Sainsbury plc.

Sainsbury plc.

Introduction

Sainsbury plc. is the parent company of Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd. It is the third-largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, with a market share of over 16 percent (J Sainsbury plc. 2019). Qatari royal family is the largest shareholder since it owns about 27 percent of Sainsbury’s. Sainsbury’s is listed on the London Stock Exchange, which is a subsidiary of the FTSE 100 Index. The performance of the company mostly relies on its leadership style. Therefore, Sainsbury’s must improve its performance to revive its position. In order to improve performance and become the market leader in the retail sector, it must practice good management practices to influence more favourable business performance.

The management style in an organisation can affect performance, and operations meet business objectives. Therefore, Sainsbury’s possess an elaborate organizational structure with both autocratic and democratic management styles. This helps the company to achieve its organisational purpose of being the customer’s choice in food. Managers are entitled to make critical decisions in Sainsbury’s with the assistance of staff members. The managers are expected to collect relevant data needed from the staff members concerning the given annual surveys. It implies that the staff helps the managers to make decisions on areas within the company. In return, the managers will make decisions, as well as consulting staff members.

As a learning organization, Sainsbury’s clarifies the significant objectives, then moves towards the exploration of commitment to management willingness. Also, Sainsbury’s analyse its management issues and try to correct them as it reflects on the openness by identifying personal agenda. Most managers at Sainsbury’s make decisions by considering the best interest of the company and learning different new management ways that are generative rather than adaptive. Similarly, they try to replace management compliance through commitment. That is, managers, replace dialogue with discussion while suspending assumptions and foster on shared visions.

There is a clear vision at Sainsbury’s of becoming the most trusted company in the retail market where people can enjoy working. Moreover, the company has the heritage that has been set up for over 100 years, and this has been the central value of the company, where people can work by applying learning and development activities after attaining the set vision. The training process at Sainsbury’s has been established through explained audits, and this ensures that there are high standards of covering experience, learning, assessment, and taking feedbacks.

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The organisational structure of Sainsbury’s above is in a way that it is in line with the enhancement of the continuation and effectiveness of services. The background of the company has emphasised service provision (Caldwell, 2012, p. 178). Therefore, workforce efficiency is not the priority of the company. The substantial difference in leadership style is another significant organisational factor. The specific branch includes bureaucratic, which holds the importance of cultural powers that depend on hierarchy by trying to control the authority of the branch.

Management style

After interviewing the manager at Kingswood branch, I realized that Sainsbury’s plc. Is operating in a democratic leadership style since team meetings are arranged where ideas and business problems are put forward and solved as a team. Mostly, the meetings are informal. However, the branch manager and Kingswood believe that the company is operating in a democratic style. Still, after engaging some employees at the lower level, I received various reactions from them. They thought that Sainsbury’s is operating in a more autocratic style, where managers tell their subordinates what actions to take rather than asking for their opinion. This is interesting as the managers believe that employees are responsible for their decisions. At the same time, employees believe that the manager should order them to perform their duties. Sainsbury has several managers that spread in the hierarchy, and this implies that each manager has some decisions made for him or her and also make others.

Decision Making

By looking at the organisational structure of Sainsbury, it means that the company functions in a hierarchal formation. Each employee is different within the hierarchy, even though all workers are treated equally within the organization. The company’s chairman lies at the top hierarchical structure. This means that the chairman is responsible for controlling and supporting work on lower departments of the CEO and CFO. Therefore, the functional interface of the company mounts from the top management level.

The management approach in a company is, therefore, focus on the provision of better value for money and higher quality products and services than the competitor. Since Sainsbury seems to practice diversification of business activities, the objective of the firm is to produce effective and comprehensive services in all life aspects. Sainsbury embraces the strategy of corporate governance through the sharing of responsibility and distribution of profits to involve shareholders and investors. By focusing on financial analysis through the opinions of market analysts, the business strategy of Sainsbury is based on discussions, suggestions, deliberations, and open approach to recommendations for improvement. One of the main characteristics of the company’s management approach is based on customer loyalty through the introduction of loyalty schemes to retain customers (Lemon et al., 2002, p. 6). Hence, Sainsbury’s is building long-term relationships with its customers. As a result, the decision-making process in Sainsbury’s is based on centralized concepts, where the contribution of every employee is important.

Entrepreneurship
Sainsbury’s has invested in small suppliers through new hot housing schemes to differentiate its offer (Leyland, 2018). The retailer has tasked its managers to find distinctive brands with potential offers. Therefore, smaller brands can be used to fill the gap of brand offering as the company continues to move away from commoditized brands. This involves investing in distinctive products, as illustrated in the marketing department. Moreover, the management team ensures that customers are served with innovative and unique shopping experiences. However, innovation will come from existing brands, but the smaller brands are also vital. Particularly, the Millennial are interested in more challenging products, and they want a unique and innovative product range. As entrepreneurs, the mangers are Sainsbury work out on what they can do with both large and small brands. Led by the branch managers, the future product team is looking to provide the best challenger brands into the company to strengthen the reputation of the retailer for innovative processes.

