The problem of sustainability at Marks and Spencer Essay

The problem of sustainability at Marks and Spencer - Essay Example The firm that is analyzed in the paper is Marks & Spencer, one of Europe’s leading retailers and a household name in the UK where it provides high-quality clothing, food, and home wares in about 30 countries through over 400 stores. It has thus employed many people worldwide and enjoys huge turnover. However, with the recent globalisation and increased competition, Marks & Spencer and other international companies face variant business challenges. The problem of sustaining the supply of high-quality clothing, food, and households is one of the major issues affecting Marks & Spencer. The core aim of Marks & Spencer is to provide great customer service since lack of it leads to customer disappointments and low turnover. Indeed, customers need full and consistent availability of high-quality services. In this case, Marks & Spencer aims at becoming the world's most sustainable major global retailer by 2015. The eight company executives who participated in the survey are specialist s who came from inside and outside Marks & Spencer. From the survey, we can establish that in 2007, Marks & Spencer launched a sustainability plan. As such, there is a clear relationship between sustainability and business models in various companies. This reflects an alignment between sustainability priorities and organisations’ business priorities. Indeed, this link is very significant as it enables the management to address the issues of sustainability in relation to business operations since all business operations should take into account the aspect of sustainability to guarantee a going concern for the company.... ctually, the survey reveals that Marks  &Spencer  aligns the concept of sustainability with core strategy in all business operations with an aim of realising sustainability in the quickest time possible. Indeed, most respondents established a clear correlation between the business strategy of the company and sustainability. However, many respondents established that there are wide gaps between the leaders’ aspirations towards sustainability and how sustainability applies within their organisations. This gap hinders the implementation of the sustainability policy and the success thereof. At the same time, we can derive form the survey that sustainability in any company faces internal and external challenges (Hogevold & Svensson 2012, p.142-151). Indeed, at Marks & Spencer, the current economy denies them an avenue to foster sustainability and its importance. Moreover, we can establish from the survey that companies face the challenge of balancing between sustainability prin ciples and sustainability objectives on one side and the actions and investments on another side. This seeks to ensure that we get maximum sustainability returns from potential investments. In addition, we can ascertain that being dependent on the importance of sustainability to the future business endeavours, the management faces a challenge of aligning the organisation’s sustainability practices with the principles of the company. As such, the management faces specific challenges of recruiting effective employees and personnel with the necessary skills to pursue the sustainability objectives as well as the challenge of making tradeoffs in other business areas. At the same time, sustainability faces a challenge of securing employee buy-in to business model changes (Deloitte 2010, p. 2-9). Most