Research Methodology
Discuss About The Essentials Of Contemporary Management Mcgraw.
Management theories have been evolving with time as each new era has distinct problems of their own (Shafritz, Ott & Jang, 2015). New theories on management develop by doing case studies on companies to identify the factors that make a company successful or failure. It is to be understood that a single theory cannot achieve success for every company. Research undertaken by Woolworth shows that, they have used several management strategies based on theories to develop a customer centred culture and team within the workplace. In this aspect, the management theories of the company are aligned with the generation of sustainable sales with the growing momentum of food demand. In this aspect, Woolworth is evolving their business to offer increased value and convenience to the consumer along with empowering portfolio of business for pursuing ways to produce stakeholder’s value. Thereafter, the management has to understand which theory is in relevance with their organization and can be a benefactor to it. Recent theories such as knowledge management, risk management, quality management, six sigma, core competencies, and others have some fundamental similarities, as all of them emphasizes on improving the process of work and constantly providing better product and service quality (Jones, George & Langton, 2013). The management also is obligated to follow the ethics of the company. Social environment and politics play a crucial part in determining the role of managerial function in an organization.
Woolworths Group Limited is an Australia based retailing company, which operates extensively in Australia and New Zealand. This report will critically analyse the roles and functions that managers perform and discuss the challenges and risks they face in the Woolworths Group Limited. Moreover, it will also discuss what impact values, ethics and diversity have on this organization’s culture. The report will provide a rationale that discusses research methodology and compares different organizational theory. Qualitative analysis and authentic external sources will be used to prepare this report.
Within the concepts of strategic management, there are diverse ranges of theories that can be used by the organization to focus on the interactive effect used for framing variables of performance. In this aspect, it can be said that the success of the organization is not dependent on a single element of isolation. The research methodology used by Woolworth is integrated with resource-based management theory of the company. In this, it has been identified that competitive edge is necessary for managing the organizational ability. Similar to this the role of competitive advantage is deduced from the mutual reinforcing influence of the consistency between organizational elements. In this context Gallardo-Gallardo et al., (2015) argues with the fact that organizational unique system is the major source of managing competitive edge.
Overview of the organization
In this aspect, the management theory used by Woolworths is stakeholder there that is used to create value for the stakeholders. In order to evaluate the way by which suppliers are being treated by Wools worth in rendering them as suppliers, the method used by the research was based on Post-positivism, descriptive approach for investigating the data within a specific context of the organization. In this context, a range of data could be used consisting of archived records for generating the strategy of theory. It has been found that in the case of Woolworth, ACCC charged the organization of behaving in an unconscious was by demanding cash in the year 2014. The program was labelled as Mind the Gap program that revealed that the company has four major dimensions in their theory of management such as delegation of duty, lack of management inference, grandfather theory and the system of feedback inside closed door of an organization.
It is very important for the managers of different organizations to make the right decisions by collecting information. If the managers do not have access to sufficient information about the working environment then they have no other options than to take decisions based on assumption. Although intuition plays a role in management it is not similar to providing sufficient information at the right time. It depends on the quality of information that the decision of the management is effective or not (Grimmer & Mortimer, 2018). The prime requirement, being a manager of the organization, is to gather information as per the need of the present scenario.
Information can be collected using different methods of data collection. The most common form of research at Woolworths was conducted using post-positivism philosophy and deductive approach. The researcher who worked on this project has used secondary sources from Woolworth’s organization for collecting data, which was analysed in a qualitative manner. The company reports and Woolworths case study was used as secondary sources to gather information. Qualitative analysis was used to study the collected data. The annual reports of the company and shareholder reports were collected to find out that the company was suffering from certain managerial issues. Moreover, the news about the managerial issues in Woolworths was highlighted in the daily media, which helped in collecting information about the research. Grimmer (2018) stated that information could be sourced from two areas- inside the organization and outside the organization. The internal and external environment of the Woolworths is contrasted in terms of the forces and conditions, which might have an impact on the performance of the organization. Both the internal and external environments are the prime factors of organizational operation. These dynamic areas need to be properly supervised by the managers for collecting information. It is helpful in recognizing new opportunities, look for changes and take effective decisions.
