Business Studies Report on M&S: Roles, Factors, and Financials

This report provides an in-depth analysis of business studies principles, using Marks & Spencer (M&S) as a case study. It begins with an introduction to business studies, encompassing marketing, finance, and organizational aspects. The report explores collaborative working practices, highlighting their benefits such as increased creativity, learning, and productivity within an organization. It then delves into the environmental factors affecting businesses, categorizing them into external (political, economic, sociocultural) and internal factors (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), and providing examples specific to M&S. The report concludes by summarizing the importance of collaborative working and the impact of environmental factors on business operations, emphasizing the role of financial management and reporting in business success. The report references relevant academic sources to support its analysis.

Introduction to Business
Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS
 INTRODUCTION
 Understanding collaborative working practices
 Environmental factors affecting businesses
 CONCLUSION
 REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION
 Business studies is an academic subject which combines the
elements of marketing, finance, accounting, organizational
studies and economics.
 In this report, M&S is taken, which is a multinational retailer in
UK, selling wide variety of products.
 This report covers roles of marketing, HR and finance in an
organization, environmental factors and role of financial
management and reporting in an organization.

Understanding collaborative working
practices
Working in groups or teams enables employees to be quicker and efficient as compared to
the people who work on the projects on their own. Collaboration makes employees more
responsible and motivates them to perform better and effective. Some advantages are stated
below.
 Increases creativity: Innovation is the greatest advantage of collaborative working by
bringing together people and engaging in tasks that requires brain storming. In M&S,
employees always works in a team with contrasting skills which blend together to solve
problems in an innovative way.

Cont..
 Increases learning: When a team works in collaboration, they are exposed to the skills
that are outside the training which encourages in ways of working and creates interest
among its employees to learn new things. M&S continuously pursues its employees to
new learning possibilities in a new field which will enhance the skill sets and improve its
worth to the organization.
 Higher employee productivity: Implementing teamwork builds bonds among members
which increases the employee engagement and productivity. M&S is taking the
advantage of the same by engaging and motivating its employees to work in team and
increase the productivity of the organization.

Environmental factors affecting businesses
Environmental factors are of two types internal and external
factors which impacts the businesses. A detailed analysis of the
same is carried out.
External Factors: These are the factors that have direct impact
and on which business have no control.
 Political: This factors determines the extent to which
government may influence the economy. For M&S, free trade
policies have been a huge political benefit but with the Brexit,
many of its policies will be no longer apply. It is expected that
Brexit will lead to increase in production cost, shutting down
of its stores overseas and losing customers.

Cont..
 Economic: It includes factors such as inflation rate, interest rate, disposable income
etc. that affects the economic performance. Currently in UK, market is shifting towards
small retail stores having lower mark up price and majority of population is preferring
these local stores rather than M&S premium products which is a big threat to the brand.
 Sociocultural: It refers to the social environment such as demographics, cultural trends
etc. Marks and Spencer has been for a very long time which is acting against it as it is
not called as the youth brand. So it is projected that M&S will lose majority of its
customers from the latest generation.

Cont..
Internal Factors: These are the factors within the organization that affects the business.
 Strength: It refers to what the organization is good at and what distinguish it from its
competitors. M&S has a positioned its brand of it customers, it perceives as value for
money due to its high quality and wide range of products, having more than 1000 stores
across 40 countries and over 80,000 workforce globally.
 Weakness: It refers to the factors that is stopping an organization to perform at its
optimum level. M&S is having a limited market share due to heavy competition from
other retailers. Being a popular brand, it needs to protect its brand from fake imitation.

Cont..
 Opportunities: It refers to favourable factors that give
organization competitive advantage. M&S can expand its
business to the new market segment and work on its
online presence to attract more customers.
 Threats: It refers to unfavourable conditions that can
have a negative impact on business. Other retail stores
are the biggest threat to M&S because of the discounted
prices.

CONCLUSION
 From the analysis it can be concluded that there are number of roles of different
functional units within an organization.
 In order to achieve business goals, importance of collaborative working practices have
in workplace which can be beneficial to the organization and various angle from which
environmental factors can impact the businesses.
 Also there exists a significant role of financial management and reporting plays in the
success of business operation.

REFERENCES
 Sanaghan, P. and Lohndorf, J., 2015. Collaborative leadership: The new leadership
stance.
 Shabanova, L. B., and et.al, 2015. PEST-Analysis and SWOT-Analysis as the most
important tools to strengthen the competitive advantages of commercial
enterprises. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences. 6(3). p.705.
 Chernysheva, Y. G., and et.al, 2017. Business analysis as an important component of
ensuring enterprise’s economic security.