The managers are there to support the business for the company to remain bold by taking a few risks in venturing in regions that are believed to blow up (Rogers, 2019). Before the establishment of future brands, it was the responsibility of every consumer to source new brands while working with the established players. But the buyer is not able to feasibly attend each trade show. Therefore, it is the role of the managers to nurture conversation with each potential buyer to enable Sainsbury to make a decision on the dedicated workforce that can work in collaboration with the buying teams.

The absolute entrepreneurial skills of the managers at Sainsbury’s enable them to use the support function to bring new management insights, inspirations, and challenges (Rogers, 2019). Additionally, the future brand team works together with the own-brand teams by sharing relevant inspiration to make decisions on whether to bring in-house ideas through the sourcing of new suppliers.

The managers at Sainsbury’s are hunting for inspiration

Different line managers at Sainsbury’s have realized that ideas for the next innovation, particularly in the food and drink can come from anywhere. To achieve this, the team have analysed customer data and updated them with the current consumer trends in the U.S and the U.K. this acts as a proxy for what is likely to take off in the United Kingdom. Therefore, the company informally partner with venture capital organisations to accelerate various ventures and identify the entrepreneurial heat, as well as where investors are putting their money.  These entrepreneurial skills of the managers are coupled with insights from the consumers who understand the marketplace. Unlike other employees within Sainsbury’s, managers do not really concerned with seasonality since they are looking for products that will sell all year round as suppliers prepare to commit at least a year of brand-level exclusivity. Therefore, managers do brand leverage in the portfolio with seasonal opportunities by proposing new product development.

Motivation and leadership

Motivation presents actions, desires, and needs of people. Similarly, it is the directional behavior of individuals. The concept of motivation prompts individuals to act in some ways that are likely to develop attitude for specific conducts (Dörnyei and Ema 2013, p. 48). There are certain needs in individuals, and this compel a person to undertake certain things that fulfil those needs and wants. Regarding motivation theory, there is push and pull motivations. Push motivations is where individuals push themselves towards the aim of attaining their desires such as relaxation, health and fitness, adventure, and social interaction (Meece, Anderman and Anderman, 2006, p. 490). Therefore, push motivation operates as a willpower, and this is only strong as the desire behind the willpower.

Sainsbury’s is using job design, reward system, quality of work life, employee participation and training methods to increase employee motivation in the company. These factors influence the way of life among employees. Jobs that are designed properly, employees become more motivated and satisfied (Badubi, 2017, p.45). As a result, well-designed jobs will positively affect employees, and this motivates them towards performance. Work motivation increase employee satisfaction and performance. Hence, it increases productivity and efficiency in the organization. So, well-designed jobs at Sainsbury’s leads to creativity and quality innovation among employees.

Sainsbury uses reward system to motivate workers. The systems seeks to attract individuals to work for the company and keep them coming to work and motivate an employee to perform high level. According to Gagne and Edward (2005), the reward system develops the ability to make decisions among employees (p. 335). Employees are influenced to work more through reward systems because they receive more incentives. Workers who view rewards as worth the effort will be more motivated towards hard work to get monetary incentives. The leadership of Sainsbury’s involves all employees, and this encourage communication between workers. Motivation is a level of energy, commitment and creativity that workers apply in their daily roles. Moreover, Sainsbury’s give employees more responsibilities and decision-making authority, and this motivates them. Through this, employees do more work, and therefore, they become responsible towards job (Cornelius et al., 2008, p. 360).

Multicultural groups and teams

Culture represents a characteristics of a given group of people and it is defined by language, religion, and social behaviors. Currently, culture is influenced by multiple groups of people. Over the decade, organisational culture has been the back bone for companies. However, it has recently received a lot of attention since it is about what people see and expect to achieve. There are hidden aspects that companies abide that the general public don’t acknowledge.

After visiting Sainsbury’s, its visible aspects of cultural organization was complete. However, the hidden aspects depends on the values, beliefs, behaviors, and what constitutes a business. For example, the homepage of Sainsbury’s states that, “you should be passionate about working in a customer-facing environment.” This indicates that eve during recruitment process, Sainsbury is looking for people that matches its foundations.

Future

The future leadership of Sainsbury’s is promising since the company is continuously recruiting and retaining employees. As a result, Sainsbury’s has been engaging in the introduction of innovative products and services. For example, the company has place the bid to reach the Millennials by introducing several new products for trial periods as part of its “taste the future scheme.”

Conclusion

Sainsbury’s has an elaborate organizational structure with both autocratic and democratic management styles. This helps the company to meet its organisational objective of being the customer’s choice in food. Managers are entitled to make key decisions in Sainsbury’s with the assistance of staff members. The company follow hierarchical decision making process, where all employees are expected to participate. Regarding entrepreneurship, Sainsbury’s has remain innovative where it offers the best challenger brands, and this strengthen reputation of the retailer for innovative processes. Motivational factors involves responsibility, job satisfaction, achievement and growth opportunities. These motivate workers for superior performance in the workplace. In this scenario, Sainsbury’s uses job design, reward, and coaching methods to implement motivation in the company. The company keep its workers engaged in critical roles in order to develop confidence and satisfaction.