Morrisons Supermarket: Leadership, Management, and Business Strategies

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Context of Business
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Assignment 2...................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
Reference list.................................................................................................................................12
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Introduction
Business environment holds the most essential part of an organization. Business environment
consists of several methods, which is playing a vital role in operating and functioning of the
business unit. Every business environment consists of internal as well as external factors. They
are often known as macro and micro factors. This report deals with Morrisons as the business
unit, famous for retail chain in United Kingdom. The reports further discuss the leadership and
management skills employed by the business unit. Moreover, it also specifies the effect of the
implemented strategies and the steps to enhance them.
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Assignment 2
1. A brief history and summary of the business you have selected and the rationale for your
choice.
The report in this particular study will be regarding a supermarket company named Morrisons.
Wm Morrisons supermarket plc, it is trading as Morrisons. William Morrison founded it in
1899. It is one of the largest chain supermarkets in the UK. The slogan of the Morrison is
“Morrisons Makes It”. Formerly, it was a stall of butter and egg nearby Rawson market. Now, it
has headquarters in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. During twentieth century, the company
stores had primarily focused in North England, and later on, it was taken over by Safeway (Woo
et al., 2018). The company’s presence increased significantly in South England, Scotland and
Wales. As per research, the current employees in the organisation are about 110,000 employees.
It serves around 11 million consumers across the globe. Other than Great Britain, Gibraltar has
one of its stores. Morrisons has nearly 10.14% as market share at 2017. It falls by about 0.86%
since 2015 if compared to other supermarkets like Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda but ahead of Aldi.
This company listed on the London Stock Exchange, and it is a part of FTSE 100 Index of
companies (Guo et al., 2019).
The company mainly provides several products such as foods, drinks, clothing, books magazines,
CDs and DVDs too. Morrisons has profited revenue of about 17,262 million pounds as per report
of the year 2018. The income of operations in the organisation is approximate 460 million
pounds. The net income of the organisations is about 315 million pounds. The operation in the
organisation is consists of two formats. The first format is the traditional superstore's format, and
another one is the online section format. The first format is called Market Street. The second one
is Morrison cellar, generally deals with wines, formed in the year 2012. In the UK, Morrisons
produces the maximum amount of product that shows that it is outstanding from the other retailer
brands (Haleem et al., 2017). One of the former operations is Kiddicare, which is an online
children's retailer for clothing and home wares. The company operates many small stores, which
called “Morrisons M Local”. These small stores located at Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and
Cardiff. The organisation is rapidly growing in Britain. The organisation involves leadership,
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management and business strategies which is shown in context to the business environment of
the company Morrisons.
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2. According to your research, discuss their vision, leadership style and management
practices and the various strategies making use of various theories you have studied as
evidence.
Morrisons has specific visions and mission as it is very popular supermarket chain retailers in
Britain. As a popular organisation, the company ensures value for money product for its
customers. In the weekly shopping, it provides the best price for the best products available in
the market. The main aim of Morrisons to be called as best “food specialist” organisation for its
customers. Morrisons offers good food delivery services through online marketing. The process
of delivery is on time and affordable. They cater to families of middle income. It means their unit
manufactures its food packaging system, as it prepares in-house foods and do not buy from other
retail stores. It attempts to the best retailer regarding butcher, bakers and fishmongers. There are
two types of leadership methods in Morrison Strategic another one is Transformational. The
leader’s works in between the operations and the organizational growth (Sethibe et al., 2015).
They allocate the interests to other area, without disturbing condition of working. Strategic
Planning is the effective style of leadership that Morrison follows as it provides backup to the
workforce team in the firm. The strategic leader sometimes makes an unsafe environment for the
persons they are providing support. It happens when accurate direction is chosen for the
company.
On the other hand, transformational leaders of the company are consistently modifying and
upgrading the protocols. The leadership style is implemented by the business organisations is one
of the best encouraging forms of leadership strategies since it motivates the employees of the
organisations. It is very essential to identify the true potential of the staffs in an organisation.
Therefore, there is a tendency to overlook learning characteristics of the staffs by the
transformational leaders (Zhu et al., 2019).
Coming to the management part, Morrisons have two types of management practises, one is
consultative, and another one is coaching (Haleem et al., 2017). The consultancy for managing
services is the domineering type. The workforce teams are allowed to involve in the decision-
making process, but the management decides the final decision. It is always advantageous for the
business unit to acquire the commitment and loyalty from the staffs of the organisation.
Consultative practice in management enables an organization to depend on its staff. Now coming
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to coaching management practice, Morrisons’s main goal is to allocate and finding out the needs
of the staffs that are usually permanent. Coaching management practice allows the organisation
to establish a robust and competent workforce team. The management of the organization runs
the business to adopt a saturation point at its desired level. The company faced many challenges
from the employees when any sudden changes applied to management in the organisation.
