BUS101: Management Report - Woolworths and Managerial Theory Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Woolworths, a leading Australian retail chain. It begins with an executive summary outlining the report's focus on Woolworths' external environment, ethical practices, and the nature of managerial responsibilities. The report delves into Woolworths' general environment, including political, economic, technological, and social factors, and its specific industry environment, such as customers, competitors, suppliers, and regulations. It then explores Woolworths' ethical and social responsibility initiatives, highlighting its CSR programs and future plans, including sustainability goals. The report also examines Mintzberg's managerial roles, offering insights into the skills and knowledge required for effective management. The analysis incorporates relevant academic theories and company-specific data, providing a well-rounded perspective on Woolworths' management practices and strategic positioning within the retail industry.

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 0
MANAGERIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE

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Executive Summary
In this report, the research is being carried out to identify Woolworth’s external environment
factors, company ethics and social responsibility practices and the nature and responsibilities
of managers to identify the threats and opportunities in the company general and specific
environment. At present, Woolworth is one of the leading Australia retail chains with having
more than 900 stores developed over the country. The major markets of the companyare
Australia and New Zealand and Woolworths and company internal strength helps the
company to gain various opportunities in the retail industry against its major rival i.e. Coles.
The company general environment includes impact of political, economic, technological and
social factors on company direct and indirect business practices whereas Woolworth's
industry environment factors includes suppliers, consumers, competitors, industry regulations
and advocacy groups. In relation to social and ethical responsibilities, Woolworths has
developed various five and ten years plan concern about their future practices. There is also a
discussion about Mintzberg’s managerial roles in relation to the managerial job I would like
to aspire. From future perspective, it is recommended to the company to come up with a new
product line in retail sector due to the increasing trend of healthy living.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
General Environment of Woolworths........................................................................................3
Specific Environment of Woolworths........................................................................................4
Ethics and Social Responsibility................................................................................................6
Mintzberg’s managerial roles.....................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
This research about Woolworths, a leading retailer and grocery chain in Australia offering
varied product range including health and beauty products, grocery products, household
appliances, magazines and so forth. At present, the company has more than 995 stores
globally and has retained 34 percent market share with employing nearly 201, 522
employees. During the fiscal year 2018, Woolworth’s net revenue after tax was 1.68 billion
Australian dollars (Statista.com, 2018) and with rise of e-commerce network globally put the
pressure on the company to adapt to online channel.
The purpose of this report is to enlighten users about practices of various managerial
frameworks and concepts in the general business and industry environment. There are four
key sections in the report including general business environment of Woolworths, specific
environment of company, Woolworth contemporary ethics and social responsibility and
discussion of Mintzberg’s managerial roles in relation to the managerial job I would like to
aspire.
General Environment of Woolworths
According to Williams, McWilliams and Lawrence (2017), the general environment is the
larger environment that includes economic, technological, sociocultural, political and legal
events and trends that impact the business organisation directly or indirectly. Considering
Woolworths political and legal events, it comprises of various government rules and political
control levied on the trade of retail chain. Taking example in the Australia market,
Woolworths together with Coles collectively changed the industry nature with duopolistic
market structure (Jones, 2011) and therefore, the Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission imposed significant regulations on the company considering the products and
price of both the company. Similarly, new federal and state laws have levied many legal
responsibilities on Woolworths where it was discovered that company is constantly facing
difficulties as of ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission). More
definitely, ACCC from a long period of time bouncing up Woolworths name in media
relating to some issue with suppliers associated with the payment and this has negatively
affected the company reputation. Here, the viable way to manage legal responsibilities is to

