Business Strategy Report: Marks & Spencer Sustainability and CSR

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Marks & Spencer's (M&S) sustainability approach and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. It begins with an introduction to sustainable development and its importance in business strategy, followed by an examination of M&S's specific strategies, including their customer-focused sustainability plan, which aims to support communities and promote healthier lives. The report details M&S's efforts in various sectors, such as food and clothing, highlighting their commitment to eco-friendly practices, waste reduction, and ethical sourcing. It then compares and contrasts the CSR approaches of micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and corporate businesses, discussing the similarities and differences in their sustainability practices and stakeholder engagement. The report emphasizes the challenges and opportunities for M&S in achieving its sustainability goals, including supply chain management, and the evolving expectations of customers and stakeholders. Finally, it reflects on the importance of CSR and sustainability in the retail industry and offers insights into the future of sustainable business practices.

INDIVIDUAL REPORT
AND REFLECTION

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
PART 1............................................................................................................................................3
Sustainability Approach of M&S to Business Strategy and management..................................3
Different Approaches to CSR of Micro, SME and corporate business.......................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
PART 2..........................................................................................................................................11
Reflective report........................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................15

INTRODUCTION
Sustainable approaches like planning for a eco and ethical programmes must be
developed by focusing on the customers which can support more than 1000 people and
communities along with ensuring the healthier and happier life of the individuals. Developing
plans become the best sustainable approach which decides a certain timeline for its
implementation and evaluation. There must be a systematic strategy and approach which needs
to be present in an organization so that they can achieve their objectives and targets on time. The
competition in the market is increasing which is why businesses must analyse the functioning
and operations so that there is going to be a better result overall. There has to be a good futuristic
approaches which businesses must find for themselves so that there are going to be lesser risks
which are going to be present. Marks & Spencer belongs from the retailing industry and the
products of the organization are food items, clothing, energy, bank, etc. The headquarters of the
business is in London, United Kingdom which was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and
Thomas Spencer. There are a lot of strategies which M&S have used in the past and are still
moulding it according to the customers so that there can be a better functioning. The ethics and
approaches of CSR and other factors would be discussed in the report so that there is going to be
an advantage and better functioning for the organization.
PART 1
Sustainability Approach of M&S to Business Strategy and management
Sustainability mainly focuses on fulfilling the present needs of the people such that it
does not have to compromise with the future needs (Jones and Comfort, 2018). This concept
basically focuses on the 3 pillars that are economic, social and environmental which are also
known as profits, planet and earth in easily understandable language. Along with strong relations
and good intentions, the companies must respond more on acting upon the Corporate Social
Responsibility.
Marks & Spencer (M&S), being a well-known retailer multinational company which deals in
selling its own labelled clothes, food and home products is focussing more on the approaches of
sustainability which can be adapted by it to increase its goodwill and to gain competitive
advantage. For this, it is planning many strategies in all its sectors whether food products or
clothing or any other to be implemented now and in the coming years to make its environment

and the operations completely sustainable by realizing the need of Corporate Social
Responsibility.
The company has even set a five-year plan for achieving its New Eco and Ethical ambitions. Its
main objective behind this customer focused sustainability plan is to support 1,000 communities
and helping more than 10 million people to live a happier and healthier lives by converting the
company into Zero-waste business.
Marks & Spencer planned to make all its packaging widely recyclable. It started giving all the
products whether food or clothing in the packets which are biodegradable and does not harm the
environment and completely restricted the use of plastic in all its stores for the employees and
the customers as well. It has also raised the amount of approx. £25 million for charity groups
and organizations which tackles the diseases like Cancer, Heart diseases, issues regarding the
mental health and many more (M&S launches plan A 2025 – an ambitious, customer focused
sustainability plan, 2017). So, in order to make the workplace completely sustainable, the
companies can minimize the use of non-biodegradable materials and donate some amount to the
needy ones.
The company encouraged majority of its employees to perform community volunteering which
reached to a number of 1 million till now and is continuing at a rapid pace. All the raw materials
which are used by Marks & Spencer come directly from the sustainable sources (M&S launches
plan A 2025 – an ambitious, customer focused sustainability plan, 2017). It ensures that the
products do not have any content which can harm the environment when thrown away. This
made its half of the sales of food to come from the healthier products.
The Chief Executive of Marks & Spencer, Steve Rowe, said that the company is leading in
various aspects since 133 years and it planned to continue making the sustainable future till
2025. In this plan, it will engage all its 32 million customers, almost 85000 colleagues and
around 200,000 shareholders who all will together support in bringing sustainable changes
(M&S, 2020).
There are many challenges for the company to bring changes in areas like supply chain, food
waste, wage of living, packaging and many more and the expectations for the company are
increasing rapidly.

