HRM in Marks and Spencer Essay

Introduction and Background attach and Spencer, established 1894 in Leeds,UK and as one of the most recognized brands in the UK and worldwide, had been hugely successful in terms of both profit and mart sh atomic number 18 until the late 1990s. However, after that it suffered a reversal in its fortunes. Correspondingly, its organizational social system and stopping point also underwent certain transformation. The set of dramatic changes include changing whirligig executive and their managerial philosophies. Now, it seems to be on the road to recovery after these radical changes. This article counseles on human resource management in M&S, analysis ranges from its traditional paternalism gardening to mod HRM practices.Paternalism & Unitarist Characteristics beneath paternalism, employers and employees view the company as a family. Its different from traditional manufacturing culture. The separation between the fail floor and management and livelinesss of them and us atomic nu mber 18 what might be expected within a traditional manufacturing culture, where the employment is full-time, long-term and relatively stable and the typical work outplace is a large firm or store. The corporation is a stable sovereign organization with a clear division of labors and everyone abides by the neighborly contract. Similarly, Unitarist deems the short letter organization as a team united by sh atomic number 18d interests and values with cured management as the sole source of authority and focus of loyalty, conflict is seen as irrational and unnecessary.Historic anyy, label and Spencer fits into an anatomy of paternalism with characteristic features of hereditary family ownership, personal relations between employer and worker, a sense of UK religious perpetration and a commitment to social welfargon and public service. The ideal type paternalist workforce matches these, with family employment done large kinship networks and is embedded in a surrounding occupationa l community. Moreover, there was a sapiditying of camaraderie and close-knit family atmosphere within the stores and they employed staffs who are most suitable and fag end right external become part of this family.In addition, every M&S store is identical and the store managers followed of import direction. The high-pitchedly centralized authority also room that there exists little disagreement with policies sent mound from the top. Also, there had never been a CEO of M&S who had not been a member of the throws family or a lifetime employee. The first exception is Vandervelde who had been appointed to the position of chairman at M&S in 2000 from outside the organization. Therefore, this kind of HRM is a typical form of paternalism, which totall(a)y breaks with batch unions and has highly centralized authority and represents the characteristic of unitarist as well.Organizations success is dep closing curtained not just now on reducing costs but also on improving the surge ry of the workforce. The organizations objective or their currently expect of their employees may be completely different from what they expected in the past due to the changing external environment such as bare-assed competitors or new technologies, internal system such as focusing on reducing costs and cutting the full-time sales assistants in store. Some of the external environment and the individual factors driving psychological contract query are illustrated in following figure.Old Contract (Greenbury)New ContractChange environmentStable, short focusContinuous changeCulturePaternalism, time-served, exchange security for commitmentThose who perform get rewarded and beat contract developedRewardsPaid on level, position and circumstancePaid on contributions or performance-establishpublicity basisExpected, based on time served in store and competenceLess opportunity, new criteria, for those who deserve itPersonal incrementThe organizations responsibilityIndividuals responsib ility to improve employabilityConsequently, employees job descriptions might be broadened and their psychological contract will shift correspondingly. Evidence suggests that these changes represented a threat to the reciprocal nature of the psychological contract with consequences for both employees and employers. Meanwhile, the strength of the psychological contract is myrmecophilous on how fair the individual believes the organization is in fulfilling its perceived obligations that the organization treats them fairly, respects their efforts and rewards them justly, its based on mutual obligation. In addition to the summarized old contract characters, evidence also shows that Greenbury only utilise sales figures and visitors to stores as the basis to make judgments on how M&S was operating, whereas lost touch with what their employees opinions or wants. It makes employees feel their portions are unimportant also it weakens their morale and motivation.The Thrill of the Purchase a rticle states this famous paternalistic culture of M&S. They endureed cradle-to-grave benefits for employees but rigidly governed the way that managers operated. Moreover, every aspect of the company was rule-driven. Most of employees feel rule-bound and they are not encouraged to use their personal discretion as well. Neverthe slight, they gradually realized their culture are fall-out-of-step and with the implementation of new HR strategic, M&S becomes open and receptive, moving from a culture of paternalism to a to a greater extent sophisticated culture of choice.Matching employee behaviors and HRM activities to agonistical strategiesMichael Porters generic low-cost or differentiation dodging plunder be adopt in the Marks&Spencer case. Namely, each Porterian combative schema involves a unique set of responses from workers or needed role behaviours and a particular HRM strategy that might generate and reinforce a unique pattern of behaviour (Schuler and Jackson, 2002). There fore, any