Need a research paper like this one? Get in touch via the email address or order form on our homepage.

Abstract

The present study presents a research on the Impact of organisational culture on strategic management, case study Tesco. The research offers a vivid background on Tesco, given that the recent past has, it has been observed that culture is increasingly becoming a centrepiece in determining the success of the organisation, with the increasing interchange of people and ideas across the globe. As the research finds out, culture affects not only the management of the company, but also the relationship between employees as well as the relationship between the organisation and its customers. The specific objectives of the research were to analyse the impact of organisational culture on human resource management strategy, to analyse the impact of organisational culture on the customer management strategy, to analyse the impact of organisational culture on the marketing strategy, and to recommend ways in which the management can exploit organisational culture to achieve a competitive advantage.  As such, the research adopted a mixed approach of quantitative and qualitative techniques, in which the researcher used positivist research philosophy and inductive approach to conduct the research. Further, the research strategy used in the research was case study strategy as the research focused on one organisation. Moreover, the researcher used interviews and questionnaire survey to collect data and the sampling method used was convenience sampling. The researcher used statistical technique of data analysis to collect data and analyse data, specifically, the 5 point likert scale for the questionnaire design and SPSS. Furthermore, this dissertation has delved on the reliability and validity concerns that arose as well as the limitations of the research. Finally, this dissertation has discoursed on the ethical considerations that the researcher study upheld. From the study, it was found that, in deed, culture affects strategic management in many ways, and managers must take keen interest in ensuring that the organisation is managed appropriately in order to foster organisational culture.

Chapter 1 – Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to introduce the present dissertation, entitled the impact of organisational culture on the strategic management, a case study on Tesco. With this aim, the chapter firstly outlines the problem statement guiding the research, followed by giving a concise rationale why the research should be done, and the research aim and objectives. Lastly, the chapter will cover the research scope before winding in a conclusive summary.

1.1. Statement of the problem

With the rapid development of global economy, organisations are facing growing competition and challenges due to the emergence of such business practices as foreign direct investments multinational corporations as well as offshore investments, among others. However, Alvesson (2013) observed that with the increasing interchange of people and ideas across the globe, it has been observed that culture is increasingly becoming a centrepiece in determining the success of the organisation, as it affects not only the management of the company, but also the relationship between employees as well as the relationship between the organisation and its customers. Much research has been carried out regarding the same (Campbell, 2002; Alvesson, 2013; Luck, 1999). Various strategic management practices are influenced by organisational culture, and among the many so far studied, researchers have also looked at culture in relation to human management practices, change management, as well as employee performance.

According to Riple (2008) the global marketplace is an interconnection of different organisations with as many cultures exchanging business interests, including services, goods and employees. Culture is therefore both organisational and national, and it transcends the set of ways in which people behave in a given setting. It goes as far as to impact the belief systems of individuals and organisations, acting as the root of their belief systems as shown in theory and practice. Researchers agree that the role of culture in strategic management is always being felt, though the precise ways in which culture affects the strategic management of the organisation still remain a bone of contention (Riple, 2008).

Moreover, though there is unanimity in the fact that culture is dual in nature, there being organisational culture and national culture, the question as to which aspect of culture, if any at all, impacts the strategic management of an organisation remains unanswered. Some of the most common organisational cultures have been defined by such aspects as mission, adaptability, involvement and consistency (Luck, 1999), paradigms, control systems, organisational structures, symbols, rituals and routines (Johnson, 1988; Shukla, 2011), as well as the locations of the organisations. Whether or not organisational strategy impacts organisational culture, or organisational culture impacts organisational strategy has not been brought out clearly in recent research. Similarly, the national cultures are also diverse, as stated by Hofstede, and they include such elements as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity and femininity, as well as long-term versus short-term orientation. These factors that define the national cultures are different from the aforementioned factors that influence organisation culture, though research has shown that they all play a role in impacting the nature of management. However, whether or not the national culture defines organisational culture remains to be a bone of contention among researchers (Caldwell, 1991, Alvesson, 2013).

In the foregoing, it is evidenced that the role of culture is amorphous as per the existing body of research, and the few studies with tangible conclusions give evidence that contradict every other research. Companies therefore have an on-going challenge of determining whether their management strategy should borrow from the culture of the region in which they are established, or from the region in which they were parented. Moreover, the management of most organisations, especially MNCs, do not understand whether they should be using the management strategy to create organisational culture, or whether the culture of the organisation is what determines the management strategy. This has inspired the need by the present research to do a case study on Tesco UK and examine whether there are any impacts of culture on the strategic management of the organisation (Alvesson, 2013).

1.2. Research rationale

The existing studies show that organisation culture is able to help an organisation gain a competitive advantage. Moreover, organisational culture provides a direction of organisation’s business. A desired organisational culture makes an organisation get high performance in its operation. And the operation environment is pleasure friendly customer-oriented environment (Campbell 2002). Moreover, it is said that organisational culture builds the basis for strategy, to formulates and fulfil the strategy effectively for an organisation. It is essential to align organisation strategy with corporate culture. Hence, initiative and objectives have to be set in an organisation to sustain and build an organisation culture that includes the corporate strategy (Rose, 2010). Such organisations as McDonalds and Samsung are testament to the impact of organisation culture on strategic management. On the other hand, it is observed that some organisations have succeeded despite using organisational strategy with a changing culture in respect to their location, an example of which is McDonald’s which alter the types of products, customer care and marketing approach depending on their market, rather than stick to company standards like telecommunication companies. This research is therefore aimed at providing reliable information that will be essential in clearing the confusion as to the precise role of organisational culture in strategic management (David, 2013).

