Organization Behavior ASDA Stores

Business ASDA

ASDA Stores is a large scale retailer in the United Kingdom. It has grown over the decades by regularly expanding its business operations all over the country. Currently, ASDA Stores is present in more than 564 locations and offers a wide array of grocery items, general merchandise, and financial services. The business operations of ASDA Stores are affected by a large number of environmental factors. These factors fall under political and governmental forces, economic forces, social, cultural, and demographical forces, technological forces, legal forces, and environmental forces. All these forces have a direct impact on the company's sales, operations, and financial performance. In order to encounter the environmental challenges and operate in the most competitive and profitable fashion, ASDA Stores has to carefully analyze these forces and design its strategic directions in the best interest of its business affairs.

The resource management practices of the company also show its efficiency and sound Corporate Governance. It manages its financial and physical resources by efficient asset-liability management, feasibility analysis, and risk management techniques. The human resource management and informational resources management are done using highly advanced systems like CRM, SHRM, etc. The managers at ASDA Stores use different employee training and motivation techniques to improve the organizational productivity through its human capital. Similarly, they use CRM systems to better manage and analyze the data of its customers. All these resource management techniques play an important role in the company's success and competitiveness. The company's recruitment and selection process requires it to design the required job specifications and interpersonal skills for every position. In order to make an effective advertisement for this job position, the company must include the job description, person specification, salary and incentives, and core expectations from the new employee.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive analysis of the internal and external business environment of a renowned retail corporation -- ASDA Stores. It starts by giving a brief snapshot of the company's scale of operations, products, locations, organizational structure, culture, and communication system. The second section analyzes the company's external business environment in the light of PESTLE Analysis. The analysis of company's resource management practices has been done for its financial, human, informational, and physical resources. The final section presents the recruitment and selection process for a specific job position for the company by designing the job description, person specifications, advertisement components, and suitable strategy for effective recruitment. The conclusion is drawn on the basis of major findings from the paper.

ASDA STORES

ASDA Stores is a large retail corporation based in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest retailer in the country and the subsidiary of world's largest retail corporation, Wal-Mart Stores. ASDA Stores was founded in 1965 in Leeds, England. It has more than 564 locations all over the country. ASDA Stores deals in all kinds of grocery items, general merchandise, and financial services. The major product categories of the company include clothing, fast moving consumer goods, electrical, electronics, furniture, toys, sports equipments, gifts, music, beauty and health care products, travel and holiday tour packages, and insurance services (ASDA 2013).

ASDA Stores has a functional organizational structure. The decisions are made at the headquarters in England while implemented at the retail outlets and local offices around the country. The Board consists of directors from all the functional areas who supervise the business affairs and formulate the strategic policies for the Top Management. The Management implements these policies in order to achieve the organization's long-term objectives. The stores are headed by store managers in every city and town. These managers are responsible to manage the day-to-day business operations, motivation of staff, and conducting marketing research for the company (ASDA 2013).

ASDA Stores also enjoys a strong organizational culture at its workplace. The employees at ASDA Stores show respect to each other, value the diversity, support their coworkers in different tasks, and share every type of information with each other which is useful for increasing the organizational productivity. The communication system of the company also enables its employees to stay in touch with their colleagues, business partners, supply chain members, and customers. There is a two way communication by which managers supervise their employees in their job tasks and get feedback in return in order to remove the inefficiencies from its system (ASDA 2013).

PESTLE ANALYSIS FOR ASDA STORES

PESTLE Analysis is used to assess the external business environment of a company by analyzing the political, economic, social, technological, legal,...

In order to operate in the most secure, profitable, and sustainable way, every organization has to analyze these environmental factors carefully and mold its business strategies and operational procedures accordingly (Cherunilam 2007). The PESTLE Analysis for ASDA Stores is described in the following paragraphs:
1. Political and Governmental Factors:

ASDA Stores is the second largest retail chain in the United Kingdom and one of the fastest growing corporations in the local retail industry. Being a large scale retailer, ASDA Stores has to face different political and governmental environment in different markets (ASDA 2013). For ASDA, the most feasible target market is the one in which the government shows positive behavior towards retail corporations. In contrast, political instability in target markets brings negative impacts to its business operations in a number of ways. For example; due to uncertain policy changes with the change of governments, restructuring of corporate strategies, or tight regulatory measures to follow and practice by the company. This political and governmental behavior not only affects the company in the short run, but also restricts it from making strategic investments in that market (Cadle, Paul, & Yeates 2010).

2. Economic Factors:

Economic factors are related to the effect of inflation, economic situation, exchange rate, unemployment, industry growth, income levels, and other economic parameters. Economic factors have always been the strongest force for ASDA Stores from its external business environment. Reason being, they directly affect its sales and profitability figures in the target markets. Inflation, economic situation, exchange rate, and level of unemployment impacts the earning and spending patterns of the general public. In high inflation and recession periods, consumers tend to avoid making nonessential and lavish purchases which decreases the sales of retail stores in that market. In bad economic situation, the costs of raw material, labor, and factory overheads also increase which negatively impact the profit margins and overall financial performance of ASDA Stores.

3. Social, Cultural, and Demographical Factors:

ASDA Stores also has to analyze the social and cultural values of the general public in every target market. In order to attract a large number of customers, it has to promote and sell the products which are more liked in their culture, society, or even religion. At the same time, it has to avoid selling products and using marketing campaigns which may hurt the values of some social groups in that market. The life styles, social status, brand loyalty, and other purchase decision parameters also affect ASDA business in different target markets. Therefore, it has to shelve and sell products which best match these parameters and help the company to make the customers regular visitors of its stores.

4. Technological Factors:

Technology has a vital role to play in the customer services, supply chain and inventory management, quality management, and other core business areas and concerns of ASDA Stores. By implementing the most advanced customer relationship management system, ASDA Stores is able to store, manage, and analyze its customers' data in an efficient way. The inventory is controlled with the latest analytical tools using the most advanced systems by the ASDA managers. In order to keep up pace with the competitive retail business environment, ASDA Stores has to use advanced payment systems and self check-out machine for its customers, inventory controls, electronic shelf labeling, electronic marketing, and other technological tools and services for its business operations.

5. Legal Factors:

Every government has its own policies and regulations for manufacturers, retailers, trade, and service organizations. On one side where political and governmental forces impact the business of ASDA in the target markets, the legal forces require it to adhere to all the rules, regulations, and policies which the government of every target market formulates for retail corporations. In order to operate in that market in a lawful way, ASDA has to follow these regulations in all its business level strategies and day-to-day business dealings with the local stakeholders.

6. Environmental Factors:

In addition to showing better and better financial performance over the years, retailers are also expected to make efforts for the social welfare and do business in the most ethical way. ASDA Stores has to ensure sound Corporate Governance mechanisms, highly ethical business practices, and true concern for every type of stakeholders in order to avoid criticism or negative behavior of the community. Ethical business practices include fair price charging, ethical marketing, quality assurance, and fulfillment of brand promises.

The analysis of these environmental forces shows that ASDA Stores has to keep itself abreast of the changes in its business environment in all aspects. It has to formulate policies and long-term strategies…