Hence, Morrisons must adapt and transform the methods of leadership and the management
practises (Jenkins et al., 2015). The transformational leadership with various factors are follows
in the given figure:
Figure 1: The Four Factors of Transformational Leadership
(Source: Created by Learner)
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The strategy of business adopted by Morrisons is to improve enhancement regarding customer
services as well as profitability. The company follows six strategies; simpler and lower pricing
strategy, feedbacks of customers, simple solutions, providing more services, smooth-running and
making the main market robust. This strategy help the company to attract more customers by
distributing goods at lower prices, receiving feedback from them and the preferences which may
help to increase the company’s profit as well (Christopher, 2018).
3. Analyse how the above has been achieved or implemented by your selected company
with specific examples
Morrisons has become food product expert for every group of customers. It is building its own
packing facilities and manufacturing units to achieve its vision. They had also employed
individuals inside the market prepping food items. They also hired butchers, bakers, and
fishmongers to be different from its competitors and to maintain the quality of food. The food
rate is cheap and quality is better as compared to its competitors. The most important priorities of
Morrisons is to provide customer satisfaction at high level and fulfilment of customers
requirements (Haddock-Millar et al., 2015). They are also implementing a technique in business
strategy for acquiring strength on value, quality, and fresh foods. This is backed by complete
vertical evaluation ability. It has also priorities to convert vision into reality.
Morrisons recognises and evolves planning leaders from the workforce. It also identifies the
capabilities and characteristics of individual and employs them at suitable place within the
organization. This concept of Morrisons helps in evolving leaders. Leaders are capable of
projecting required changes in business unit based on the suitable information available to them.
Existing leaders are responsible for directing the co-workers for increasing profit in business.
They focus on boosting the morale level of co-workers in order to encourage them and for the
profit of the organization. Leaders also believe in teamwork for the success of organization in
retail industry. They are given the responsibility to increase the sales along with development of
the industry. They discuss the growth opportunity in presence of the management and employees
in order to make easy for them and to dictate the responsibilities of the employees. (Lamey et al.,
2018).
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Directions of tasks and people management are the two main factors, which are given priorities
at Morrisons. There is a special team of task specific leaders who are given responsibility to
resolve the customer problems and to react immediately for any type of operational dilemma. In
order to allocate right people to right task people specific leaders are given the responsibility.
People specific leaders influence and encourage employees to produce productive results by
implementing the required changes and by master resistance (Ike, 2017).
Morrisons has also administered a management style to make a fruitful decision by consulting
with the team members and employees. The managerial practice like bottom up and top down
communication are implemented within Morrisons. They also provide individual the opportunity
to evolve flourish for success by implementing suitable managerial practices. Through proper
development, training and staff recruitment the corporate firm believes in achieving success
(Jenkins and Williamson, 2015).
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4. What could be your recommendations as an improvement (the proposed leadership
styles, management practices and the various strategies that can be undertaken by this firm
based on research done) to your company.
It is not necessary that the transformational leadership will always be effective for Morrisons, as
leaders might take sudden decisions. It is observed that strategic leaders focus on current
scenario and happenings, which may affect future activities. In order to overcome challenges
arising from transformational and strategic practices Morrisons must implement situational
leadership amongst them (Haleem and Jehangir, 2017). Retail sector is driving and it observes
sudden changes in environment. In this way, situational leadership will predict and identify the
changes. An environment will be created in the organisation, which will encourage customers to
comes towards it deliver reasonable services to the retail customers. Situational leaders react and
implement according to the preparation and requirement of organisation. They will implement an
environment, which will be comfortable to the employees for performing duties. It has been seen
that situational leadership brings satisfaction amongst employees thus encouraging them to be
more efficient and productive. The main objective of leadership is to provide workers a scope to
enhance their knowledge.
Morrisons also adopts classical management strategy for improving management practices. This
study targets at increasing the capability of workers along with increase in productivity. It
depends on specific job role for employee’s of different position grade. Through this, large tasks
can be easily broken down into smaller ones more easily. Thus, it makes a complex problem
simpler. The Morrisons management believes that employee will perform better if given rewards
and incentives on their performance. Morrisons also believes that if employees are motivated to
use different techniques and tactics then it may improve the production, efficiency and profit in
comparison with its competitors (Filimonau and Gherbin, 2017).
Some of the recommended strategies of Morrisons are improving employer-employee relation,
paying utmost involvement of staffs, scheduling training and speeding teamwork. Morrisons
evaluates the importance of employees for organisation success, so they apply their concepts
business process for their satisfaction and business growth. Morrisons also believes that
providing industrial training to the staffs can be beneficial for the growth of this organization
(Trott and Simms, 2017). A sound relation between employees and top-level officers is very
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much effective in a business operation. In order to maintain a strong relationship Morrisons must
implement initiatives of in double way communication strategy and feedback system.
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Conclusion
It is clear from this study internal and external environment of a business organization affects
Morrisons. Morrisons is the United Kingdom’s fourth largest and oldest retail supermarket chain.
The management and leadership style of Morrisons depends on the mission and vision of the
organization. The management also encourages employees to perform better. It has also observed
that they had built its own business policies for enhancing the profit and its communication with
consumers. The productivity and operations enhances by providing suitable industry based
training to the employees. Therefore, this report explains regarding the management and
leadership skills of Morrisons along with its implementation.
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