Coles Boss Sets Great Store by Teamwork

MGMT 901 - MINI ESSAY

Management Theories as seen in Speedy.J (2009)” Coles boss sets great store by teamwork - Exclusive Supermarket Rethink“, The Australian, 5 December 2009.

This article explains the turn around process that the Supermarket chain “Coles” is currently going under the able leadership of Mr Ian McLeod. The contents of the article illustrate several management theories including managerial functions, restructuring, managerial roles and skills, managerial challenges for building competitive advantage, behavioural management theory and organisational environment theory.

Management Functions - The turn around is based on a major change in the strategy of Coles, a key planning function of the management. This is turn has resulted in a major restructuring of the organisation. So we see here the organising function of the management in action. The new strategy requires bringing in a new culture centered around intense responsiveness to customers. This needs energising of all employees. Here we see the leading function of management. Ensuring that the new strategies are consistently and enthusiastically implemented over 2200 stores and 100,000 employees would mean introduction of several new measuring and monitoring systems. This is the controlling function in action.

Restructuring - This is a major challenge that managements have to handle increasingly in the current times. From the articles it comes out the restructuring has been done mainly in Head Quarters, consistent with current top management’s vision that Coles have to focus more on the frontline - the stores. In McLeod words the organisation has to be “store centric”.

Managerial Roles - Viewing Mitzberg’s ten managerial roles we can see McLeod as an entrepreneur who comes up with innovative ideas like allotting larger store areas for fresh food and introducing changes in private branding. As one entrusted by owners to turn around the company, he is certainly is a...