There’s an old saying in China: “It’s easy to strike a river and a mountain, but difficult to keep a river and a mountain”. It means that it may be easy to build a country or a company, but it is not easy to keep it. How to make a company last? How to solve the various crises and changes in the process of growth? Are we prepared to cope with changes in the external environment in advance? Those questions all could test a company’s change management.

The Brexit

Britain’s biggest change in the near future is “Brexit”. From March 29, 2017, the United Kingdom officially launched Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and prepared for the agreement to leave Europe. It has been two years since then. However, the delay in reaching an agreement puts Britain at risk of Brexit without an agreement. Now there are three possibilities: first, on April 12, there is no agreement to Brexit; second, cancel the Brexit; and third, apply for a postponement of Brexit (BBC News 2019).

Regardless of the fact that Brexit has had an impact on British companies, London-based companies are believed to be the most affected. These consequences may vary from industry to industry, but many London-based companies are now questioning the future of the UK (Eisenberg, A. 2019).

Marks and Spencer’s problem

Marks and Spencer (M&S), a 100-year-old London Department store, including fashion, food and even banks has inevitably been influenced by the Brexit. Because the price rising of some links of supply chain caused by Brexit might make it is difficult to keep the price of goods unchanged. This will put a lot of pressure on M&S in her corporate recovery plan. They have been facing years of declining profits, higher commodity prices will make it harder to increase turnover (M&S 2019).

Solution to the problem

How to solve the problems that might arise from the Brexit? After my learning of change management theories and case study from Mullins (2016) I will elaborate on the following three aspects:

Organizational change：Moving from the heavyweight corporate structure to a family of parallel businesses, each with shared brand values but each led by its own integrated management team. Streamlining the company’s structure could save human costs, especially too many middle-level managers, who pay relatively high wages, and to some extent lead to inefficient implementation of internal strategies.

Business structural change：Change business infrastructure and make the digital first which means investing in e-commerce fulfillment. Traditional department stores like M&S are slow to respond to market changes because of their huge corporate system. Today, with the vigorous development of e-commerce economy, if we continue the old sales model dominated by physical stores, we will miss the rapid growth of business brought by e-commerce.

Strategic change：More commercial, attract younger customers, change the old internal manage tools into new system. In order to reduce the cost of Brexit, we must change our strategies more actively to attract more young families. Change the “old” image that remains in the minds of consumers, and maintain business vitality to win back customers.

Action plan recommended to M&S:

1.Selected supply chain by reducing the number of product lines and buy more quality products in greater depth. That will reduce the cost of supplier and factory, even some of them want to increase the price because of Brexit.

2.Build a new distribution centre is a step towards delivering a single-tier network of national distribution centres which could reduce the cost of delivery from multiple stock points.

3.Reduce the store’s area of fashion. M&S always have big sale area of fashion which could become more efficient with less products but higher quality.

4.Build a new IT system and update training contents to employees. That is a step towards efficient working environment and better customer service.

5.Use younger fashion brands to attract younger customers which is the major consumption of the UK.

Learning Outcomes

1. The major forces of change include :Uncertain economic conditions; globalization and fierce world competition; the level of government intervention; EU influences and social legislation; political interests; conflict from within the organization (Mullins 2016).

2.Economic change in the EU because of Brexit. (Eisenberg, A. 2019) .

3.The challenge of e-business. Except of economic environment change, the most challenge is come from e-commerce which totally change the game (Burnes, B. 2009)

4.Resitance to change including individual resistance and organizational resistance (Mullins 2016).

5. Getting people to accept change. It also need some methods to let employees and stockers accept strategy change by analyzing benefits and risks clearly (Mullins 2016).

Reference list:

Berytech. (2019). Change Management in Startups: What Founders Need to Know | Berytech. [online] Available at: http://berytech.org/change-management-in-startups/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2019].

BBC News. (2019). What happens next?. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46393399 [Accessed 12 Apr. 2019].

Burnes, B. (2009), Managing Change, 5th Edition, Financial Times Press

Eisenberg, A. (2019). Business After Brexit: What Changes for UK Businesses?. [online] Business.trustedshops.co.uk. Available at: https://business.trustedshops.co.uk/blog/brexit-damage-european-market/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2019].

Kotter, J.P. and Schliesinger, L.A., (2008), Choosing strategies for change, Harvard Business Review, (Jul-Aug2008), Vol. 86 Issue 7/8, p130-139

Laurie J. Mullins (2016) Management & Organizational Behavior, Eleventh edition, Pearson Education

McGuire, J.B., Palus, C.J., Passmore, W. and Rhodes, G.B. (2009), Transforming your Organization, Centre for Creative Leadership

M&S. (2019). Annual report. [online] Available at: https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/annualreport [Accessed 12 Apr. 2019].