Secondly, while a plethora of literature exists today, it is evident that the management of most organisations may not be in a position to search through an array of journals, books, and published research filtering content amidst the conflicting conclusions at which different scholars have arrived (David, 2013). Similarly, it is a painstaking experience, especially for beginners of the course in any related fields of strategic management studies, to analyse and discriminate one research from another to come up with relevant literature that can guide their judgement about the relationship between culture and strategic management (Campbell, 2002).  

Lastly, the reason why this important is necessary is because it is intended to conduct a primary research on an existing company. Researchers agree that one of the biggest advantages of such an approach to problem-solving is that a researcher might use to answer a burgeoning problem, especially in the field of business management (Campbell, 2002). As such, this research will be indispensable firstly for the management of Tesco if they are looking to gain a competitive advantage by exploiting the opportunities that exist between culture management and strategic management. Secondly, the research also stand to prove relevant to managers of start-ups, MNEs and other MNCc that are in the league of Tesco as they all operate in some form of a business environment whether there is an interaction between culture and strategic management.     

1.3. Aims and objectives of the research

Firstly, Shukla (2011) noted that organisational culture has a great influence the behaviours of employees towards the customers. Whether an organisation has successful strategy or not depend on the way its culture supports risk-bearing (Shukla 2011). Secondly, it has been argued that organisational culture impacts the performance of the organisation, with some analysts concluding that organisations with a stronger culture is poised to perform above average. Organisation culture has also been associated with the relationship between the human resource management and the company employees. This is mostly observed when looking at the multinational companies where the organisation operates with a mixture of employees from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Based on these pieces of literature, the aim of the research is to examine the impact of organisational culture on strategic management. The research will narrow the study down to the case of Tesco UK, focusing on the company’s branch located at Union Street, Aberdeen. To achieve this objective, the research will focus on the following objectives:

1. To analyse the impact of organisational culture on human resource management strategy

1. To analyse the impact of organisational culture on the customer management strategy   

3. To analyse the impact of organisational culture on the marketing strategy

4. To recommend ways in which the management can exploit organisational culture to achieve a competitive advantage.

1.4. Scope of the research

For the purposes of this research, the study will only limit its investigation to Tesco UK retail store located at Union Street, Aberdeen. Moreover, it is notable that the research will only conduct sampling from the employees and management at this given store and any reference to the employees and management in light of the data collected will imply the employees and management of the same store. 

1.5. Chapter synopsis

Chapter one has introduced the research study by discussing the research problem statement, research rationale, as well as the aims and objectives of the research. In chapter 2, the research focuses on the literature review, whereas chapter three is a discussion of the methodology. Chapter four is the analysis of findings where was chapter five is the conclusion of the research and recommendations. 

Chapter 2 – Literature Review

It is crucial that manager comprehends the organisational culture both in evaluating the strategic status, and in implementing appropriate strategy. Through a survey in determining the function of organisational culture and the importance of organisational culture, one can reach some arguments that link the organisational culture to strategic management to find the relationship between them (Birkinshaw, Brannen and Tung, 2011). This chapter is set to review the literature of the key concepts that are targeted for the present research. Precisely, the chapter will undertake a critical review of the background information related to strategic management and organisational culture, including the different types of organisational culture as contained in the theories of Hofstede five national cultural dimensions, Charles’s Handy’s theory and Harrison’s management theories. Additionally, the chapter also examines the impact of organisational culture on human resource management strategy, marketing strategy and customer management strategies. The last section of the report is a recommendation based on the reviewed literature, followed by a summative conclusion of the chapter.      

2.1. The concept of organisational strategic management

According to Cheng (2007) strategic management refers to the careful creation and implementation of short-term and long-term goals by the senior management team of an organisation with the interests of the owners and the employees, as well as other stakeholders at the centre of operations. First, Brannen and Doz (2010) noted that to ensure a company chose an effective and correct strategy, the information acquired is essential. The company should conduct a strategic analysis target its internal environment and external environment. It is necessary to know the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses and its external opportunities and threats.

Second, Cheng (2007) also observed that to get a successful strategic implementation, a company is required to allocate resources efficiently. That is, how the company gains the needed finance, human resources through a suitably masterly staff introduced. Other facilities include equipment, plant, and structure. Agreeing with this point, Doz (2011) added that the company is proposed to reallocate its structure and culture to create an appropriate strategy. Thirdly strategic implementation usually refers to alter the interior to accomplish the stated goal. According to Doz (2011), it should also take account of the change in management in the process of strategic implementation. Some emergent strategies might be carried out temporarily accompanied by short time and elastic methods.

