Analysis of Sainsbury's Business Context and Strategy

This report provides a detailed analysis of Sainsbury's business context, focusing on its background, vision, leadership styles, management practices, and strategic implementation. The study examines Sainsbury's position as the third-largest supermarket chain in the UK, founded in 1869. It explores the company's vision to be the most trusted retailer, its use of participative leadership, and its management practices, including classical management and total quality management. The report analyzes the implementation of its vision, leadership styles, and strategies, such as differentiation and cost leadership. It also provides recommendations for improvement, including cost reduction, employee empowerment, democratic leadership, and global expansion, and the adoption of new technologies to enhance business operations. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of marketing, promotional activities, and competitive pricing to drive sales and profitability. This assignment is available on Desklib, offering past papers and solved assignments for students.

Context of business

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................1
1. Company Background .......................................................................................................1
2. Vision of Sainsbury's and leadership style and management practices in the organisation2
3. Analysis of achievement and implementation of vision, leadership styles, management
practices and strategy.............................................................................................................4
4. Recommendations to the company.....................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Context of business is the method to analyse the environment in which business operates.
Context of business is one of the major aspect of the business which help to run the business for
the long term. This study is base on third largest chain of supermarket that is Sainsbury which is
UK base company with a 16.9% share of the supermarket sector. It was founded in 1869 by John
James Sainsbury with a shop in Dury Lane, London. This study covers the background of the
company and also the reason to choose Sainsbury. Further it covers the vision of the company
and also different leadership style, management practices and also the strategies which are most
appropriate. Further this report will cover that how Sainsbury has uses and implemented this
style to achieve the goals of the organisation. And at the last this report will include the various
recommendation that the company should adapt to improve the working of the organisation and
run in the right direction (Bititci, Cocca and Ates, 2016).
MAIN BODY
1. Company Background
Sainsbury 's is the third largest chain of supermarket in the United kingdom with 16.9%
share of the supermarket sector. Sainsbury has been trading for 147 years. It was all started with
one small rented store in Dury Lane and now the retailer has over 1200 stores across the United
Kingdom. Sainsbury was founded in 1869 by John James (Sainsbury's, Live Well for Less, 2019).
The company become the largest retailer of groceries in 1922, and also it was early adopter of
self service retailing in the United Kingdom. There are various subsidiaries of Sainsbury such as
Sainsbury Bank , Sainsbury 's supermarket Ltd. , Sainsbury 's local, Habitat, Nectar and Argos.
In February 2018 , the largest overall shareholder is the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar which
holds 21,99% of the company. It is also listed on the London Stock Exchange. Sainsbury has
over 1300 stores and also has over 161,000 employees and also Sainsbury provide good working
condition for the employees so that they work in the effective manner . Sainsbury has
headquarters in 33 Holborn , London , EC 1, United Kingdom. Also Sainsbury has £23.775
billion turnover in 2015 (Maak, Pless and Voegtlin, 2016).
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Rationale
The major reason to select Sainsbury is because it has faced many ups and down. But by
that only it gives very tough competition to their competitor and is the third largest chain in the
retail industry. Sainsbury has many opportunities to earn more and it is very famous for its high
quality products which are offer in low prices. Sainsbury has revenue of £28.456 billion and
operating income £518 million and net income is £304 million. It has 161,000 employees. And
also in 2014, Sainsbury 's become the first retailer to power one of its stores by converting food
waste into bio- methane gas to generate electricity. And the second reason to choose Sainsbury
was that also it has great management and coordination of the company . And it uses effective
leadership style, management practices and strategies which are effective to understand (Yahaya
and Ebrahim, 2016).
2. Vision of Sainsbury's and leadership style and management practices in the organisation
The vision of an industry is developed by Leader and with the help of various style he led
the followers to achieve the vision (Akinbode and Al Shuhumi, 2018). In the success of the
company, management practices also plays an important role to manage the people and develop
strategies effectively and systematically for the company's success.
Vision of Sainsbury's
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Illustration 1: Sainsbury's
(Source: Sainsbury's, Live Well for Less, 2019)

The vision statement of the organisation is, “Our vision is to be the most trusted retailer,
where people love to work and shop (Our Vision, 2019). We will do this by putting our customer
at the heart of everything we do and investing in our stores, our colleagues and our channels to
offer the best possible shopping experience.”
