark organization.
Unfreezing : it is the initial step before implementing any change. The Prim ark organization is
planning to expand its business by adopting e-commerce (Fronzo, 2018). As this will include
complete change of business strategies and many employees will resists change so the managers
plays important role in explaining the strategies that will help the Prim ark to overcome the loss
caused during lock-down and will also help in engaging more customers through online selling
of products. With these changes the organisation will further be able to compete with its stiff
competitors in terms adopting new marketing trends.

Changing : this step includes the face the changes that are implemented. The Primark
organisation needs to provide proper training and support the employees in order to adapt to the
new changes which will help in enhancing their performance by improving their working skills
(Coghlan, 2021). These new changes are accompanied by new risk and challenges which the
organisation could face in terms capital input and money invested.
Refreezing : this step ensures that the new changes adapted by the organisation are regulated
smoothly and the employees do not work according to old strategies of business. The Primark
new e-commerce strategy should be accepted by all its employees and other departments to
ensure that the change made will be implemented successfully for long term goal achievements.
Analysing force field analysis for Primark organisation to highlight support and opposition
Force field analysis help in analysing the effective factors that help in efficient decision-
making for the business organization by analysing the main factor to bring the changes. The Prim
ark fashion retail is planning to bring change in its business strategies by adopting e-commerce
and there are various factors which supports and opposes its business strategy (Hartmann and
Lussier, 2020). The Prim ark plans to adopt the new online selling of products which help the
organisation to capture more customers globally by interacting online and will help in increasing
then sales of the products. This will support its stakeholders by increasing market profits and the
organization will be able to make high revenue rates with these changes. Also, it will help to
meet the growing demands of the customers by helping the business to grow further. But there
are some factors which can oppose the changes such high rates of new technology can increase
the products costs and lead to decrease the customers for Primark fashion retail company. Also,s
the new technology can affect the working efficiency of the employees due to lack of knowledge
on operating new software's. This can make it difficult to compete with the stiff competitors who
are already running their business online and can affect then finance structure of the
organisation.
Analysing force field to use recommendations for meeting the objectives of Primark
Since the Primark fashion retail is focused to expand its business to overcome the losses
faced during lock down by taking an initiative to implement e-commerce for selling the products.
The company can give right information and proper guidance to the employees to teach them the
technological skills to enhance the employees' performance so that the production rate is not
affected (Algharabat, 2018). Proper mentoring and training sessions by an IT professional will

boost the confidence of the workforce and will help them overcome various technical issues. In
order to minimize the cost of new technology inputs the Prim ark company can first adopt
substitute technology at low cost so that there is no risk faced due to huge investments on
software devices and the company can later make investments in adopting the innovated
technology by the revenue generated from selling the good online through substitute technology.
This will also help the company to keep the prices of the products low.
Analysing different change barriers and their impact on decision-making and leadership of
Primark
There are different barriers faced by the Primark fashion retail before implementing the
changes in business strategies. Since the company is focusing on integrating the online sale of
the products which affects the decision-making of the leaders of the organization. The leaders
need to be focused on providing the right training to the employees on operating the new
analytical techniques such as data management. With the right guidance and training the
employees will be able to work more efficiently. The leaders of the organization needs to make a
proper business development strategy before implementing the new ideas by considering the
benefits of the employees and shareholders by giving them complete information on future plans
and objectives of the Prim ark organisation. This decision-making will help in overall
professional development of the organisation by fulfilling the needs of the customers on time
(Zhao and et.al., 2018). The leaders make effective decisions by regulating timely flow of
information about any changes made within the Primark company which will help the employees
to complete their assigned tasks on time which will help the company to compete with its stiff
competitors.
Analysing the change implemented and the success rate for Primark organization
The change in business strategies was implemented by Primark company by providing
regular training and mentoring to the employees and on how to manage big data and records of
the company. The right training helped the employees to work more effectively towards their
tasks by completing it on time to achieve the set goals for the company. Primark company did
deep testing and analysation of the new technology devices before adopting them in the business
environment which helped them in selecting the suitable technology devices which were more
compatible for their business environment by this they managed to overcome this risk of money

investments and time management. The right technology devices decreased the work load of the
employees and made the interaction with the customers more collaborative through e-commerce.
Also, the company sis deep analysis of the current market trends and strategies followed in
innovation business world which helped the company to select the right business strategy to beat
the competitors and helped in capturing more customers. With the help various change
management models such as situational leadership style the Primark company is successful in
implementing the new changes.
Analysing the advantage and disadvantage of various leadership approaches
There are various leadership styles which helps the business organisation to adapt to the
new changes in the business environment. These are as follows:
Autocratic style : with this style all the major changes and policies are made by the leaders of
the Prim ark organization (Gumus and et.al., 2018). This helps in assigning right tasks to the
employees by following the new changes of adapting to online selling of products. With this
Prim ark organization have hold on its subordinates to fulfil the set goals of the organization.
This style has a disadvantage as the main power to make decisions is in the hands of the
company's leaders which does not provide equal opportunity of sharing ideas and knowledge of
other employees which demotivate the employees as they have no role in decision-making on
whether to run business online or offline.
Democratic style : with this leadership style equal chance id given to employees in decision-
making along with considering their ideas and benefits. The Prim ark organization integrates the
decisions of its employees and other subordinates while implementing the change of running the
business online which helps in looking the benefits of new business strategies for its employees
(McCallaghan, Jackson and Heyns, 2019). It has advantage of making quality decisions by
considering the ideas of employees understanding their issues. The disadvantage of this style is
that leads indiscipline within the organization as many people are involved in decision-making
and leads to delay of the new plans that are meant to be implemented.
Laissez- Faire Free Rein leadership style : in this leadership style the leaders make decisions
by involving the ideas and motives of the employees and subordinates to bring the changes. With
this leadership approach the leaders of Primark company can implement the new changes of
online business by integrating the visions and ideas of employees which will help in effective
decision-making and the boosts the confidence of the employees (Abun and et.al., 2021). The

disadvantage of this approach is the leaders are entirely dependent on the employees and the less
involvement of the leaders in the administration leads mismanagement which leads to poor
planning of online business strategies and the Primark can face risk in successfully implementing
the new changes to expand its business.
Critical evaluation of various leadership approaches and change management models to
implement changes
With the help of situational leadership the Prim ark company is able to help and support the
employees to adapt to the new business strategies of online business and delivering the
information to all the employees through collaborative communication with all the departments
(Mahmood, 2021).
The democratic leadership approach has helped the company in effective decision-making by
considering the ideas of all the employees which helps in overall professional development of
Prim ark organization. It gives the opportunities to all the subordinates to share the issues faced
by them in adapting to the new business environment.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that right leadership approach helps in proper
development and growth of the business organization. With the help of various change
management models the organization are able to implement the new changes more effectively
within the working environment. Total inclusion of all the employees and support from leaders
helps in professional development of the organization. The right leadership styles helps the
development of the business organisation by setting right strategies and delivering the
information to all the employees regarding the implementation of changes that will be made
within the organisation.

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