inconsistency in internal HRM practices will likely lead to role conflict or ambiguity that can put in with individual performance and organizational effectiveness. In the Devanna et al. pose, human resource management strategy and grammatical construction follow and feed upon one another and are influenced by environmental forces. This basic model effected the bare bones of a theory on SHRM. (Linda Maund, 200173)Porters model comprised three components1. cheap lead or cost reduction strategyUsing this strategy, organization will gain militant advantage by being the lowest cost producer. Managers are attempting to increase the organizations market share by emphasise low cost compared to that of its competitors, they try to emphasize that their goods or serve are cheaper. Its an aggressive and tightly cost-controlled strategy that emphasizes overhead minimization. Meanwhile, it pursuits the economies of scale and primarily focus on increase productivity with reduci ng output cost per person and reducing wage levels by all means. This approach takes effect by means of mass-producing, mass-selling to save the costs, whereby gain the impairment superiority. Moreover, it lay asides manufacturing process simple and clamant in orderliness to save the costs of raw materials, whereas basically there are no improvements or expansion of their products.Greenbury, the former chief executive of Marks and Spencer, had decided that to control costs by means of cutting full-time sales assistants in stores, at the same time, bring in full-time, part-time and Saturday staffs to work in stores. Further, their approach is also rely on and highly trust the look of British suppliers and M&S play as a bulk buyer who even buy up all the stock of specific suppliers, whereby conducting mass-selling to earn profits. In addition, as the Channel 4 programme stated at 25th Feb,2001 that operations of the organization within M&S is focused on short-term strategy rather than long-term one and they were firmly placed in the middle ground, emphasize acquiring generalized view of the market instead of trying to target various segments market. The overall strategy is bump-aversive and traditional. Hence, they are adapting typical cost-reduction strategy, meanwhile, with somewhat emphasis on quality aspect.In general, cost reduction pursued through increasingly using of part-time employees, subcontractors, work simplification, measurement procedures, automation, work rule changes, job assignment flexibility. Therefore, consort to this competitive strategy, the expected employees behaviors should be followed the key cost-reduction strategy characteristics illustrate as followLow-cost leadership strategy (Greenbury)Needed Employees BehaviorsHuman mental imagery PracticesRelatively repetitious and predictable behaviorsRelatively fixed and unambiguous job descriptionsA rather short-term focusNarrowly designed jobsPrimarily autonomous or individual ac tivityNarrowly defined career path, unitarismModest mend for qualityExternally, reliable suppliers internally, QC surviveHigh concern for quantity of outputLean production, JIT system, fully participationPrimary concern for resultsminimal levels of employee tuition and developmentLow risk-taking activityShort-term, result oriented performance appraisalsRelatively high compass point of comfort with stabilityClose monitoring of market pay level2. Differentiation or quality enhancement strategyThis strategic emphasizes on enhancing products or services quality and oblation products or services that different from those of its competitors. There are numerous ways to implement this strategy, the most common ones are advertising, offering distinctive product or service features, providing exceptional service, or relying on new technology. The organization is trying to make a unique product or provide a unique service with high quality to attract target clients and earn profits.Due to the risk-aversive and traditional managerial methodologies, actually Greenbury laid less emphasis on quality enhancement or on delivering products with unique quality. Therefore, by April 1999, in order to overcome the difficulties M&S had been facing, Salsbury, the successor of Greenbury, had devised a large-scale promotional campaign to try to doctor its images as an sophisticated retailer offering unique quality products. He started to segment the market and offer different category products to its target customers with strong emphasis on its unique quality. Also, by moving away from its original bureaucratic culture and hierarchical environment, modest amount of cooperation was formed to enhance products quality.At the end of March 2001, for the future development of M&S, Vandervelde, the new chief executive of M&S, started to focus on its core 300 domestic stores by cutting or withdrawing its stores worldwide, and started moving business closer to the customer and selling cus tomized products within the UK. For customized products, quality is a key success factor. Therefore, obviously, at this stage, M&S strategy focuses mostly on differentiation character. The matching HRM practices of this competitive strategy for M&S are summarized as following tableQuality enhancement strategy (Salsbury and Vandervelde)Needed Employees BehaviorsHuman election PracticesRelatively repetitive and predictable behaviorsRelatively fixed and explicit job descriptionsMore long-term or intermediate focusGiving employees more discretionModest amount of cooperative, interdependent behaviorsMix of individual and group criteria for performanceappraisalHigh concern for qualityExtensive and continuous training and development of employees, QC function, TQM practicesModest concern for quantity of outputHigh level of employee participationHigh concern for processTraining and development of employees, TQM practicesLow risk-taking activityRelatively egalitarian treatment of employeesC ommitment to the goals of the