Report: Analyzing and Implementing Change at Marks and Spencer

This report provides an analysis of change management strategies, specifically within the context of Marks and Spencer (M&S). The report begins with an executive summary and introduction outlining the significance of managing change in addressing organizational challenges, particularly concerning training and development issues faced by M&S. It explores the concept of managing change, emphasizing its importance in adapting to internal and external factors such as organizational structure, culture, economic conditions, technology, and internationalization. The report details the internal and external parameters affecting M&S and discusses a step-by-step approach to implementing change, including building awareness, analyzing areas for improvement, identifying current problems, developing a change plan, and applying and reviewing the changes. The report also examines the impact of change on both the organization and its employees, highlighting the potential benefits of effective change management, particularly in enhancing employee performance through training and development programs. The conclusion reinforces the importance of managing change for M&S's continued success.

MANAGING CHANGE

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Managing change........................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................7

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Managing change is one of the major concept utilised by most of the company. This is
because organisation have to face many issues which can be internal as well as external. And for
this purpose, they have to look for various solutions to overcome a particular problem. Changes
can not implemented immediately. In order to reduce the prevailing troubles in the company, it is
essential to focus towards managing change techniques. Marks and spacers in context of this
report is going through some serious issues like need of training and development. They have to
take immediate actions in order to overcome this problem. In this respect, they have to introduce
some changes in the organisation and thus there must be a concept of “managing change”.
Change is necessary but company have to maker sure that the workers do not get affected due to
any kind of changes. For the change initiatives in context of training and development, it is
essential for the mentioned company to be familiar with the internal and external factors that can
directly affect the change implementation. Internal factors may includes organisational culture
and structure. Economic conditions, environment, technology, internalisation comes under
external factors. Mentioned company needs to evaluate these elements in order to perfectly
implement the change management strategies. Company needs to successfully choose an
approach that can deal with resistance to change. Training and development programs must be
given to the employees of Mark and Spencers in order to maintain the overall efficiency of the
INTRODUCTION
Managing change can be defined as the way by which company adopt and implement
new changes in the organisation in order to maintain the efficiency of the work. This concept is
very important because company faces many issues in their working place and thus it is essential
for them to find appropriate solution to those troubles by introducing change in the organisation
(Benn, Dunphy and Griffiths, 2014). For this purpose, it is necessary to have a good command
over managing change concept. As per the given file, Marks and Spencer is the British based
company and mainly known as a multinational retailers. They are basically into the selling of
luxury food products, clothing and home products. This company is facing an issue related with
training and development and thus it is necessary for the company to bring change management
in the organisation.
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Managing change
Aleration is necessary in the organisation in order to maintain the potency of work with
time. It is a well known fact that there are several changes that occur in the surrounding and thus
a company needs to adopt these changes to beat the level of competition in the market. This
change management in terms of organisation is known as managing change (Benn, Dunphy and
Griffiths, 2014). This is adopted by maximum number of companies so that they can implement
essential changes in the organisation. This will help the company to successfully apply necessary
changes without hampering the overall productivity. There can be many issues that can arise in
the company, such as management issues, financial issues, human resource requirements and
many more. To maintain the best performance of the company in the market, it is important for
them to adopt new changes and focus towards change management techniques.
Choose organisation in context of managing change is Marks and Spencer. This is one of
the leading brand of U.K in terms of multinational retailers. They are specialised in quality
products such as clothing, luxury foods and home products. As far as issues related to this
organisation is concern about, training and development is the most important area which must
be taken into consideration by the mentioned company. This issues must be resolved in order to
maintain the proficiency of the company in the market.
There are basically two types of changes that that can be avail by an organisation.
Internal as well as external changes are the two major ways by which a company can feel the
pressure to take substantial changes. Internal changes are those changes which occurs within the
internal area of an organisation. Example of internal changes can be seen as the modification in
the working process, adaptation of new techniques and many more (Brown and Osborne, 2012).
On the other side, external changes can arise as a result of outside modification and thus can
directly affect the company. This may includes changes due to external policies, prevailing new
technologies and so on.
This company is facing training and development issue. And for this purpose, it is
essential to know the major internal as well as external framework of the company. In this
regard, it is important to know the organisational structure and culture of Marks and Spencer's in
context of internal framework. Organisational structure is one of the key factors which is
responsible for the growth of the company. On the basis of various functional unit, company
finally established its organisational structure in such a manner that this will help them to
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achieve their target in the market. There are many features of a potential organisational structure
such as it must indicates the idea of formal reporting hierarchy that starts from lowest to top most
level of the company. Marks and Spencer have a flat organisational structure. There are less
number of levels between administration department and front line workers.