For instance, if the manager of Woolworths takes the decision of modifying the selling price of the products then he needs to look for a variety of categories before taking the final call. He needs to consider the cost of production and it is extremely unfortunate for certain companies to be unaware of their product price. While taking this decision, it is important to have a clear concept about the pricing strategy of the competitors. This is because if the management of Woolworths keeps the price of the product very expensive then there is the least scope for the products to be sold. In this way, they will miss the opportunity to sell their products on the market. On the other hand, if the prices are kept too low then the company will lose the opportunity to gain a better profit margin (Grimmer, 2018). Therefore, the manager has to look carefully at the customers’ preferences and demands. The individuals who are more experienced in the field of management gather better information in their regular activities as a form of naturally occurring data.
On 5th of December, 1924, Woolworths inaugurated their first retail shop called Woolworths Stupendous bargain Basement in Sydney (“The Woolworths Story – Woolworths Group”, 2017). The company was founded by five people -, Stanley Chatterton, Cecil Scott Waine, Ernest Williams, Percy Christmas and George Creed. Over the decades, the company extended their business by opening supermarkets, grocery stores, food stores, petrol stations, liquor stores, hotels and pubs, and other departmental stores that offer discounts, under various names across Australia and New Zealand. Currently, the company had been employing 202000 employees under its name.
In recent times, Woolworths Group Limited is facing problems in profiting from their existed shops in comparison with their competitors in the market. As a result, their revenue is experiencing a decrement. They have grown a strong relationship with their customers and suppliers for their consistency in proving quality service and products. Yet, at present, challenges are arising with their profit level. The company has great potential to make a proper use of their resources in order to attract the new generation. Nevertheless, there has been proof of recent lack in innovation in the field of marketing; the high price is also another problem that they are facing. The management is being unable to make proper utilization of the e-market through online shopping (Kelly & Tetlock, 2013). In the intensely competitive market, they are losing customers for their comparatively high price than their competitors. The management has to make use of the technologies to create better and more attractive advertisement strategy and make effective e-marketing plans (Jolivet, Jullien & Postel-Vinay, 2016). In addition, they need to make themselves sufficient in conceptual skills to visualize the future of their business and take actions accordingly.
For this research, Woolworths Group Limited was selected as it is one of the leading organizations in the retail industry. It is successfully running in their retailing market for more than ninety years. It has been expanding its business from general merchandise to food, petrol, liquor, grocery, hotels and pubs in Australia and New Zealand. Through the years, they had brought many innovative strategies to satisfy their customer requirements. The new generation depends much on gadgets and technology. Modern technology has brought the stores to their houses. The company utilize this advantage in making their online stores more available. It will be effective in attracting the contemporary generation and increasing the target market (Laudon & Traver, 2013). A thorough study of the Woolworths Group Limited will help the company to comprehend the current market trends and the competition in the relevant industry. Being able to understand that, it will be possible for them to make a proper plan and execute them accurately. The company had been selected as it has the potentiality in the management and the resources to provide better and more effective services to their customers in a more convenient way (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). This report will make some suggestions for the organizations, which will direct them towards their attainment of the current company goal. With appropriate strategy, the company will gain its previous position in the market.
The management strategies at the Woolworths group are intended to put the customers as first preference. They have set different objectives in order to attain their goals. Those objectives are given below:
- To build up a strong team of culture led by the customers and store
- To create sustainable sales popularity in food
- To modify the retail business so that customer value can be enhanced and they can be provided more convenience (King & Thobela, 2014)
- To boost up the portfolio businesses in order to look for the strategies for providing shareholder value
- To be the lean retailer in the end- to- end process and system excellence
In this context, the contingency theory can be used which stated that the managers make effective decisions based on the current scenario instead of a general one that is applicable to all. The Woolworths management had taken decisions based on their current scenario in order to utilize the leadership approach. Such an approach includes the participation from the co-workers, but the leader might want to utilize an autocratic approach. Apart from the contingency theory, there are other principles, which Woolworths follows, in its organizational structure. They follow the processes of planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling as per the administrative theory of Henri Fayol (Eacott, 2015). These are the five important functions in the field of management, which helped in solving the issues in a creative manner. They have always maintained the strategies of creating a great retail team that pay heed to the customers, suppliers and team members.