Leadership style in Sainsbury's
Leadership style of the company creates an environment that employees' work and
attitude and performance of the team influences. Leader has a preferred style but this will not be
appropriate in every situation (Stewart-Banks and et.al., 2015). Participative leadership style is
the mostly use and valuable for the company's leaders. According to this style, leader involve
employees in decision making process but the final decision is made by the leader only. This
style enables employees to come up with various recommendation and suggestion to improve the
business function.
CEO of Sainsbury's, Mike Coupe plays a perfect role of leader in the company. The CEO
has charismatic leadership quality and follow transformational style of leadership Sainsbury's
began its leadership programme in October 2004. As the company has hierarchical
organisational structure, it is essential for the company to adopt various leadership style rather
than following single style for all the situations (Maak, Pless and Voegtlin, 2016).
Management practices in the company
As leader is essential in leading employees, management is also essential to manage
people within the industry. There are various behaviour of management focuses on task-oriented
and employee-orientated style. The manager of the organisation is responsible to initiate
communication among the team members and to empower the staff by developing new strategies
to improve the quality.
The management of Sainsbury's would identify mostly to an Authoritarian management
style that concerns with production and efficiency and concentrates less on the people (Bititci,
Cocca and Ates, 2016). With the task-oriented approach and mainly develop strategy related to
need of tasks rather than the want of subordinates. Sainsbury's follows classical concept of
management practices and total quality management practices. The various theories implement
by the manager is scientific management theory.
Strategies
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Apart from the style and practices, leader and manager of Sainsbury develop and
implement various strategies in the company such as; differentiation strategy and cost leadership
strategy to grab the market and gain competitive advantage (Akinbode and Al Shuhumi, 2018).
The business strategy of Sainsbury's is made up of five pillars with the aim of providing great
products and services at fair price.
3. Analysis of achievement and implementation of vision, leadership styles, management
practices and strategy
Analysis of achievement and implementation of vision
The company was able to implement its vision by showing its concern towards the needs
and wants of the customers by making the products of the company available in its stores on
timely basis. This will help the company in fulfilling all the requirements of the customers and
thus would contribute towards building the customer loyalty in favour of Sainsbury in order to
achieve the business objectives effectively and efficiently. Even the company has implemented
its vision through huge investment in stores, channels and colleagues so as to provide its
customers best shopping experience. Thus, this would help the company in improving its brand
image as well as it will also contribute in changing the perception of customers towards the
company.
Analysis of achievement and implementation of leadership style
Participative leadership style is one of the best form of leadership style. This leadership
style can be implemented in the organisation by giving each and every member of the
organization to take part in decision-making process. Further, it can be implemented in the
company through empowering the employees.
Participative form of leadership style creates a sense of belongingness in the mind of
employees which in turn would also help in increasing the retention rate of employees because
employees would be given authority to participate in decision-making process. Thus, this
leadership style would play a vital role in keeping the employees motivated as well as bringing in
creativity; so that they achieve organisational objectives effectively and efficiently.
Analysis of achievement and implementation of management practice
There are three kinds of management practice adopted by Sainsbury. First one is
enhancing communication which is implemented in the company through development of
flexible systems or processes that fosters smooth flow of information at the workplace(Shane and
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et.al., 2015). These systems and processes has in turn helped the company in achieving the
objectives of the company efficiently and effectively by eliminating or reducing the conflicts at
the workplace.
While on the other hand, empowering the employees was the second management
practice adopted by the company and this was implemented in the organization by giving the
employees autonomy to take their own decisions. This has helped the company in motivating the
employees to develop positive perception towards the company which is essential for the
attainment of the objectives of the company smoothly. This would in turn help the company in
gaining the competitive advantage over its rivalry firms as well as in surviving in the changing
environment.
Analysis of achievement and implementation of strategy
Sainsbury has undertaken cost – leadership strategy. The company has implemented it in
the organisation through undertaking mass production in order to achieve economies of scale and
this has in turn helped the company to earn reasonable margin of profits even by charging low
prices because of decreased cost of production(Porter and Heppelmann, 2017). Furthermore, the
company even adopted the differentiation strategy. Sainsbury implemented differential strategy
by producing differentiated goods in comparison with other rivalry firms. This in turn has helped
the company in achieving competitive advantage over its rivalry firms; which is essential in
order to grow and survive in this competitive environment.