In context culture, it has been evaluated that every company follows some major culture
which is made of up of their own value and beliefs. Marks and Spencers have always been a
good example of the working culture which is so rich in learning prospective and growth
(Cameron and Green, 2015). But in past decades, it has been noticed that this company is facing
some issues due to rigid organisational structure. They are very popular in the market and thus
they forget to introduce new changes in the organisation. This somehow damages their growth
and also decease the market shares and profit. But with passage of time, company realise the
importance of managing change in the organisation. As this company have to adopt some
techniques in order to implement training and development programs and this above mentioned
internal factor must be taken into consideration. Organisational culture and structure must be
liberal in order to bring the change in the company.
External parameters that can affect the growth of the company can be economic
conditions, environment, internationalisation, technology and many more. It is very important for
the company to beware about the mentioned external factors that can directly affect the change
implementation in the organisation. Economic conditions must be favourable to support the
training and development programme (Chung, Su and Su, 2012). Internationalisation can be
defined as the way by which involvement of companies in the international market increases. For
this purpose, company needs to make sure that they have proper techniques under
internationalisation which can serve the purpose of training and development programs. There
can be many threats that company needs to focus upon such as threat of substitution, threat of
new entry, threat from competitors and many more. This must be taken into account by the
company in order to successfully run the company with prescribed changes. Technologies must
be latest so that all the changes that are adopted by the organisation can be utilised to its best.
With the help of several latest technologies company can go for various techniques and methods
of training and development issues. They also have to focus towards the available opportunities
such as expansion in the international market, attain cost advantage by meeting overseas
suppliers, adaptation of fastest technologies and many more.
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In order to resolve the current training and development issue of the company, it is
necessary to follow certain steps (Cummings and Worley, 2014). The very first phase considered
under the process of organisational change would be building awareness. This might be
considered as the step where all the concerning people of the organisation get to know about the
fact that company needs a change in order to overcome the current issue. One of the major
advantage of building awareness is that workers can give their opinion and thus can accept the
change with full heart and dedication.
The second step can be analysing the area where improvement or alteration is necessary.
This is the actual phase where company evaluate the need of new idea or plan. For this purpose,
company determines their major operations and its efficiency. On the basis of their evaluation,
they finally finds the need of change in one or the other functional unit of the organisation. It is
then very important for the company to bring out major changes in order to maintain the
efficiency of work.
Under step third, company find out the current problems. There are various change
management tools that can be used by the mentioned company. These tools may include
workplace observations, internal interviews, survey questionnaire and many more. In order to
determine the root cause of current issues, tools such as fish bone diagrams, Pareto charts can be
used (Hayes, 2014). It is important to fully evaluate the present issue of the organisation in order
to develop its best solution.
Under next step, company have to develop the change plan. All the possible alternatives
then compared and the best one is selected by the company. In this respect it can be concluded
that organisation have to review and make a proper comparison between all possible courses of
action. In order to make best actions for the chosen issue, it is necessary to conduct stakeholder
analysis, brainstorming sessions and data analysis. One of the major advantage of this step is that
company can develop best possible action to overcome the current problem. This will result in
the improvement of overall work efficiency of the company.
Finally under this step company apply the change plan in the organisation. For this
purpose, management needs to communicate within the organisation in order to convey all the
details about the present change plan. Each and every working people must be aware about the
changes that are being implemented in the organisation. In this way, workers will be familiar
with the ways by which new changes have been introduced in the organisation.
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Next step is related to the follow up process, taking measures and review the change.
Measures can be evaluated by comparing the desired performance with the current performance
of the company after implementing change.
At the last step, company finally celebrate its achievement in term of brining change in
the organisation (Ijaz and Vitalis, 2011). This is very important so as to maintain the standard of
work by the company.
In this way, it can be concluded that Marks and Spencers have successfully apply the managing
change process in order to overcome its current issue related to training and development
programs. This will result in the improvement of their performance in the market.