organizationApplying Balance scorecard3. counseling or innovation strategyHowever, they also try to design a new range of turn for M&S through hiring famous innovators and conducting in-depth research to understand customers shopping habits and their demographics. This strategy emphasizes some of the innovative character, whereby gain advantaged of its competitors. Its different from the previous two strategies. Meanwhile, the organization concentrates on a specific geographical area, specific group of customers. Overall, for firms pursuing a competitive strategy of innovation, the employees are encouraging to offer suggestions for new and improved ways of doing their job or manufacturing products. Eventually, this strategy will result in feeling of heighten personal control and morale, greater commitment to self and profession. In addtition, selecting highly skilled individuals or training employees could be costly once adopting this strategy.Focus or innovation strategy (Vandervelde)Needed Employees BehaviorsHuman Resource PracticesHigh degree of creative behaviorsSelecting highly skilled individualsLong-term focusAppraising performance for its semipermanent implicationRelatively high level of cooperative, team on the job(p), knowledge sharing and interdependent behaviorsUsing minimal controls normalize degree of concern for both quality and quantityTQM practices, making a greater investment in human resourcesEqual degree of concern for process and resultsProviding more resources for experimentationGreater degree of risk takingAllowing and even rewarding occasional failureUncertainty, unpredictability and constant changeCompensation, incentives, giving employees more discretionComparatively speaking, Low-cost leadership is effective but difficult to do in a high-cost organization. Differentiation can be profitable if target customers are not particularly concerned with price but its costly to implement, such as research and development, advertising costs. Focus strategy can gain quick returns but takes time to identify area or group and the cost could be even higher since it focuses on innovative aspect of products.Analyze Matching model and other HRM strategiesFrom the in a higher place comparison, we can see that effectiveness will increase by melding HR practices with competitive strategy. The advantages of this model are obviously and are summarized as following tableComponentAdvantagesDisadvantagesLow-cost leadershipEffective elusive to do in a high-cost organizationDifferentiationCan be profitable if target customers are not particularly concerned with priceCostly to implement, e.g. research and development, advertising costsFocus supple returnsTakes time to identify area or group(Linda Maund, 200155 Adantages and disadvantages of Porters competitive strategies)However, anyways the disadvantages illustrated above, the practice of this matching model could also be problematic since achieving th e goal of close fit of business and HRM strategy can contradict the core soft HRM goals of commitment, flexibility and quality. Work organization as M&S may adopt a soft version of HRM for managerial staffs, which is consistent with its current strategy, whereas concurrently pursuing a hard version of HRM for low-level worker, which might undermine the commitment of the latter. Hence, the matching model is essentially unitary and it tends to assume that workers are unproblematic and will comply with managements perception of the needed role behaviors.Meanwhile, we also cannot ignore the fact that workers and their unions, especially for M&Ss famous British working union, might influence strategic planning. In addition, excessive fit can be disadvantageous to gaining competitive advantage since it can make a company inflexible and incapable of adapting quickly to the external environment. Recalled that when Greenbury insisted on its cost-reduction strategy and its quality criteria, the environment of the whole market has gradually changed. Competitors targeted at niche market and adopted differentiation strategy to attract and gain credibility among numerous consumers, whereas M&S still keep its traditional or risk-aversive way to do business.RecommendationOther HR strategies suggestions for M&S At individual level, employees motivation can be stimulated through appropriate job design and rewards. Also, emphasizing employees participation or empowerment, and it could be reinforced through encouraging front-line staff to solve customer problems on the spot, without constant recourse to management approval.At organizational level Development through changing the paternalism structure and corresponding traditional culture to a culture of the individual and of teams. The organization should focus on make its growth valued (such as brand revitalized by Vandervelde) and rewards excellence. Meanwhile, strategy-focused organizations like M&S can apply the balanced sc orecard to align their employees to their strategy. This strategy can be implemented through dialogue and education, personal and team objectives, and incentive and reward systems. They should extensively use self-managed teams and decentralization. Also, paying attention to reducing status differentials and encouraging willingness to share information. Finally, when individuals understand how their pay is linked to achieving strategic objectives, and set personal objectives to met and help to get through the strategic objectives, organizations effectiveness will expect to be achieved.References and BibliographiesLinda,M.(2001) An Introduction to Human Resource Management theory and practice, Hampshire, New York Palgrave Publishers LtdSchuler,R.S and Jackson,S.E (2002, 7th edn) Managing Human Resources A Partnership Perspective diary of Personnel Review,31(1),114-121Tyson,S. and York,A. (2000,4th edn) Essentials of HRM, Houston Butterworth HeinemannTorrington,D. and Hall,L. 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