In order to implement its strategies, it has made certain goals which are to be achieved in the
coming 5 years. The first 10-year plan was successfully implemented which gave confidence to
the company to introduce some more. In the clothing Sector, the company has developed many
strategies. It operated many systems for quality management with the suppliers (Painter-Morland
and et.al., 2016). These are performed under certain precautions and are regularly checked in the
audits and testing. For this, the suppliers have to focus on the quality and the safety of
environment and social standards.
It also made a goal to remove the micro-beads from its own branded products. It had an aim that
till 2020, none of its products will be manufactured with the micro-beads. Marks & Spencer also
became a part of the Sustainable Clothing action plan which was initiated in UK in order to
minimize the resources in the industry of clothes. The company collaborated with many other
brands to achieve the objectives like reducing the Carbon and Water Footprint by 15% and the
reduction of waste generated in complete product life-cycle by 3.5% (Goworek and et.al.,2018).
It also decided to use such type of fabric in manufacturing its products which can be recycled
after complete use or thrown by the customers thereby not harming the environment in any way.
Since, the company focuses on selling the top quality products, it must keep a tab on all the raw
materials provided by the suppliers from around 70 countries. It has its established stores in
almost 62 international markets (M&S, 2020). So, any carelessness done by any of its supplier
can affect its goodwill an image at a greater level. M&S is considered to be the food specialist
which means that their food products cannot be compared with the other companies. It lays
emphasis on offering high quality food and household products along with maintaining the same
standards in all its suppliers.
It also focuses on the methods of the manufacturing of food products to ensure that it does not
harm any animal during the process. Its 5-year plan is applied to the food sector also which
ensures the sustainability in the product renewal and innovation. It also promotes and rewards
this type of behaviour with its supply base but not with the branded products from the companies
who already have their plans for sustainability like Unilever.
Like Marks & Spencer, many other well-known companies also focus on improving its
sustainability by implementing various strategies. Tesco plc., being the largest group of retailers
in UK, is also extending its partnership with charity groups and organizations. It also ensures the

well-being of the people working in the company because more safe employees result in safe
productivity (Dey and et.al., 2020). Its products are also healthy and sustainable making them
affordable to everyone. In order to do this, it also tackles many issues from farm to fork. Tesco
also lays emphasis on safeguarding the environment by resolving the issues from the threat of
global climate change. It protects the forests and the marine life along with increasing
sustainable practices in agricultural sector that helps in protecting the health of soil and the
biodiversity (Renwick ed., 2018). It also helps many communities economically and socially
across the world. The manufacturing department has also changed its contents of the food
products from junk food to organic food to aware the people about the safety of their health and
become health conscious. This also helped it to increase its customer base along with gaining a
competitive advantage. This also increased the image of its brand along with enhancing the
overall progress and growth.
Thus, all the establishes companies having their own brand tries to develop sustainability in its
practices, workforce and the workplace. They develop many plans and encourage all the
employees, customers and stakeholders along with their suppliers to follow sustainability in all
their processes to gain a large support from them in maintaining the sustainable environment.
Different Approaches to CSR of Micro, SME and corporate business
Similarity: All the businesses whether small or large, Micro, SME or Corporate, all
focuses on the sustainability factors in order to increase the customer base and the goodwill.
Majorly, the sustainability of the large companies is focused because they are depended on many
SMEs and many small businesses are depended on it. The MNCs also worry about their goodwill
and the SMEs can change their goodwill easily by developing some innovative strategies
(Medabesh and Khan, 2020). In contrast to this, if once the goodwill of the MNCs is destroyed, it
can result in a great loss of customers as well as the profitability.
Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR is a concept in which the organizations keep in mind the
social and environmental changes in developing its strategies and also the impact of its activities
on the employees, stakeholders, customers and the environment. Along with following all the
local laws, the companies also try to improve the quality of life of the employees and their near
and dear ones as well as the society.

