Question

Discuss to what extent an institutional perspective would have assisted the management in analysing and understanding cross national employment relations?

FROM CONTINENTAL CHOCOLATES TO CONTINENTAL CLOSURE By Moira Calveley, University of Hertfordshire Business School The company background arks and Spencer (M&S) is a well-known high street retailer in the UK with stores nationwide. It was formed in 1894 by a partnership between Michael Marks and Tom Spencer and became a public company in 1926. During the 1970s the company began to expand on a global basis, opening its first overseas store in Canada in 1973 and in France and Belgium in 1975. In the late 1980si quired stores in the USA which remained trading under the Brooks Brothers name) and opened stores in Hong Kong. By the mid-1990s, M&S had stores in around 30 countries worldwide, incorporating Europe, North America and Asia. Known for its high quality, good service and value for money, the comparn developed into a highly profitable organization, even branching out into financial services in 1985. M&S was to become one of the most profitable retailers in Europe However, when the recession hit the retail industry in the UK in the late 1990s, M&S began to make the news as its profits dropped sharply In 1999 M&S responded to the fall in profits by reviewing its management structure, stopping recruitment to its operations. The first major overseas investment to go was in Canada, where in 1999 it closed its 38 stores, reportedly cutting approximately 900 jobs and paying around $35 million in severance payments and closure costs (Warson, 1999). It also sold its Brooks Brothers stores in the USA in November 2001. It was, however, the closure of shops in France and Belgium in March 2001 that put M&S in the headlines, as we shall see below. graduate training programme and reviewing its business M&Ss approach to people management The company takes a paternal approach to managing people and, although not without its critics, it is often viewed as a 'good' employer. M&S prided itself on introducing staff elfare' services in the early 1930s that included the provision of pensions, subsidized staff canteens, health and dental care, hairdressing, rest rooms and camping holidays. Such practices have continued over the years and the company works at being seen to be fair with people. For example, when it was decided to freeze graduate recruitment in 1999, as a gesture of goodwill it gave the equivalent of one month's salary (around E1,500) to each of the graduates to whom it had withdrawn its offer of employment Welch, 1999) The company has promoted good human relations because, as Lord Sieff a former Chairman explained, 'we are human beings at work not industrial beings' (1984, quoted in Blyton and Turnbull, 1998) and "good human relations at work pay off; they are of great importance if a business is to be efficiently run' (1990: 245, quoted in Blyton and Turnbull, 1998). The company's approach to trade unions is that employees have a

Answer 1

When organizations do business in more than one country then it automatically comes to manage the employment relationships in overseas market as well as the people who join the organization. It is one of the most critical functions as organizational success in a particular domestic market depends upon such employment related terms. Marks and Spencer (M&S) has successfully adopted the local employee’s needs while devising its human resource policy, welfare approach and treating everyone equal. It should follow the employment policies created by respective government of France and other countries.

The top person director HR and board members are responsible to mange any uproar, critics, policies, and negotiations done by the HR department along with country level. If, government will interfere then company’s representatives must have show correct reasons of policies formulation against the employees. To maintain the restructure , M&M must have a sound institutional approach which faces the challenges raised by the trade unions, foreign government and others.