Influence of Organisational Power, Politics and Culture on Marks and Spencer’s Operations

Unit 12 Organisational
Behaviour

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................4
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................4
Influence of Organisational Power, Politics and Culture on Marks and Spencer’s Operations. .4
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................9
Content and Process Theories of Motivation...............................................................................9
LO 3...............................................................................................................................................11
Effective and Ineffective Organisational Teams of Marks and Spencer...................................11
LO 4...............................................................................................................................................13
Philosophies and Concepts of Organisational Behaviour..........................................................13
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................16

INTRODUCTION
Organisational behaviour is the strategic study of employee behaviour within a business
organisation. Organisational behaviour also assesses the interlink between the business
organisation and its employee and human behaviour in order to assess its influence and impact.
The primary goal of organisational behaviour is to create a better conceptualisation of
organisational life and to revitalise the organisational theory in a business organisation (Wood,
and et.al., 2016). This report analyses organisational behaviour in Marks and Spencer. Marks and
Spencer Group Plc, is a global retail business organisation that was founded in 1884, an
astonishing 136 years ago and operates from its headquarters in London, England, UK. Marks
and Spencer specialises in selling clothing, food items and home products to the customers
within retail sectors of UK. Having successfully operated within the retail industry of UK for
such a long and sustained period of time has allowed for Marks and Spencer to grow and expand
tier business operations to international markets, in an attempt to diversify their operations and
effectively increase their market share, customer base, productivity and profitability within the
global retail industry. As of now, Marks and Spencer operates around 1500 distinct
establishments across the globe, with 960 stores operating in UK’s retail markets itself. Such
expanded operations have allowed for Marks and Spencer to become the first retail business
organisation in the UK to generate over 1 billion pounds sterling in pre tax profits. For all of its
operations to be conducted successfully and efficiently within the retail markets, Marks and
Spencer employees around 80,000 distinct individuals at various operational positions within its
dedicated hierarchical organisational structure.

MAIN BODY
LO 1
Influence of Organisational Power, Politics and Culture on Marks and Spencer’s Operations
Organisational culture, power and politics of Marks and Spencer have an immense
impact on the operations of the retail business organisation and also come to significantly impact
the individual and team behaviours of employees working within Marks and Spencer.
 Organisational Culture:
Organisational culture comes to represent the shared beliefs, values and assumptions which
collectively govern the behaviour of employees within Marks and Spencer. Organisational
culture has a significant impact on the performance, efficiency, productivity and job satisfaction
metrics of the Marks and Spencer’s employees and is also consistently changing within the
business organisation. The influence of organisational culture on Marks and Spencer can be
better analysed by making use of Charles Handy’s Organisational Culture Typology, which is a
strategic business model that is used to analyse how an organisational culture impacts and
influences the employee behaviour within a business organisation such as Marks and Spencer
(Chumg and et.al., 2016). According to Handy’s model of organisational culture, there exist four
main types of culture within a business organisation that have different impact on the employee
and team behaviour of the organisation in addition to impacting the operational productivity and
profitability of the business organisation. These four types of organisational cultures for Marks
and Spencer as per Handy’s model are as follows:
Role Culture: Business organisations that possess role culture place significant emphasis on
organisational policies and rules in order to have a healthy and productive organisational culture
that is able to productively influence the employee and team behaviour within the organisation.
In role culture, workplaces are highly controlled, with all the employees of the business
operating as per their role within its strategic long type organisational structure. The roles and
responsibilities of all employees as per their organisational role are clear to them. This type of
culture requires the organisational structure of the business to be long as opposed to flat type.
This type of organisational culture results in all decision making operations of the business