Contingency theory is signified as the organizational environment that helps to establish a leader within the workplace. Therefore, based on the theory of contingency it can be said that the surroundings of the leaders are effective for Woolworths Company. It is the connection between the subordinate employees and the managers that help the company to develop effective communication between them (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). In this context, Woolworth’s organization maintains the trait and contingency theory for developing the organizational structure of the company. In order to maintain HR management theories within organization Woolworth have successfully adapted the trait theory and Contingency theory. However, the trait theory has not been beneficial all the time, as a result, physical features have been taken into consideration. It has been found that the application of trait theory in Woolworth has not been proved to be effective since subjective judgment is associated with it. On the contrary, the implementation of contingency theory is appropriate for Woolworth Company. In this regards, it has been seen that Contingency theory helps the company to make sure about the accessibility of the appropriate people for the specific project. Moreover, through the implementation of contingency theory, Woolworth exercises control over all the employees in a wide area of locations.
The trait theories are implied ad the great man theory after the evidence of the talent. In this aspect, the employees working for the HRM department in Woolworth have got some certain unique capabilities. These particular capabilities help them to behave, like a leader within the organization. Moreover, it helps the organization to recognize the innovative personality of the employees and their attitudes. It is, therefore, one of the most naturally pleasing theories that offer them constructive data on leadership motivation. By approaching and managing change within the firm, with the help of individual effort the organization manages its business in an innovative way. Woolworth members are trained in a way to establish the necessary skills to implement changes across all their departmental area.
The management programs, which were implemented in the organization used to receive daily feedback and suggestions from the customers. It referred to focusing on the on the regular activities to improve the services and shopping experiences of the customers. The management team has struggled hard to serve the purpose of bringing little good to everyone on a daily basis and putting the customers as first preferences. The management uses the strategies of innovation in their products in order to provide the best to their customers as they consider the customers as their top priority. Moreover, their portfolio businesses enable them to highlight in providing the shareholder value. They are thinking of modifying their strategies in order to turn around their business scenario.
By implementing the use contingency theory, Woolworths is slowly responding towards the new age of innovation by delivering the foundations of growth and opportunity. Therefore, addressing the demands made by the customers at the central point of their business, the management system of the company has drastically changed their way of selling the products with the use of mobile technology. The company has also raised the availability of operations towards the products and stability of process procedures (Otley, 2016). For examples, the companies have sold all their retail products, in the local stores of Australia. Thereafter, by accepting the changes within the contingency theory, the company has focused their business operations towards online processes to reach the most potential consumers. Eventually, the organization has realized the requirements to keep up with the changing demands of the customers by ensuring the retailed growth of operational processes (Hörisch, Freeman & Schaltegger, 2014).
According to Knox (2015), they follow simple strategies of developing one team, refreshing stores, upgrading their product offering, developing a cohesive brand and reducing costs to improve the policies and procedures. As it is said that retailing is never stagnant, therefore they place their customers in the forefront, listen to their opinions and create unique ways to shop with them. Mobile technology advancement has helped since the past years have helped in providing the best shopping experience to the customers. It is their lookout that the customers can move forward in the retail industry without any barrier and get access to the products and prices from every corner of the world. They are concerned about their customers and therefore decided to invest in the areas of open business so that it is a compliment to their retail stores. Such open businesses include mobile applications, websites, online stores and special delivery options.
Woolworths has approximately 18 million customers every week where everyone values the other. They get ample choices about the locations from where they want to shop. Therefore, they work hard and struggle to gain their custom and reward as loyalty. Owing to the various associated product lines delivered by Woolworths, the company has to follow a conglomerated structure. In this the structure of management within the company are classified into three major areas, Woolworths South Africa, based on Africa, David Jones, trading operations are managed in Australia and country road group is based New Zealand and southern Africa. The specific organizational structure offers them with much-required flexibility, improved speed and reliability to face and resolve the changing environment of business while developing deceptive organization (Brannen, Piekkari & Tietze, 2015). Apart from these, the companies organizational structure includes the board of directors, the board of management and brand management operators who manage the brand the board of directors within the organization are accountable for evaluating the overseas operators of the organization. Therefore, it is evident that the management system of Woolworths is engaged in the management system of control.