2.2. Concept of organisational culture

Kotter and Heskett (1992) defined organisational culture as the set of beliefs and values that are shared by the stakeholders of an organisation, which moulds the behaviours of the employees. Similarly, organisational culture was defined as the driver of members’ contributions and efforts within the workplace that shows that shows the bigger picture of the interrelationship that exists between goals and the processes of attaining these goals (Gordon & Cummins, 1989). According to Hosfetede et al. (1990), organisation culture refers to the process by which an individual distinguishes members of a given group from members of another different group. Additionally, organisational culture is also described as determines and reflects the beliefs, values and attitudes of its members, the three of which foster norm that influence employees’ behaviour (Brannen and Doz, 2010). Organisational culture directly reflects what the things people to do, as it form patterns of behaviour for employees in an organisation. This is a repeating process of behaviour, thereby making it a key determinant or guide of people’s behaviour. As a result, it is noted that its impacts are far-reaching, which may impact reward, organisation structure, and business process (Watkins, 2013). 

Campbell (2002) also noted that organisational culture may have effect on staff motivation, working quality, productivity and efficiency, relationship between staff and company, attitude of staffs, reformation, and attraction of the organisation, among others. It stands for the methods through which values will be transmitted in the organisation from high-level manager to low-level employee (Campbell, 2002). Organisational culture is motivating force for an organisation to developing its business and it influence on business strategy. It is also considered as a key component of influence on staff’s mind, interaction and behaviour. According to Shukla (2011), whether an organisation has successful strategy or not depends on the way its culture supports risky operations.  

Based on this lucid overview of organisation strategy and organisational culture, the rest of the chapter considers the famous theories, paradigms as well as a critical review of existing studies. The foregoing discussion can be analysed further through the analysis of the theories of Hofstede, Charlse Handy, and various others.   

2.3. Important theories

2.3.1. Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory

Hosftede (1980) conducted a series of research in which he aimed at finding out the impacts culture on organisational behaviour. In so doing the research was conducted across fifty different nations and concluded that different countries of the world had different cultural biases, thereby making it necessary for organisations to be aware of this international differences of cultures. The basis of this theory is that different cultural backgrounds influence the ways in which people think and act, whether in the family or in the organisation, political set-up or even in religious gatherings. These cultural backgrounds have direct impacts on the core operations of the organisation, including management and the behaviour employees and of the organisation as a whole. According to this theory, organisations can be affected by five national cultural groupings, namely, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism versus individualism, femininity versus masculinity, and long-term versus short-term orientation (Hofstede, 1990).

The theory has found application in various contexts of strategic management, especially in international business. According to Wardrobe (2005), national cultural dimensions are indispensable for strategic management especially for businesses that are hugely engrossed in international communication. He further explains that cross-cultural communication is of prime importance as what might be considered right by organisations in one culture may be despicable in another culture. Seconding this line of thought, Katsikeas, Samiee and Theodosiou (2006) notes that other areas of strategic management that have been proven too rely on national cultural dimensions include international management, negotiations and international marketing. Nevertheless, the theory has been criticised by scholars such as McSweeney (2002) who argues that the assumptions made by Hosftede might be misleading, especially on the premise that all nations have distinct culture. Alion (2008) also critiqued the theory, noting that there are a lot of inconsistencies within the theory and methodology of the research, thereby rendering its findings very questionable.

2.3.2. Charles Handy

Charles Handy is known for furthering the research conducted by Roger Harrison regarding the relationship between organisational structure and the existing culture (Martins &Terblanche, 2003; Lages, Jap and Griffith, 2008). Based on their researchers, four different types of cultures that can be found within an organisation are power, role, task, and person cultures. As Katsikeas, Samiee and Theodosiou (2006) argues, the power culture is a type of organisation culture in which the power within the organisation is only controlled by a small set of people, or even an individual who spearheads all operations. The characteristic of this type of an organisation culture is that decisions are usually made much faster, and this is mainly because there are very little defined bureaucratic modes of operations with even fewer rules. This type of an organisational culture benefits the strategy within the organisations by making them easy to implement while the organisation is very small. On the other hand, Brooks (2006) writes that the major disadvantage of the power culture is that the central source of power might start to lose grip on the management of the organisation if the organisation continues to expand. It is because of this that the organisation might choose to adapt a new strategy of breaking up the organisation into smaller spinoff companies in order to retain control and power within the centre.    

The theory further outlines the role culture in which the organisation is controlled by a number of managers through various departments. The departments are controlled mostly by organisation procedures, communication procedures as well as dispute procedures under the supervision of the top management (Cascio, 2006). On the other hand, Brooks, I. (2006) internes with the observation that the task culture is a job or project oriented organisational culture that is defined by the type of task at hand, with resources and employees distributed according to the needs of the project. As such, the strategy is to hold people in charge only for the projects that they show the most expertise in and relinquish them from the position soon afterwards. Scholars have argued that this culture is advantageous because of its ease of adaptation, although critics condemn it for its unsustainability, especially when managers desire to remain in control, or when there is no sufficient expertise to lead given projects (Campbell, 2002).  

2.3.3. Other theories

Arguments that relate organisational culture to strategic management can also be seen in other theories, and research findings such as those of Cameron and Quinn (1999), who found out that the success of the organisation is pegged on the culture in which the organisation is run. For instance, organisations can adapt clan, adhocracy, and market or hierarchy culture as assessed using the organisations culture assessment instrument (Handy, 1976). Arguing on the relationship between the strategy adopted by the organisation and the culture therein, researchers have also shown that organisations with high level of employee motivation and better products and services are also observed to have strong organisational cultures (Chatman &Jehn, 1994).

