Strategic ManagementProvide a strategic analysis of Marks and Spencer Essay

Strategic ManagementProvide a strategic analysis of Marks and Spencer and make recommendations for its future development and direction - Essay Example Their finance division is currently tiny, but growing rapidly. 300 out of 379 stores are in the UK; their European stores are run as franchises; they also have US subsidiaries under different names. They sell 35% of the UK lingerie market, 25% of men's suits, and 50% of chilled ready meals. For more than half a century Marks & Spencer was the epitome of enlightened capitalism, dominating the British high street and providing shoppers with quality and value clothing unrivalled by competitors. Then in November 1998, profits began to fall and an attempted boardroom coup rocked the company to its core as a tale of ambition, treachery and incompetence unfolded. Within a few months the Press declared open season on what had been its favourite retailer and suddenly the company that had been unable to do any wrong, could do no right. New management and armies of consultants have worked frantically to reverse the trend and in the autumn of 2001, George Davies the creator of Next, launched a new range of fashionable clothes to tempt shoppers back. Whether or not he succeeds, Marks & Spencer may never regain its former status. Organization culture: It is the 'basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously and define in a basic taken-for granted fashion an organization's view of itself and its environment'. Such taken-for-granted assumption are also likely to exist at the organizational level-the organizational paradigm-and can be especially important as an influence on the development of organizational strategy. The 80's saw a massive growth of interest in culture and symbolism in organisations by practitioners as well as academics. Culture and symbolism is about meaning and imagery. They are terms used to highlight the softer' features of organisation. The patterning of action within organisation is treated as a web of meanings and symbols rather than as a hard' structure or system. The key to both understanding organisations and to controlling organisations is seen to lie in their analysis as cultures (e.g. values, myths, ceremonies, etc.). The explanation of why people act as they do may lie not in a combination of "objective" and "subjective" factors, but in a network of meanings which constitute a "world taken for granted" (Schutz, (1964) by the participants. Indeed, "objective" factors, such as technology and market structure, are literally meaningful only in terms of the sense that is attached to them by those who are concerned and the end to which they are related... Organisations do not react to their environment, their members do. People act in terms of their own and not the observer's definition of the situation' (Silverman's, 1970) A key for sustainability of all organization is to change and evolve continuously to match with its environment out side its window in which it operates. Until the late 1990s M&S have been very successful. It worked to achieve this esteem by applying a structured formula to all its operations and maintained it by establishing a set of fundamental principles, which were held as core to the organization and used in all of its business activities since its birth. Their paradigm help them in the past but the same paradigm didn't worked in the