The management board includes the range of individuals like CEO, managing directors, CFO and other employees. All of these managers and employees manage their expertise areas to gather evaluated and reported information based on the performance of the areas. These areas analyse the different management strategies of the company in comparison to the performance of the specific unit of the group. By doing so, it helps the organization to accomplish the pre-developed objectives. For instance, with the help of organizational and management group of team Woolworths measurement of performance depends on the implement of home and other requirements.
Unique innovations in stores have paved a better approach for establishing a firm base to their business. Every single aspect of association with the business is aimed at making the customers’ lives simple, better and easy. In terms of the stakeholders and partners of Woolworths, they have followed the strategies of collaboration, fairness and local sources (Luiz, 2016). Implying everything is a part of a working relationship that is based on mutual trust and integrity. Majority of the stakeholders of the company are associated with them for more than a decade and they work in close bonding to develop the products and services of the customers. Given below is the current management structure of the Woolworths group:
Fig: Management structure of Woolworths
Source: (Spillan & Ling, 2015)
Fig: Management strategies used at the Woolworths
Source: (King & Thobela, 2014)
Information is a critical factor in the effective management of the organization. However, there are restrictions in the types of information that is collected from several sources. In the case of corporate governance in Woolworth, they maintain ethics and diversity in an effective way. It has been seen that over half of the total employees within working in Woolworth are comprised of female that splits the board into a ratio of 50:50 in between male and female workers. In this context, FY16 it has been found that there are 39% of the women who are working in a management position in the company. The company aims to enhance the overall equality performance by offering inspirational role models and they are also focused on reducing the gender pay gap. For maintaining corporate social responsibility Woolworth has implemented several business practices that entails to its social, legal and environmental restrictions (Brannen, Piekkari & Tietze, 2015). Therefore, based on these factors, the company has been working on an ongoing process of water maintenance project with the WWF-SA as a part of water sustainability needs of the organizational strategy. In this aspect, the organization manages to conduct training workshops for their employees through a GBJ program. Moreover, the company donates additional surplus food from their stores to the charities that could otherwise be wasted. However, Woolworth is determined to introduce programs in support of recycling programs for the customers and reduction of waste to limit the adverse effect on the environment (Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2015). Woolworth Company is a member of SEDEX, the exchange of supplier ethical resources that based on the innovative web-based program. This specific system helps the organization to maintain an ethical supply of products and thereby challenging the process of involving with multiple tier supply of the company.
It is required to maintain certain ethical standards while collecting information and no illegal and unethical activities are entertained (Rosenbaum-Elliott, Percy& Pervan, 2015). Given below is the list of illegal and unethical activities, which is not accepted by the management at Woolworths:
- Stealing documents from the competitors is not accepted
- Gathering information from the competitors under false presence is illegal
- No employees of the rival companies should be contacted to gather information by giving bribe.
The success of the company depends on the collection of items in one area of business that successful and ethically serves the requirements of all the community members. In this aspect, some of the retailers argue that these can be achieved by delivering the retailers with the exclusive right to sell their products in the centre specifically if the centre is developed through the efforts of the developer and the owner (Eacott, 2015). In case of doing such things, the company completely agrees with the lease agreement guidelines with regards to confidentiality and security issues of the owners handling the shopping centres. They legally maintain the rules integrated into the occupancy of space and legal criteria.
Apart from these, according to the society of competitive intelligence professional, the codes of ethics are given below: struggle for improving the identity and fame of the profession; Maintain the applicable domestic and international laws; Disclose the accurate information in a proper manner including the name of the organization; Avoid clash and conflicts while fulfilling the duties; Provide authentic and genuine recommendation (Spillan & Ling, 2015).
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded from this paper that Woolworths had managed to maintain all the relevant strategies in their stores and they are looking forward to amending some more strategies. They are focusing on the rival companies to make appropriate strategies for their organization. Authentic data were collected from the secondary sources of the organization, which were analysed in a qualitative manner. Therefore, it can be seen from the study that Woolworth has applied various theories of management such as traits theory, contingency theory to manage their employees and organization integrated with innovative ideas. The theory of contingency and change is the most used strategies of the organization to address customer-centred service. Moreover, post-positivism philosophy and deductive approach undertaken in the course of this research helped in the collection of valid data. It was found out from this report that the basic skills that a manager must possess to successfully govern a company are technical, interpersonal; and conceptual skills. The ethical codes and standards are outlined to highlight the unethical and illegal issues, which are not accepted at Woolworths.
References
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