According to the organisational culture inventory, there are three different cultures in an organisation, which are passive, constructive and aggressive cultures (Cooke, 1987). Organisations in which individuals interact at a personal level with the aim of meeting higher-order satisfaction needs are constructive, while those in which employees are trained to handle tasks forcefully in order to protect their security and statuses are aggressive cultures. Offering a different perspective, Deal & Kennedy (1982) aver that passive cultures on the other hand suggest that employees need to relate with customers in manners that safeguard the security of the organisation instead of threatening it. The organisations that adopt a constructive culture are noted to embrace team work, with focus mainly on achievement, self-actualisation, humanitarianism, and affiliation (where people are treated with more value than property). On the other hand, in the according to the conclusions of the research by Schein (1990), organisations that adopt defensive cultures tend to tutor their employees towards the norms of avoidance, dependence, conventionality and approval. Aggressive cultures are synonymous too organisations that gratify opposition, power, competition, as well as perfectionism.

From the theoretical perspectives assessed in the sections above, it is notable that the culture within organisations greatly impacts the strategic management of the organisation. Different departments within the organisation are affected in a unique way, and it becomes clear that culture plays a central role not only in the success of the company, but also in other aspects that are crucial to the mere existence of the company, such as employee relationships, customer relationships, employee productivity and international growth of the organisation. As these aspects define strategy in any organisation, it becomes the more necessary to agree with the school of thought that culture impacts the strategic management in the organisation. With this, there is created a need to inspect how organisational culture impacts human resource management strategy, marketing strategy and customer management strategy, which are some of the most crucial elements of management.

2.4. Impacts of organisational culture on strategic management

2.4.1. Impacts of organisational culture on human resource management strategy

Human resource management refers to the process by which the top decision-making organs of an organisation make optimal use of the employee’s capabilities to achieve strategic goals of the organisation (Collings& Wood, 2009). As such, human resource management is tied to the management of people and this includes a myriad of activities, such as recruiting, training and hiring employees, as well as appraising their performance systematically in order to reward the positive performance and putting punitive measures for non-performing employees. Moreover, this department in the organisation is also tasked with the duty of creating a balance between the organisation’s human resource requirement, and the laws of the land, collective bargaining power of the labour market and other external environmental factors. Human resource management and organisational culture have been noted to have a link by various scholars, including Schein (1990), Klein (1996), and martins &Terblanche (2003) among various others.

According to Deal and Kennedy (1982), the link between organisational culture and human resource management strategy is that the presence of a strong organisational culture is highly associated with an excellent performance of the organisation. This can be explained by the fact that human resource management strategies that an organisation chooses to follow are most of the time in tandem with the core values and beliefs of the company, including the recruitment process and the organisation rituals (Schein, 1990). Supporting this observation, Terblanche (2003) adds that an organisation’s values and beliefs are determined by the shared stories within the employee communities, the principles that dictate employee’s behaviour, as well as the norms within the organisation. The various components of human resource management strategy that are influenced by organisation culture include the recruitment process, training process, as well as performance management of the employees. For instance, Birkinshaw, Brannen, and Tung (2011) correctly noted that if an organisational culture is evidently promoting environment responsibility, then such an organisation is bound to show concerns about the potential risk when the company is in the process of a developing new product, whose effect to the environment is uncertain. Thus, the company may need to formulate a risk assessment program in light of boundaries built by the company’s belief. Considering the sense of social responsibility, it would affect the company’s strategic planning. From this example, a mission of an organisation, which is guided by the organisation culture, provides a basis for its strategies formulation. However, the implementation of these strategies depends upon the staff of the organisation. Only when these staffs understand the culture of their own organisation and fit in it, can the strategy be implemented. Thus a reasonable organisational culture plays a significant role in strategy formulation and execution (Shukla 2011).

Owing to the unique role of organisational culture and its strategic advantage, companies are advised to rethink the role of culture in strategic management. As a recommendation from Schmid and Kotulla’s (2011) research, they advise that a company which adheres to the philosophy of consumer-orientation and fun stands a better chance of registering strong performance. This philosophy as a corporate strategy used in business is expected to be very appealing to those employee who hold dear the idea fun and consumer-focus (Kokemuller, 2013).

2.4.2. Impacts of organisational culture on Performance management strategies

It has been long agreed that organisational culture improves the performance of the employees, as its effective management makes employees more dedicated and committed to the norms of the organisation (Cascio, 2006). Consequently, the high performance of employees is tied very closely with the success of the company as it is the backbone for growth and development. If the employee is aware of the culture of the organisation, then he is bound to become more loyal, thereby driving the employee’s desire to achieve more (Brooks, 2006). The transmission of organisational culture in form of reward mechanism, incentives give a driving force to employees to realize current stated objectives because the benefit from this system includes financial rewards, status improvement, and recognition. These employees will generate behaviour patterns or shape a values and beliefs through incentives ways in context of organisation’s culture (Watkins, 2013). Watkins (2013) further notes that the permeation of culture is also a shared process of collectively held belief and holistic comprehension from various staff’s view and interests. It also offers a criterion for combination intention and shared behaviour. With this view, the role of organisational culture on the existing company human resource strategies is made very crucial.

