Strategic Management at The Body Shop

Introduction

In the recent era of globalisation, the business firms are facing intense competitive threat in running their international operations, where the corporate leader and managers focus on managing human resource and developing good marketing tactics , including business dissertation help, in order to expand their business strategically (Boon, Den Hartog and Lepak, 2019). The study aims at discussing the role of HR Marketing and finance functions within organisation Body Shop, which is a famous brand in cosmetics industry. The study provides a scope to analyse HR management, marketing tactics and evaluating the collaborative working practices in the Body Shop in order to manage their international operations and meet the strategic aim of the company. Body Shop is a British skin care, cosmetics and Fragrance Company, established in 1976. The company is successful to deliver high quality skin care products along with different cosmetics and fragrance to the customers across 3000 locations. The company is hereby efficient to manage their international operations and generate revenue in the last year approximately more than $ 5.3 billion (Body Shop, 2021a).

2. Describe the role of HR, Marketing and finance functions within organisations

2.1 Describe the role of HR within the Bodyshop

Human resource management or HRM is the practice of managing the employee life cycle by arranging suitable workplace and providing direction to all the staff for contributing efficiently in the company to achieve future success (Boon, Den Hartog and Lepak, 2019). The recruitment and selection as well as learning and development are the major roles of HR where the managers aim at handling the workplace with continuous motivation and ensure knowledge management practice in long run (Mitrofanova, Konovalova and Mitrofanova, 2018). There is hereby serious role of HR in Body Shop where the HR managers recruit the experience staff members and retain them for long run and for example, recently the firm has strong employees base of more than 10,000 employees. Performance management is another role of HR of the company, where the manager provides clear job roles and responsibilities to each staff and encourages them to perform better. There is proper employment contract of Body Shop as well as good organisational structure where the employees are working proficiently under effective supervision and control. The HR manager at Body Shop is also efficient to arrange compensation and benefits for the staff to encourage their creativity and maximise their performance (Body Shop, 2021a).

2.2 Describe the role of Marketing within your chosen company

Marketing refers to the activities that a company undertakes to promote the buying and selling of the products and services (Roundy and Burke-Smalley, 2021). Marketing includes advertising the brand, selling and product quality management, pricing strategies, placing and people management activities, through which it is possible for the company to meet the strategic vision. The marketing is hereby playing a crucial role at Body Shop, which are product and service management, market communication handing, branding and good promotional practice, placing and strengthening distribution of the products and services and ensuring physical evidence and process innovation. Marketing tactics provide an opportunity to Body Shop to manage their products and services and promote them in the market so that the clients can access their product and make effective purchase decision. Hence, marketing is important for the company to enhance sales volume and generate profitability in long run. Additionally, it is helpful to strengthen their distribution network to manage sales volume and handle the customers in long run through process innovation (Body Shop, 2021b).

2.3 Describe the Finance Functions within an Organisations

The important role of the financing in the organisation is to ensure all the financial records are accurate and kept up to date for further decision making practice. Finance is hereby important for Body Shop to make sustainable decision by utilising the organisational funds (Roundy and Burke-Smalley, 2021). It is mandatory for the multinational corporations to maintain financial stability and the finance manager at Body Shop is efficient to develop annual report, create balance sheet and cost functions in order to analyse the credit and debit of the company. This further provides a scope to the management team at finance department of the company Body Shop to make the financial functions appropriate by making investment decision, financial decision, liquidity decision and dividend decision. The major functions of finance at Body Shop are such as financial planning, forecasting the cash flows and output flows in order to maintain liquidity fund of the firm, as well as reallocation of the funds, effective use of the funds, financial control, rising funds for further investment decision.

3. Develop an understanding of collaborative working practices in the Body Shop

3.1 Describe the organisational culture in your company

Organisational culture is the collection of values, practices and expectations that guide and inform the actions of all the team members (Roscoe et al., 2019). Charles Handy, a leading authority on organisational culture, mainly defined four different kinds of culture which includes power, role, task and person. Power tends to fast paced or changeable work with dominance of individuals and direct involvement of the owner (Zaabi, Singh and Ajmal, 2017). Role tends to relatively show and unchanging workplace activities. Task tends to high pace work with innovation, team oriented and highly ambitious. Personal tends to be study work, individualised centred and entrepreneur driven culture (Tortorella et al., 2021). In Body Shop, the task culture is mainly adopted to enhance innovation and creativity ion the workplace. The cooperative working practice is possible at Body Shop where the managers are task oriented and supportive to lead the employees towards achieving the organisational aim. Clear vision and strategies are shared with the employees; where high aced working practice further encourage the individual creativity to perform better. Team oriented activities is hereby effective for Body Shop to enhance collaborative working practice (Body Shop, 2021a).