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train managers, how to deal well with the suppliers to save company from potential lawsuits
causing significant impact to the business.
The next general environment factors include economic trend in the country which is
changing at a high pace and as per the research, it was revealed that 40 % of Australia
consumers do not consider brand while shopping and the price is the key factor in driving
brand loyalty (researchnewslive.com.au, 2018). As more numbers of consumers are getting
price sensitive, Woolworth receiving burden to retain their margin low on side with
introducing extensive range in its supermarket stores as well as grocery segment. In terms of
socio-cultural factors, the company is appreciating different needs of the consumers from
various perspective via developing ‘listening culture’ so as to gain the trust of the consumers.
Earlier, Woolworths also had faced several issues with the suppliers and to ensure its future
positive relationship with them, the company established a target to sign up most of its 3000
odd sellers with offering several benefits to them such as free scorecards monthly
(freshplaza.com, 2017), viable reports as per their performance comparing with the
competitor. The next most important general environment factor of Woolworth is technology
which totally changed the shopping experience of customer and internal operations of the
company. To move up with the social trend, Woolworth introduces SAP connected
merchandising system via replacing it with their old proprietary system (Coyne, 2016).
Woolworths plan to gain more operational efficiency while attaining competitive advantage
and this SAP implementation of the company can be a part of this revolution and it is also
linked to company cloud assets to match with payroll model in the country. Because the
general environment often has a substantial influence on a company level of success,
managers must trail events and trends as they growth and try to forestall the insinuations of
these events and trends (Otache and Mahmood, 2015).
Specific Environment of Woolworths
Williams, McWilliams and Lawrence (2017) have stated that some of the major factors in
this specific environment includes customers, rivals, suppliers, industry regulations and
advocacy group components of the specific environment impact businesses. In relation with
customer, no company can exist without the support of customers and so, it is significant for
Woolworths to monitor changing necessities and wants of these consumers. At present,

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Woolworths is serving over 29 million consumers across its brand every week
(woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2019). Woolworth’s strategies also based on proactive customer
monitoring where the company identify and address customer needs, issues and trends before
they occur. It can be found on their website where their key objective is to have consumers 1st
across all its brands and recognise as trust while being known as cornerstones of their
customer satisfaction. Furthermore, Woolworths had announced in 2015 to have a three year
strategy which the company claims to transform the organisation into a buyer first business
and help neutralize its rivals (Cameron, 2015).
The next specific environment factors are the competitors and at present, the biggest
competitor of Woolworths is Coles as in 2017-18, Woolworth’s market share stands out to
37.2% whereas Cole’s market share is 30.3% (ibisworld.com, 2018). For attaining
competitive advantage in the sector for over longer period of time, Woolworths required to
keep close track of competitors what they are doing. As per latest trend, Coles plan to take on
lead on Woolworths while meeting the rising demand of time-poor consumers who are ready
to pay more for convenience. This plan will be supported by the company overhaul of 100
superstores in the next 6 months while keeping stock more for semi-prepared food items as
well as ready-to-eat meals (Dunn, 2019). Hence, it is necessary for Woolworths to pay close
attention to this strategy of Coles and come up with similar bigger plan to counter Cole’s
strategy. Suppliers are also a significant component of specific environment and Woolworths
is committed to developing strong and long term association with the suppliers through fair
and equitable dealings. In Australian retail market, there is more of buyer dependence stated
to the degree to which Woolworths suppliers relies on buyers as of the significance of the
buyer to the suppliers' sale. This is because the bargaining power of suppliers is low and one
of its key cause is the duopolistic environment in the Australian retail marketplace.
The next key factor is industry regulation where there are some set standardised rules and
laws established by various regulatory agencies and commission and need to follow by every
organisation operating in respective industry. Taking example of Woolworths, the
government and ACCC approves to stronger rules for Coles, Woolworth’s supplier dealings
and in response, it was noted that there will be an introduction of threshold to ensure any
supermarket with at least $5 billion in revenue or 5% market share will sign up to the current
code (Elmas, 2019). The last significant part of the industrial environment is advocacy groups
that include group of concerned people together try to influence the business practices of the
brand. Taking an example of 2018, Consumer advocacy groups have been reluctant to

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criticize Woolworths and Cole’s decision to raise the price of 3 litres, house brand milk to
$3.30 to support of dairy farmers (Mizen, 2018). In results into further actions such as The
Australian Financial Review called a range of customer advocacy organisations to pursue
their visions relating to how the price rise could influence customers and Australia's leading
consumer advocacy group, CHOICE asked for media inquiries to Australian Dairy Farmers.
Ethics and Social Responsibility
It is important for an organisation to undertake various important ethical and social
responsibility practices for the improvement of the welfare of society. According to this
concept, a manager must strive to attain both corporate and societal goals for the longer
sustainability of the organisation as a business is a subset of and exerts an important influence
on society and, it has the responsibility to help in the improvement of society (Park, Kim and
Kwon, 2017). Woolworth's approach to ethical practices and social responsibility can be
assessed relating to profit and growth and how the organisation relates to Group community
and methods in which it reduces environmental impact. According to Woolworths,
synchronisation of the financial performance with the non-financial methods will improve
value for its stakeholders and its members. Towards its social responsibility and ethical
practices, Woolworths also has a CSR program help organisation to maintain a positive
association with employees, suppliers, members and other stakeholders. This program works
as a prescribed form of values and standards that plays an important role in company decision
making. According to Woolworth annual report 2018, one of the strategic pillars is prosperity
in relation with the material issue of corporate conduct and ethics. More definitely, it relates
to maintaining a value based business with a culture of good governance and ethical conduct,
where the culture assists the effective functioning of core processes and systems
(woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2018). Furthermore, offering a healthy and ethical environment,
where consumer and community interests are secure from the destructive costs of problem
gambling.
The company also have compiled with the applicable ethical requirement linking to the
assurance engagements which is grounded on the important philosophies of reliability,
objectivity and professional competence. In terms of social compliances, Woolworth Group
has assumed a group-wide assessment in addition with ethical sourcing managed by a cross