In addition, a study conducted by Piekkari, Welch and Paavilainen (2009) showed that organisational culture is thought to impact the behaviours of employees, thereby making it a necessity in human resource management. As Campbell (2002) noted, organisation culture not only strengthens the value of behaviour from all level of organisation but also point out the rule of each departmental operation. In light of this, all staffs of organisation need to understand that culture might impact fundamental organisation symbols such as promotion, job title and others. According to Campbell (2002), the extent to which these symbols are interpreted reflect how much employees understand and relate to the culture within the organisation. He further argues that organisational culture is a key determinant of the right and wrong behaviour in an organisation, as well as the determining factor of employee evaluation.

To buttress this point, Solberg (2008) referred to the four facets of culture of power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism can be considered further. The national cultural theory holds that organisations try to maintain the relationship between the managers and the employees to a standard allowable by the culture in the region in which the organisation operates. As Schmid and Kotulla (2011) noted, in societies where there is a high score of power distance, then the organisation might have a bigger gap between the employees and the managers, with the latter enjoying more rights and privileges. On the other hand, in societies where the power distance is low, then the organisation may strive to maintain equal rights for both employees and managers.

Similarly, some societies expect people to pursue personal goals, whereas other societies expect that goals should be collective. A study by Solberg (2008) observed that this impacts the strategic management of an organisation in that organisations in the former category might encourage extreme individualism and capitalism, as seen in the United States. On the other hand, collectivist societies even expect the organisation to show responsibility to its employees, and this affects the strategic decisions that an organisation might make (Schmid and Kotulla, 2011). The same goes for masculinity and femininity in that organisations that operate where there is a huge gap tend to give one gender more rights and privileges, whereas in countries of the West, people are treated nearly equally because the gap is very slim. Strategic decisions such as human resource management are therefore directly impacted by the culture in which the organisation operates. In a society that is more biased towards long-term goals, the organisation may show a higher propensity to save, adapt to changing times and show more perseverance, whereas organisations in short-term oriented societies may have strategic decisions that are targeted at obtaining quick results and in line with traditions (Piekkari and Welch, 2011).

2.4.3. Impact of organisational culture on customer management strategy

An Organisation’s culture is very important on account of the impact on all level of organisation’s activities. Different personality such as someone is motivated, fervent and others are slack, apathetic, and humdrum (Piekkari and Welch, 2011). The diverse personality will influence their lives in some respects. Despite the clearly defined strategic goals that a company may have, there is usually a shift in responsibility in the process of strategic fulfilment form the strategic level up to departmental or functional manager. This shift is regarded as obstacle to the fulfilment of the acceptable strategy along with responsibility transferring from the little to many. As Brannen and Doz (2010) had earlier noted, the new executor may have a difference in the understating of requirement of them. Therefore, the difference of working unit and workplace would cause an unbalanced utilization of strategy. Meanwhile strategic shift distortions will increase in the further. One leading factor why this may arise is the differences in personalities that the different people operating within the organisation might have. In light of these differences, strategy management is usually aligned along the lines of marketing management, human resource management and customer relations management (Piekkari, Welch and Paavilainen, 2009).

2.4.4. Impact of organisational culture on the marketing strategy

According to Hawkins et al (1983), culture refers to the complex setting that comprises customs, laws, morals, as well as beliefs and knowledge that are acquired by people in a given society. As Umoren (1996) later noted, one of the defining elements of culture is language, as it serves as a vehicle for driving culture, and this makes language an important tool for influencing consumer behaviour. An organisation can exploit culture to ensure that there is an effective marketing strategy since, however powerful an organisation is, it must promote its product in the language that the buyer will understand and relate with in order to sell the product. All the forms of marketing, which include advertisements, promotions and sales, as well as personal selling, are all dependent on culture, which starts from the language in which the products are prompted. As such, it is important for any organisation, especially MNCs to understand the concept of culture of the market they are intending to approach with their products.

As Umoren (1996) found out using the symbolic theoretical approach, religion is also an element of culture that affects the marketing strategy that an organisation might adopt. This implies that the organisation ought to understand such religions as Islam, Christianity and others, as well as how they affect perceptions of the consumers regarding given products. Evidence shows that religion impacts the patterns with which people in a given society consume given products, as seen by the demand for Muslims to refrain from consuming alcohol. In agreement, Brannen and Doz (2010) adds that an organisation that targets the societies, in which religion is highly regarded, such as some parts of Africa and the Middle East, must therefore be careful to adopt products that suit these categories of cultures.     

While there is evidence to the effect that culture affects the marketing strategies that an organisation might adopt, there have been observed tendencies by organisations to prefer product standardisation and other marketing techniques that might not be in favour of cultural diversity (Cheng, 2007; Doz, 2011; Griffith, 2010). Brannen and Doz (2010), strongly pointed out that organisations always consider the markets of all their subsidiaries the same way in which they consider their home market. However, it is advices that an organisation should always consider which international strategies of marketing it will consider after picking the market in which it wants to operate, and the strategies do not have to be necessarily the same as the strategies that the company uses in its home market. Other than culture, it has also been seen that other important variables include the financial muscle of the organisation, organisational policies, as well as its size in international operations, whereas the external factors include legal requirements, the political climate as well as the economic climate of the region (Doz, 2011; Griffith, 2010).