Differences: The Corporate businesses mainly focuses on the ways and the strategies in order to
enhance sustainability whereas the SMEs try to manage the CSR. Although, the SMEs like My
Bakers bakery in UK contribute majorly to the economic stability of the country by providing
more than half of the employment opportunities but still the CSR of SMEs is not majorly focused
as it does not have much supply chains and the suppliers. The MNCs like Tesco, Sainsbury and
many more in UK must manage the CSR of its own along with the sustainability of its supply
chains (Valente and Atkinson, 2019).
Similarity: SMEs have less attention of stakeholders and the public scrutiny, so it makes
difficult for the SMEs to construct policies for implementing the strategies of CSR. But the
micro and the small enterprise carry much weight in terms of ethical motives, so they are much
motivated to take certain actions regarding the social and environmental matters.
Difference: These companies are mostly self-owned, so they can find it easy to incorporate such
strategies whereas the corporate business has to consult with many sectors and departments in
order to implement the strategies of sustainability.
Similarity between SME and micro: Although the SMEs and micro enterprises like Prufrock
cafe in UK perform its operations at a smaller level than corporate business but its every ethical
and unethical activity implements the motivation and the capabilities such as Code of Conduct,
reporting schemes or the policy documents (Stoian and Gilman, 2017). The SMEs sometimes get
discouraged thinking that if they don't follow the CSR rules then they might fall down in terms
of sales and profit and also sometimes the expensive cost in implementing those strategies
demotivates them to incorporate such strategies of sustainability.
SME: It was also found that implementing the CSR can help the SMEs to earn more profit and
sales but on the other hand the other proved that implementing CSR needs much investment
which is not possible for all the SMEs to invest more amount and improved financial returns.
So, some SMEs do this by the suggestions from their decision-makers who make non-financial
decisions.
Difference between SMEs and Corporate: The decision-makers in corporate business are also
impacted by many factors including peer pressure, personality, pressure to maintain the brand
image, self-interest, achievement of goals and many more. On the other hand, the decision-
makers of the SMEs are influenced by the personal feelings, finances of the company, family,
friends along with religion in making various decisions regarding the CSR activities. When the

small and medium-sized enterprises focus on implementing the local CSR activities, then they
are concerned about the environment and the legal factors also which, if not noticed can hinder
the progress of the company.
Similarity between SME and micro: The owners of the SMEs are the sole decision-makers, so
they can directly change the practices and the policies without consultation of any stakeholders
due to their small sized business same in the case of micro organizations (Jamali, Lund-Thomsen
and Jeppesen, 2017). They focus more on maintaining the values rather than earning more profit
which changes the decisions in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility. Difference: SMEs lays
emphasis on the availability and the use of resources in implementing the strategies which are
not much focussed by the corporate business. They are majorly focussed on profit-making and
gaining competitive advantage by using more resources.
Difference between SME and corporate business: Although the visibility of the SMEs is low
and referred to as cooperative one, these SMEs sometimes involve the stakeholders in the
decision-making process in order to guide them about the need of CSR and the ways to
incorporate it in the company for managing such practices of CSR. On the other hand, the
corporate businesses must have the capability to adopt the CSR policies which can allow them to
have interaction with the social, political and environmental issues and can find solutions to
compensate the negative effects involving the bad effects of climate change, labour standards
etc. Therefore, these businesses invest much money and resources in implementing the CSR
practices. The figure below shows the degree of activities along with the dimensions in MNCs
and SMEs.
Figure 1: Degree of Activity of various dimensions
Source: Mousiolis, 2020