4. Recommendations to the company
They should reduces their cost of products by removing unnecessary services from their
stores. They should manage the work placement because they involve individual services to the
young people than educational people.
They should improve their compensation policies in the organisation and should provide
better pay to their employees.
They should adopt democratic leadership style in their organisation. With the help of
democratic leadership style the Sainsbury can involve their employees in decision making that
helps to enhance the satisfaction level of the employees and create good relationship between
management and employees.
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Sainsbury should add more management practices to make effective their business
operations and that practices should link with the employees that helps to enhance the
productivity of the organisation.
They should develop their marketing plan and reset the budget that helps to rearrange the
business operations in effective manner. Sainsbury should expand their operations on globally
that enhance their profitability of the organisation.
They should adopt consultative management style in the organisation that helps to
improving their decision making. This management style help to advice and consult to the other
people before decision making.
Sainsbury should remove hierarchy organisational structure that create flexibility at
workplace and enhance the communication between the management and employees that helps
to enhance the productivity of the organisation.
They should organize the training and development programs for the employees that
helps to enhance the skills and abilities for the employees and provides better results to the
organisation.
They should adopt technologies for develop and enhance their business operations as well
as profitability of the organisation.
They should expand in CSR activities for long term growth as well as connect investors,
suppliers and customers to the company.
Sainsbury should invest in promotional activities such as advertisement, personal selling
as well as social media. With the help of promotional activities the company can enhance the
awareness of their products as well as increase the brand image.
Sainsbury should reduces the prices of the cleaning products because they provide
cleaning products at premium price that is not affordable for all level of customers so they can
reduce their cleaning product prices that helps to enhance the sales of the organisation.
They should provides their products online through their own website to the customers
that enhance the sales as well as profitability of the organisation. They should include discounted
prices for attracting customers
CONCLUSION
From the above study it has been summarised that leadership styles and management
practices helps in order to achieving success. The report has been explained the summary of the
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Sainbury company. It is also explained the vision, leadership styles and management practices
the organisation and how they are helped in accomplish the goals of the Sainsbury. It has been
described various strategies of the management for achieving the targets and improve the current
situations and problems. With the help of management practices and leadership styles the
company can implement the strategies in effective manner and accomplish their goals.
Furthermore, the report has been given some recommendation to the Sainsbury for the future
growth.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Akinbode, A. I. and Al Shuhumi, S. R. A., 2018. Change Management Process and Leadership
Styles. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences. 4(2).
Bititci, U., Cocca, P. and Ates, A., 2016. Impact of visual performance management systems on
the performance management practices of organisations. International Journal of
Production Research. 54(6). pp.1571-1593.
Grewal, D., Roggeveen, A.L. and Nordfält, J., 2017. The future of retailing. Journal of
Retailing. 93(1). pp.1-6.
Lam, C.K., Huang, X. and Chan, S.C., 2015. The threshold effect of participative leadership and
the role of leader information sharing. Academy of Management Journal. 58(3). pp.836-
855.
Maak, T., Pless, N.M. and Voegtlin, C., 2016. Business statesman or shareholder advocate? CEO
responsible leadership styles and the micro‐foundations of political CSR. Journal of
Management Studies. 53(3). pp.463-493.
Porter, M.E. and Heppelmann, J.E., 2017. Why every organization needs an augmented reality
strategy. Harvard Business Review. 95(6). pp.46-57.
Shane, H.C. and et.al., 2015. Enhancing communication for individuals with autism. Baltimore,
MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Stewart-Banks, B. and et.al., 2015. Education Leadership Styles Impact on Work Performance
and Morale of Staff. Journal of Marketing & Management. 6(2).
Yahaya, R. and Ebrahim, F., 2016. Leadership styles and organizational commitment: literature
review. Journal of Management Development. 35(2). pp.190-216.
Online
Our Vision. 2019. [Online]. Available
Through:<https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/about-us/our-vision>.
Sainsbury's, Live Well for Less. 2019. [Online]. Available Through:
<https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/>.
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