A marketing strategy, therefore, must capture the entire process of market selection and analysis, as well as the creations and maintenance of the right marketing mix that is aimed at giving the people maximum satisfaction. With this definition, the organisation has no choice but to ensure that its marketing strategies are aligned towards the culture of the people that it targets as well as with the organisational culture. This is because the success of selling any product in any market is directly aligned to the marketing management strategies that the organisation adopts.         

2.5. Summary and recommendation

In conclusion, this chapter has reviewed the existing literature on the subject matter. Firstly,t the concepts of organisational culture and management strategies have been considered in detail. Moreover, the theories that guide the operations of most organisations have been assessed, based on the most commonly studied theories. At the core of the literature review is the existing research on the impacts of culture on the management strategies of different organisations. Specifically, the ways in which culture impacts human resource management strategy, marketing strategy, and marketing strategies have been evaluated based on a plethora of literature.

Various recommendations have been outlined in theory and previous empirical researches on what an organisation can do regarding the question of organisation culture and the management strategies. Firstly, it was recommended by Ekerete (2001) that an organisation should have a marketing concept that has a focus on the need to identify what the customers want, as well as creating the best means through which these wants can be satisfied. This allows the organisation to satisfy not only the current customer needs but also the latent needs of the customer. Additionally, Katsikeas et al (2006) conclude that the management of the organisation is advised to consider focusing narrowly on the given product that has been found suitable to a certain market. In light of this, the management should ensure that the products it produces are suitable to the culture of the people that are being targeted as customers. Moreover, organisations are advised to have consistent organisational cultures that guide the employee workforce because of its effectiveness in motivating workers. As such, a good organisational culture is bound to promote the competitive level of the organisation (Lages, Jap and Griffith, 2008).       

From the above literature, it is clear that organisational management strategies are impacted greatly by the culture in the organisation as well as the cultures of the targeted market. Various scholars have agreed that there is a positive relationship between organisational culture and the effective implementation of the strategic management of the organisation.

Chapter 3 – RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

This part of the dissertation focused on the methods that the researcher used to achieve the aim of the research which was to analyse the Impact of organisational culture on strategic management, with Tesco Inc. as the case study. This section appraises the methodological techniques used in the research including the research philosophy, research approach, strategy of the research, research instruments and sampling techniques. It further focuses on the data collection methods, data validity and reliability and limitation of the research and finally ethical consideration. 

3.2 Research philosophy

According to Saunders and Thornhill (2007), research philosophy refers to the development in the nature of the research, background of the research, as well as, the knowledge of the research. As such, it is evident that research philosophy encompasses the understanding of a particular area of study and its development in the process of research. According to Crossan (2003), research philosophy provides a researcher with the foreknowledge on whether to conduct the research by observing natural phenomenon or individual personalities. To this end, any sound research is based on the understanding of the researcher concerning the bestresearch philosophy to employ. According to Holden and Lynch (2004), there are two main research philosophies that are used by researchers which are interpretivism and positivism research philosophies.Interpretivism research philosophy refers to a research stance thatuses interpretations anchored uponhistorical situations and cultural derivations, to interpret social life (Gray, 2013). Interpretivism research philosophy posits that there is no direct co-relation between the world and ourselves and to understand the world, we can only understand it through graphic classification of the mind.

On the other hand, positivist research philosophy posits that the world is an external phenomenon to a researcher and it can only be comprehended through observation (Alexander, 2014). Further, this philosophy holds that that reality is made up of elements that are available to the human senses including things that can be touched or smelt. Additionally, and opposed to the interpretivism philosophy, inquiry in the positivist philosophy is based on scientific observation (Bernard, and Bernard, 2013). As such, positivist philosophy holds that any idea that needs to be incorporated into knowledge requires to be subjected to empirical testing before incorporation.

Based on the above discussion and in line with the objectives of this study, the study research used positivism research philosophy. The use of positivism research philosophy enabled the researcher to focus on the objectivity of the study as the research relied more on empirical testing and statistical data. As such, the use of positivism philosophy mitigated eventualities of biasness based on the subjective personal understanding of the researcher as in the case of interpretivism research philosophy.

3.3 Research approach

According to Bryman (2012), research approach refers to the plans and techniques of research that vary from a wide range of assumptions to comprehensive methods of collecting, analysing and the interpreting data. There are two main research philosophies that are used in the business research they are inductiveand deductive research approaches (Holde and Lynch, 2004). In deciding the appropriate research approach to use, it is imperative for the researcher to take cognizance of the research philosophy adopted. For instance, if a researcher chose to use interpretivism philosophy they should select deductive approach. On the other hand, if a researcher settled for positivism philosophy, they should select inductive research approach.

According to Neuman (2003), inductive research approach is a strategy in research that starts by focusing on the critical observations of the world, and then progresses towards ideas and generalisations. Put differently, while using inductive approach, a researcher begins by establishing a topic, creates empirical generalisations, and identifies preliminary relationships as they advance through their study. According to Goddardand Melville(2004), inductive approach begins with observation of the subject under study which is followed by formulation of theories towards the end of the research. Inductive approach entails investigation of patterns from the made observations and development of theories using a chain of hypotheses (Goddard and Melville, 2004). In other words, the use of inductive approach does not require any theories at the beginning of the research. As such, the researcher is has the leeway to alter the direction of the research even after the research has started.