3.2 Briefly discuss the Management / Leadership style in the Body shop

The leadership and management style at Body Shop is mainly democratic style, where the leaders and managers encourage the group members to share their creative ideas for making collaborative decision (Roscoe et al., 2019). Democratic leadership is hereby a type of leadership style in which the members of the group take a more participative role in the decision-making process (Zaabi, Singh and Ajmal, 2017). This style of leadership at Body Shop further offers everyone the opportunity to exchange ideas, participate, have their opinions heard, and encourages discussions. This is effective for the leader and management team to create values for the employees at Body Shop and lead them with continuous support and guidance. Through continuous cooperation, communication with the staff and empowering all the members in the organisational decision making practice, the democratic leadership at Body Shop made the highest quality contributions. The managers are hereby successful to enhance creativity by encouraging the climate of innovation and business strategic planning, enhancing collaboration by facilitating good organisational culture with harmony, freedom to work and team working practice and increase engagement to achieve the organisational goal of becoming a famous branding cosmetics industry (Body Shop, 2021b).

4. Financial management and reporting within the Body Shop

4.1 Explain what a Profit and Loss Account is

An income statement or profit and loss account is one of the financial statements which show the company's revenues and expenses during a particular period financial year. It mainly indicates how the revenues are transformed into the net income or net profit (Cascino et al., 2021). By developing good profit loss account, the company Body Shop aims at maintaining business fairness and publish the annual report in each year. It is hereby beneficial for Body Shop to maintain company’s revenue and evaluate profitability in each year. The profit and loss account also reviews the existing expenditure and investment amounts in each financial year. On the other hand, the competitors of Body Shop like Asda and Morrison also focus on publishing their annual report, where profitability or loss will be discussed clearly to evaluate the brand performance.

4.2 Explain what a Balance Sheet is

In financial accounting, a balance sheet is a financial statement that reports a company's assets, liabilities, and shareholder equity. Through developing balance sheet, it is hereby possible for the finance manager at Body Shop to control their resources and maintain liquidity in running the business strategically. The balance sheet is one of the core financial statements that are utilised to evaluate a business (Cascino et al., 2021). It provides a snapshot of overall finances of Body Shop in each financial year. The document of balance sheet is important to maintain shareholders equity and liquidity ration in order to manage the operational activities and also provide high return on the investment of the shareholders and investors.

4.3 Explain what a Cash flow Statement is

Body shop focuses on cash flow statement in order to maintain the cash inflow and outflows for running the business efficiently and ensure financial stability. A cash flow statement is hereby a financial statement that provides aggregate data regarding all cash inflows a company receives from its on-going operations and external investment sources (Alabdullah and Maryanti, 2021). For making effective investment decision, Body Shop tries to develop cash flow statement so that the finance managers can chose the best portfolio investment for expanding their brand and making the business successful in long run (Body Shop, 2021b).

5. Conclusion

It can be concluded that Body Shop is a successful brand in global cosmetics industry, where the leaders and managers mainly focus on collaborative working practice by providing good training programs to the employees, encouraging their creativity, empowering them in the organisational decision making practice and designing compensation and benefits. The financial management is also effective for making further investment decision; where cash flows are managed well and published annual report maintain fairness and accountability to control their financial activities across the globe. The brand must expand their business with such democratic leadership style, maintaining fairness in financial accounting and enhancing collaborative working practice in order to secure future sustainable development.

6. Reference List

Alabdullah, T.T. and Maryanti, E., 2021. Internal Control Mechanisms in Accounting, Management, and Economy: A review of the Literature and Suggestions of New Investigations. International Journal of Business and Management Invention, 10(9).

Body Shop, 2021a. Our heritage. Retrieved from: https://www.thebodyshop.in/our-heritage

Body Shop, 2021b. Sustainability. Retrieved from: https://www.thebodyshop.in/community-trade

Boon, C., Den Hartog, D.N. and Lepak, D.P., 2019. A systematic review of human resource management systems and their measurement. Journal of management, 45(6), pp.2498-2537.

Cascino, S., Clatworthy, M.A., García Osma, B., Gassen, J. and Imam, S., 2021. The usefulness of financial accounting information: Evidence from the field. The Accounting Review, 96(6), pp.73-102.

Mitrofanova, E.A., Konovalova, V.G. and Mitrofanova, A.E., 2018. Opportunities, problems and limitations of digital transformation of HR management. In The European Proceedings of Social & Behavioural Sciences EpSBS (pp. 1717-1727).

Roscoe, S., Subramanian, N., Jabbour, C.J. and Chong, T., 2019. Green human resource management and the enablers of green organisational culture: Enhancing a firm's environmental performance for sustainable development. Business Strategy and the Environment, 28(5), pp.737-749.

Roundy, P.T. and Burke-Smalley, L., 2021. Leveraging entrepreneurial ecosystems as human resource systems: A theory of meta-organizational human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, p.100863.

Tortorella, G.L., Fettermann, D., Fogliatto, F.S., Kumar, M. and Jurburg, D., 2021. Analysing the influence of organisational culture and leadership styles on the implementation of lean manufacturing. Production planning & control, 32(15), pp.1282-1294.

Zaabi, H.H.J.A., Singh, S.K. and Ajmal, M.M., 2017. Role of organisational commitment, culture and leadership in managing innovation: a study. International Journal of Value Chain Management, 8(3), pp.270-284.

Looking for further insights on Strategic Management Approaches of Ryanair for Competitive Advantage? Click here.