MARKS & SPENCER

Learning Log- HRM Issues at Marks & Spencer



Learning Log- HRM Issues at Marks & Spencer

Log Entry 1:

Company overview:

Marks and Spencer plc, also known as M&S, is a world's renowned retailer with its headquarters in Westminster, London. It has more than 300 stores across above 40 countries and more than 70 stores in UK. M&S is famous for its clothes and food products. It was found in 1884 by Thomas Spencer and Michael Marks in Leeds. In1998, Marks and Spencer was the first British retailer to acquire pre-tax profit of more than £1 bn. However, after few years M&S faced crisis that lasted for few years. Since 2000 the company Marks & Spencer began rapidly to expand and explore other areas: household products, food, furniture, products for beauty, technology, financial services, etc. In recent years, Marks & Spencer stores act as full-scale shopping centres with huge grocery supermarkets, entertainment venues and cafes (Armstrong, 2009, Pp. 96). The company is covering general merchandise sector and food sector. The general merchandise is divided into menswear, women's clothing, home and beauty. All these units have contributed in shaping up company's vision stating that they want to set a standard through which other company should be measured. These units are centralized by the values of Marks and Spencer. These include trust, service, value and innovation.

Background Information:

With such a comprehensive business scheduled all over the world, Mark and Spencer is very strong institute of UK. Currently the strongest competitors which ate away M&S Share are Asda and Next in cloths line and Tesco in food revenue. The last 3-5 years had been very crucial years of change. There was a series of change in management and corporate structures, with a huge decline in trade. It experienced collegial and uncompetitive blur on the UK stock market. This was due to the change in current economic depression and demand of consumers for retail products, and because of all these hindrances, Mark & Spencer had to go through succession or alignments and transformations (Beardwell, 2010, Pp. 63).

Mark & Spencer's have not been development initiators, due to which they have to suffer this major quantum or organizational changes within them. The corporation has distorted their marketing mix, products/service and target market. Nevertheless, M&S economized and made many employees laid back and yet they were not able to extend the ability to seek out the key to tribulations. They were not able to achieve, both high performance and quality of work life (Buelens & Geert, 2004, Pp. 85). The reasons for all these tribulations are no evidence for scientific management process for the change process that had been incurring throughout the time.

Resons for interest in the issue:

There is no organization in the world that immediately ran on the road of success. Every firm faces hurdles, with respect to the workforce, operations or some other factors. This reasons behid interest development in this issue are to figure out one of the critical issues that impede the progress of a ...