Moving forward, deductive approach, which was used in this research focuses on the development of hypothesis on the basis of existing theories (Bryman and Bell, 2011). Deductive approach can best be understood through explanation of hypotheses which are arrived at from the schemes of theory. Put differently, deductive approach is rooted on the deduction of conclusions from propositions or premises of a particular theory (Gray, 2013). In this research, the use of deductive approach means that the researcher is reasoning from a specific to a general point of view. If a particular theory brings out a causal relationship in one case scenario, then the casual relationship is likely to be replicated in other cases. According to Snieder and Larner (2009), deductive approach uses a casual uses a logical path to explain the phenomenon being studied. Deductive approach starts with the development of a theory and then establishment of a hypothesis. The established hypothesis is tested through the process of observations that lead to the acceptance or dismissal of the hypothesis (Snieder and Larner, 2009).

This research applied inductive approach by focusing on the general impact of organisational culture on strategic management which formed the basis of developing theories, which formed the hypothesis of the study and ultimately evaluation of the hypothesis based on the observations and interpretations of the data.

3.4 Research strategy

Research strategy describes a procedure that guides the actions of a researcher by enabling them to carry out the research in a systematic manner rather than in a disorganised way (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2011). A sound research strategy helps a researcher to avoid frustration, consequently improving the quality of their research. According to Saunders and Thornhill (2007), there are different types of research strategies that include action research, experiments, ethnography and case study.

Action research is a research strategy that involves diagnosis of a research problem and provision of solution to the identified problem, through a collaborative relationship between the action researcher and the patron (Bryman and Bell, 2011). Further on, experiments refers to a research strategy in which the researcher manipulates an independent variable with the aiming of evaluating how it influences dependent variables. This strategy is mostly used in casual researches (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2011).Ethnography refers to a research strategy used in social research to analyse the lifestyle of a given community. In this kind of research, the researcher becomes a member of the community in context with the aim of learning the needs and values of the community under research (Bryman and Bell, 2011).

Further on, case study refers to a research strategy reduces a wide scope of research in a single research topic. Case study is used in life and social sciences to investigate a single organisation or a single individual (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011). This study applied the use of case study because the scope of the research involved one particular organisation, Tesco Inc. The advantage of using of using case study in this research is that it helped the researcher to unearth the attitude of the employees at Tesco with regards to the company’s organisation in better way than observation or experimental research strategies (Yin, 2014). Additionally, the use case study enabled the researcher to challenge theoretical postulations brought forward by who have studied on the relationship between organisational culture and strategic performance.However, the use of case studies affects research because it is prone to biasness in the collection and interpretation of data (Yin, 2014). Further, it is difficult for the researcher to make generalisations from the findings of the study by using case studies.

3.5 Research instruments

Data collection instruments refer to the tools that a researcher uses to collect data of a given study (Thomas, Nelson and Silverman, 2011). Data collection instruments help researchers to track their observations and report them in a more coherent way. To this end, the researcher is able to influence the reliability and the validity of the data collected. There are different kinds of research instruments that are used in collecting data for the research. The two main instruments used by business researchers are questionnaires and interviews (Yin, 2014).

Questionnaires refer to data collection instruments used in the investigation of trends and frequencies of the phenomenon under study.A questioner uses questions of two kinds, open ended questions, and closed ended questions. With regards to this study, the researcher used closed ended questions that were structured using the 5 Likert scale. The questions were presented in form of statements and the respondents were asked to tick the questions they most agreed with.

The researcher used questionnaires because questionnaires are not only easy to use when collecting datathey also make the analysis of the data easier. Further, questionnaires allow researchers to collect data from a large population at low cost. In addition, questionnaires are easy to administer compared to interviews and they are easy to understand for the respondents. Finally, questionnaires standardises the data collected from different respondents. However, the use of questionnaires has its own limitations. Firstly, a questionnaire that is incompletely filled in affects the validity and the reliability of the data (Snieder and Larner, 2009). Moreover, it is easy for the respondents to misinterpret the questionnaire if the questions are poorly designed and unclear in language. Furthermore, if the questionnaire surveys are conducted too frequently, the person collecting data may become very exhausted and this may make them to compromise as they try to reach their daily targets (Snieder and Larner, 2009). To this end, the questionnaire was divided into four parts. The first section collected the demographic information of the respondent while the second part collected information on the relationship between organizational culture and Human resource management. The third and the fourth sections of the questionnaire investigated on the impact of organizational culture on performance management strategies and the impact of organisational culture and customer management strategy respectively. The structure of these questions was designed in line with the aim of the study which was to analyse the Impact of organisational culture on strategic management.

Moving forward, interviews refer to a tool of qualitative research which entails collection of data from a limited number of participants with the aim of getting their viewpoints regarding particular situations and ideas (Boyce and Neale, 2006).There are three types of interviews which include semi-structured, structured and unstructured interviews. Structured interviews are made up of pre-determined questions that are asked to all interviewees in the same way(Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). With regards to this study, the researcher used structured questions as reflected in the interview protocol section of the appendix. The questions on the interview protocol were standardised to make sure that all the participants were asked similar questions.The researcher used interviews to collect data because interviews allow comprehensive collection of data and the data collected can be analysed immediately. Further, the use of interviews allowed the researcher to clarify questions for the consumers thus increasing data validity and reliability (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). However, the main limitation with interviews is that the interviewer may mislead the respondents to answer questions in a manner that befits the interviewers instead of following the interview guide. Further, interviews are time consuming and expensive for the researcher. This particular research used both questionnaires and interviews to collect data from both the employees and the management. The use of questionnaire was handy in collecting information from the large number of employees. On the other hand, the use of interviews enabled the researcher to have a one on one interaction with the managers.