Therefore, the Corporate Businesses are much impacted by the CSR policies. So, they organize
various training programs for the employees to be aware of the ways in which they can
implement various strategies at all levels regarding the CSR and sustainability (Morsing and
Spence, 2019). Their main aim is to bring improvement in its CSR practices as it is becoming
their priority.
SMEs: It becomes easy for the SMEs to implement these as they have flat hierarchies and the
information can be disseminated easily. On the other hand, corporate businesses have to make a
greater investment of money and the resources in order to perform these functions (Dey and
et.al., 2018). The decisions can be easily spread in the SMEs as the leaders directly interact with
the employees which is just opposite in case of corporate businesses where the environment
under consideration becomes much vast and large and many factors to focus upon. The owners
of SMEs have much lower pressure from investors than the corporate business in order to make
much profit.
Difference in the evaluation of sustainable strategies: The CSR policies in corporate
businesses can be easily evaluated by its regular session reports which are difficult to measure in
the SMEs die to lack of documentary works and reports. So, in this case it can be measured by
the improved performance of the employees and the company regarding the sustainability and
the implementation of CSR policies and the extent to which the employees involve the social and
environmental issues in the strategic implementation.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that there is a need for businesses to have a
sustainable strategies and methods for themselves to be able to operate effectively in the market.
There are a lot of risks which the businesses have to take so that they will be able to function
effectively in the market but for that they must have the right strategies so that they can get a
competitive advantage for a long run. It is very essential for businesses to follow the CSR
strategies effectively and change them according to the employees and customers so that the
business will be able to profit from this factor.

PART 2
Reflective report
There are a lot of learning's which I received from the above report and a lot of
experience which is received as well which is very helpful for the future growth. Through Gibbs
reflective model which was published in 1988 (Di Stefano and et.al., 2016). The further report
discusses the skills and development which I have had through these discussions in the
classroom and this report.
Description
From this report there were a lot of improvement in myself which are visible. In the
discussions of the classrooms there was discussion on how important in communication in any
business organizations. This is my strength which is going to help be grow in the future as well
so that there is going to be a better functioning. In the classroom I learned a lot of topics like
analysis, self reflection report writing, exchanged ideas, etc which was a great learning for
myself since there were a lot of topics I was not aware of in details. I understand the skills and
responsibilities I have to improve and gain which is going to be good for the career ahead of
myself (Bindels and et.al., 2018). There were a lot of presentations which were shown to us in
the classroom and discussions on them after the presentation so that everyone can keep their
point of views and there would be a better understanding for the future of the students was
provided by the teachers. There are a lot of skills which have to be improved and analysed for
self which can be improved upon but only after one knows about them in detail.
Feelings
There was a complete shift in the feelings I had on this topic because I thought I knew the
right skills and detailed knowledge about this topic but there was more to it. The teacher made
sure that all the doubts were cleared in the class and I learned a lot from this factor which is a
great factor (Pilitsis and et.al., 2020). I was not so attentive in the beginning of the classes or
discussion because I thought I had covered this topic for the report to be done but as the
discussions continued there were a lot of self confidence which lowered down and gained again
by the end of the classes and the time which I had to do the report. When the discussions were
taking place I realized that speaking in public and getting nervous is a very normal reaction and
the teacher took care of this factor or my weakness so that there is going to be a better
functioning. The time frame for the report was less since the classes got over and after I gained a

lot of information on the skills, then putting it in report made me take a lot of time and that
created a lot of pressure on me and doing the work was not according to what I had planned
earlier.
Evaluation
While the discussions I felt very good because the teacher not just gave the right
information and cleared all the doubts but they also gave us confidence and encouraged us to be
able to achieve the objectives. The data collected by the teachers on the topics was very
appropriate and effective which made it easier for me to understand the topics easily. There was
a use of right examples and methods which are being used by the teachers so that there is going
to be better operations (Raab and et.al., 2017). The contribution of the group is going to be
effective if everyone is going to put in their ideas and knowledge together but there has to be a
good understanding and meetings for the distribution of work. The result was good because the
group understood one another as the deadline approached and the results are good is the only
thing which went great for the report and results of the report are also going to be better for all of
us.
Analysis
Team working for this report was not that affective is what I feel because there was not
clear direction and we all had different approaches (Shao and et.al., 2020). All the problems have
to be solved on time but as a group we did not which made it difficult for us to finish the work on
time and the group felt the pressure of the deadline approaching in front of us. The teaches did
supervise on the students to find out if the work is being done on time but the group did not take
up their responsibility seriously which made the results not so effective. There has to be control
on the assignment as well and a good leader who can understand the division and monitor all the
team members so that the work can be completed on time. The experience of doing this report is
very good which a great factor for the group is because we got the end result very well.
Conclusions
I understood the strengths and weaknesses I have for myself so that there is going to be a
better functioning. In future I am aware of the measures and actions which have to be taken so
that there is going to be a better functioning. In future distribution of work and discussion and
meeting in the beginning is very essential so that there is a better direction in which the group
can function within so that there is going to be a better result overall. There has to be good