Changes will surely affect the organisation as well as employees. Company can be
affected by several ways such as it will affect the growth level of the company in the market,
market shares and profit margin. It will overall affect the brand image of the company. Success
rate will depends upon the ways by which change is implemented in the organisation. Employees
are the most important resource of a company, therefore any kind of change will highly affect the
workforce. They will be affected by many ways such as the entire working pattern will get
changes. As far as the given change is concern about in Marks and Spencers, there is a urgent
need of training and development programs. Thus, an effective change management will result in
improving the overall performance of the company (Kool and van Dierendonck, 2012). This is
because with the help of effective training program, employees can perform best in the
organisation. All their efforts will be put into the right directions. Another way by which workers
get affected by any kind of change in the organisation is that change will affect their working
environment. This may be because of the change in the organisational structure. Authorities of
workforce will also get changed. Their roles, responsibilities, task will be differ. In this way it
can be concluded that if organisation adopt some kind of change then this will surely affect the
organisation as well as the employees. Managing change must be a matter of concern for the
mentioned company. This is because, if organisation wants to avail the best result of change then
they have to be specific about change management techniques. They need to take certain steps in
order to implement the prescribed change in the organisation. This will surely help the company
to achieve maximum number of market shares and profit.
Resistance to change is the most common phenomena that can be seen in any
organisation. This can be understood as the ways by which company face some kind of trouble in
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implementing change in the company. This arises in the organisation because employees were
better aware about the previous working conditions and thus they have a fear in their mind that
whether they would be able to perform with the same efficiency in the changed plan as well.
Workers also have a fear to loose their jobs (Liu, Liu and Zeng, 2011). This is because if
employees do not adjust in the new working conditions, they might get terminated and thus most
of the time the factor of resistance to change can be seen. It is very important for the company to
take preventive actions in order to avoid the resistance to change in the organisation.
Management needs to communicate with each and every single employees and solve their
queries. Top management needs to make sure that workers will get proper training and
development programs.
In order to deal with resistance to change, mentioned company have to focus upon
various approaches (Smollan, 2011). There can be many ways to tackle resistance to change.
First one is to involve employees in the change process. This will make them more aware about
what is actually going on in the organisation. They will feel affiliated and thus the threat of
loosing job will not be there in the mind of employees.
According to Kotter and Schlesinger, there are basically six types of approaches that can
be considered in resistance to change. First is the education and communication. In this
approach, company actually communicate well in the organisation and give proper education to
them. This is so far the best way by which resistance to change can be minimized. Second is the
participation and involvement. Organisation needs to take participation of the employees in the
change process. This will make workers aware about all the possible aspects of bringing change
in the organisation (Whitney and Cooperrider, 2011). Third approach can be seen as a facilitation
and support. Employees most of the time make a mind set that they would not get any kind of
support from the organisation and thus this approach will help the workers in order to properly
understand the new change in the company. Negotiation and agreement is the fourth approach
which states that management offers some or the other incentive to the employees to accept the
change. Next is the manipulation and co- option. If above mentioned techniques are not
successfully followed then company adopt this method. In this way, they manipulate the
employees and in this way workers accept the change.
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CONCLUSION
On the basis of above mentioned essay, it can be concluded that change management is
one of the key areas of any organisation. It is a well known fact that company may faces some
orb the other issues in their working environment. For this purpose, they need to adopt some
changes in order to overcome the current issues of the company. Mark and Spencers is one of the
leading brand in international retailers. They are facing an issue in training and development
programs. They need to evaluate internal and external factors and on the basis of this they can
finally develop a change plan. Resistance to change can be managed by adopting some or the
other approaches. In this way company can successfully apply the change plan in the company
with full support of the employees. This will increase the market shares and profit of the
organisation. Company's overall brand image will surely affected by the change. If company
have taken a good measures to ensure the positive response of the change management, then this
will improve the overall performance of the company.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Benn, S., Dunphy, D. and Griffiths, A., 2014. Organizational change for corporate
sustainability. Routledge.
Brown, K. and Osborne, S.P., 2012. Managing change and innovation in public service
organizations. Routledge.
Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to
the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Chung, S.H., Su, Y.F. and Su, S.W., 2012. The impact of cognitive flexibility on resistance to
organizational change. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 40(5).
pp. 735-745.
Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage
learning.
Hayes, J., 2014. The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Ijaz, S. and Vitalis, A., 2011. Resistance to organizational change: Putting the jigsaw together.
International review of business research papers, 7(3). pp. 112-121.
Kool, M. and van Dierendonck, D., 2012. Servant leadership and commitment to change, the
mediating role of justice and optimism. Journal of Organizational Change
Management, 25(3). pp. 422-433.
Liu, J., Liu, X. and Zeng, X., 2011. Does transactional leadership count for team innovativeness?
The moderating role of emotional labor and the mediating role of team efficacy. Journal
of Organizational Change Management, 24(3). pp. 282-298.
Smollan, R., 2011. Engaging with resistance to change. University of Auckland Business Review,
13(1). p. 12.
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Whitney, D. and Cooperrider, D., 2011. Appreciative inquiry: A positive revolution in change.
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