Strategic Management of M&S

Strategic Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
QUESTION 1...................................................................................................................................1
a. Critically evaluating company's approach .........................................................................1
b. Presenting the main area of concern with regards to Marks and Spencer's external
environment............................................................................................................................3
QUESTION 2...................................................................................................................................5
a. Critically evaluating company's risk management in strategic planning process...............5
QUESTION 3...................................................................................................................................7
a. Presenting stakeholder theory and critically analysis of the organization's relationship to
each stakeholder groups in M&S...........................................................................................7
b. Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR)...........................................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Strategic Management is continuous process of planning, monitoring and analysis of all
that which are necessary for an organization in order to meet out the goals and objectives of a
company. The report main aim is to understand the importance of strategic management in an
organization and the chosen firm for this report is Marks and Spencer (M&S) which is one of the
multinational retail company in UK who provides the best products at reasonable rates such as
food, grocery, clothes and accessories etc.
The report will critically evaluated M&S approach to strategy development that consider
the planner, emergent and incremental approaches. Further by using PESTLE analysis, the report
also provides the main areas of concerns with regards to its external environment. Then it also
evaluate the company's risk management in strategic planning process. Apart from this, the
present study will further define stakeholder theory and provide justification for each of the
stakeholders of M&S. Further, it also describes the meaning of Corporate Social Responsibilities
(CSR) and critically analysis the CSR of M&S.
QUESTION 1
a. Critically evaluating company's approach
Due to change in external and internal environment, the company functions are also
fluctuated and that is why there is a need to re- evaluate the strategy by using some approaches
and Marks and Spencer also uses this strategy which are as mentioned below:
Planned Approach: As there are many factors that affect the business performance and
there is a need to re- evaluate the strategy development for Marks and Spencer. For this reason,
the quoted firm may used planned approach in which issue based strategic planning model may
be used. This Is an enhancement of a basic plan which is used by cited firm in order to go deeper
the planning process and to determine the fluctuation in market (Golembiewski, 2019). For this
reason, the company initially determine the internal capabilities by using SWOT analysis and
then the stakeholders of the company will identify the major issues i.e. external and internal
factors. After this, the reviewing the mission, vision and values of the company and make
necessary changes as per fluctuation.
In addition to this, after reviewing, the managers should develop action on yearly basis to
cope up those factors and keep monitoring the plan at every interval of time. In this way by using
planned approach, Marks and Spencer will easily make planning for its smooth function as well.
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Emergent Approach: it is another approach, which develops when an organization takes
a series of action with time and that also turns into consistent pattern of behavior and some
specific intentions as well (Webber, Pesty and Balacheff, 2018). In the same way, in the context
of Marks and Spencer, as it face the rapidly change environment, there is a need to develop some
emergent strategy rather than to rely on planned approaches (Amiri and Agrawal, 2019). Even
this strategy is also not drawn up separate activity and the min concern of this approach is to
make company able to compete at global level. This approach is also critical in advancement of
the technology that is being used in market. For instance, Marks and Spencer refine or develop
the products then it must provide new and innovative products to their customers that further
helps them to understand the competition. In this way, by adopting new technique into the
working area, the quoted firm may also re- evaluate the strategy to gain better competition in
market.
Incremental Approach: This approach is also the best suitable for Marks and Spencer
such that this approach is based upon the assumption and its prime mode is to used for strategy
setting. Even the theory is also used to integrate some psychological, political and informational
needs of an organization for setting up a strategy (Riks, 2019). In the same way, Marks and
Spencer is also wants to re- evaluate the strategy and this is possible only by using Incremental
Approach into the working area. Apart from this, the theory also helps to improve the quality of
information which is utilized in order to take corporate strategic decisions and it also helps to
deal with personal resistance and many external environmental factors or any important strategy
change encounter (Yun and et.al., 2019). incremental strategy identifies the changes in a firm
that needs to implement in order to improve the specific condition. Further it also provides clear
direction related to political and funding priorities. Using this approach, the company can also
determine the strategy that will help to take better decision. Beside this, the approach also
decreases the uncertainty in the surroundings by allowing the interactive learning between the
enterprise and different impinging environment as well. Thus, in this way the company may use
this strategy to re- evaluate the strategic development in management process.
From the above, it has been cleared that all the three approaches are used to determine the
changes to internal environment, but among all, Incremental approach is the best suitable for the
company because the approach analyses the needs, build awareness, generate partial solutions,
identify zones of opposition and indifference. As to re- evaluate, it has been analyzed that this
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