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functional team. It also related to company business structure where Woolworth
benchmarked its approach against prominent global retail drew on customer and investor
visions with transparency in its corporate activities and piloted with suppliers. Regarding
company future plans, Woolworth pledge to transition to 100% reusable and recyclable
packaging in its own brand product by 2025 (woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2018). Furthermore,
the company also effectively coordinate its business activities with 17 global objectives set
by the United Nations in 2015 and Woolworth believes that the business community has an
important role in play in developing significant issues and this makes the company
synchronise their material concerns with the pertinent SDGs.
Mintzberg’s managerial roles
According to Mintzberg, major fulfils three key roles while performing its job i.e.
interpersonal roles, information roles and decisional roles. Mintzberg model can be used as a
frame of reference when I am thinking about building my self-skills and knowledge
(Altamony and Gharaibeh, 2017). The different roles of managers in Mintzberg model signify
that management is often more art than science and every role require developing peer
relationships, inspiring juniors, solving conflicts, developing information network, and get to
the decision with little or ambiguous information (Williams, McWilliams and Lawrence,
2017).
From my perspective and in relevancy of Mintzberg role, I would like to be in decisional
roles as I believe obtaining and sharing information with individuals inside and outside the
organisation is useful to managers as it aids in creating or reaching well decisions. Under
decisional roles, I would also like to practice entrepreneur role in Woolworths. It will help me
on problem solving, creativity skills and excelling with brainstorming sessions or crazy ideas
meetings. Here, change management is very important aspect and in this dynamic and
competitive retail business environment, Woolworths required to be competitive with
innovative ideas and practices against its major rivals i.e. Coles, Aldi and Costco. In this role,
I will work for problem solving and creativity skills so that to gain new ideas and implement
them successfully to gain competitive edge in the retail chain industry.
My previous experience with Gold Coast, a volunteering organisation in Australia offering
aged care providers, sporting clubs, animal welfare, child protection and many more. I work
for the organisation for two months with a mission to optimise social impact by harnessing

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innovation and promotion of inclusion while valuing the importance of collaboration.
Working with the organisation offers me a holistic approach towards different managerial
roles and perspective as with doing volunteering and interacting with individuals and
business organisations, I gain and learn executive volunteering, team building opportunity
and benchmark the business with having social conscience. It will definitely help me in the
next managerial role at Woolworths with gaining of new and innovative ideas. In contrast to
disseminator role, I would also like to pursue the spokesperson role in Woolworth while
sharing information outside their department and company. Making right, ethical and good
decisions depends on having right information and while being a manger in future in
Woolworths, I have to assess a broad range of information from both inside and outside the
company.

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Conclusion
Considering all, it can be state that it is necessary for an organisation to proactively undertake
environmental scanning of the general and specific environment as it allows a brand to act on
threats and opportunities before it leads huge impact on the goodwill and business practices
of the brand. Furthermore, managers also required to pay due attention to latest trends and
events that are directly associated to their organisation capability to compete in the market
place. Woolworths has gained a significant position in the Australian retail market and
current offering wide range of products to the customers, supporting suppliers and local
community while complying with various rules imposed by ACCC and other government
organisation. However, in order to gain competitive edge in the sector, Woolworths required
to pursue differentiation strategy with leveraging technology across all its stores and online
channel.

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References
Altamony, H. and Gharaibeh, A. (2017) The role of academic researcher to Mintzberg’s
managerial roles. International Journal of Business Management and Economic
Research, 8(2), pp.920-925.
Cameron, N. (2015) Woolworths details 3-year strategy to become customer centric
[ONLINE] Available from: https://www.cmo.com.au/article/574302/woolworths-details-3-
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[Accessed 19/01/2020].
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[Accessed 19/01/2020].

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