3.6 Sampling and data analysis

Sampling describes the principles used to select participants from the general population of a study (Bell and Opie, 2002). Sampling forms an eminent part in the study that relies on collection of primary data.In determining the sampling technique to employ, the researcher establishes the guiding principles that determine the sampling group from the general population. According to Keith (1998), sampling techniques can be classified into two broad categories which are probability and non-probability sampling.

Probability sampling method uses a non-zero probability strategy whereby the chance of selecting each member of population is high. On the other hand, non-probability sampling uses non-random technique to select the participant of the study. Non-random selection methods are quota sampling, convenience sampling and snow ball sampling.

This particular research used non-probability sampling method with a biased focus on convenience sampling. Convenience sampling refers to a non-probabilistic sampling technique in which the participants of a study are available and accessible to take place in the study (Thomas, Nelson and Silverman, 2011).The use of convenience sampling requires the researcher to use the available primary data without adding other requirements. Put differently, convenience sampling requires that the researcher gets the participant wherever and whenever it is convenient. The advantage of using convenience sampling method is that it is simple and easy to use (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill, 2011). Further, the use of convenience sampling makes it easy for the researcher to conduct a pilot study and to generate the hypothesis of the study. Additionally, convenience sampling is cost effective as it does not use a lot of time or money.  However, convenience sampling has been criticised for its vulnerability to biasness and high degree of error in sampling(Thomas, Nelson and Silverman, 2011).

In line with the aim of the research which is to analyse the Impact of organisational culture on strategic management in Tesco, the researcher sampled 100 employees upon whom the questionnaires were distributed. Prior to the distribution of the questionnaires, the researcher informed the management at Tesco about the aim of the research so as to receive the full support of the management. The respondents were given a time frame of one week to fill in the questionnaires. Out of the100 administered questionnaires,the researcher received back 68 valid questionnaires; this represented a return rate of 68%. Further, the researcher conducted 3 interviews on three senior managers at Tesco Inc. The three managers were sufficiently informed about the aim of the research and the benefits of the recommendations to the company. All the three managers agreed to participate in the research which was conducted for three days during the lunch breaks. The researcher opted to interview the managers during the lunch breaks because they were readily available and there was little possibility of interruptions. The response rate to the interviews was 100%. The collected data was analysed using statistical data analysis techniques such as thestatistical package for social sciences (SPSS) and Microsoft excel. The use of use these statistical data analysis tools enabled the researcher to present the findings in a graphical manner using pie charts and histograms.

3.7 Research Validity and Reliability

Research reliability helps the researcher to determine whether or not the research instrument they used can be relied upon to measure data more than once. Put differently, research reliability refers to the extent to which a research method replicates consistent and stable findings in different studies (Keith, 1998). In relation to this research, research reliability was achieved by conducting a pilot study prior to the actual research. This helped the research to identify the questions that were ambiguous or faulty. Further, the researcher ensured reliability of the research by standardising the questionnaire questions for ever every respondent. Further, the questionnaires were designed using simple language and in most cases, the questions were formulated using the Likert scale as found in the appendix section of this paper. This not only made it easier for the respondents to fill in the questionnaires, it also made it easy for the researcher to analyse the data.

Further, research validity refers to the efficacy of the of the research instrument in measuring what it is meant to measure. There are two classifications of research validity which are internal and external research validity. Internal validity is concerned with showing how the findings of a research reflect reality(Keith, 1998). On the other hand, external validity describes the degree with which the findings of research can be reflected in other research environments. To this end, the researcher made sure that the questionnaire was in line with the objectives of the research so as to ensure the internal validity of the study.

3.8 Limitations of the study

The researcher experienced a myriad of challenges during the research process. Firstly, the number of the respondents to the questionnaire was huge and it took time for the researcher to disseminate the questionnaires and to collect them back. To overcome this challenge, the researcher liaised with different supervisors to collect the questionnaires on their behalf. Further, the use of convenience sampling method exposed the study to biasness in the event that the respondents’ responses did not tally with the opinions of the researcher. To mitigate this limitation, the researcher emphasised the importance of being impartial in case the data collectors did not agree with the responses of the respondents.Moreover, some of the research questions were not clear to the respondents;however, this limitation was overcome after conducting a pilot study that exposed the ambiguity and the faults in the questionnaires.

3.9 Ethical considerations

Ethical considerations in research refer to the values and norms that guide a research (Neuman, 2003). This research complied with the established research ethics by first ensuring that only the respondents that consented to participate in the research were allowed to fill in the questionnaires. Prior to the collection of data, the researcher informed the human resource manager at Tesco of the aim to conduct the research at the company. The researcher further assured the manager that the research would not be used to taint the image of the company. Furthermore, the researcher ensured that the research questions on the interview protocol and the questionnaires were not demeaning or discriminating the respondents. Moreover, the researcher ensured that the respondents were not coerced to respond to the study questions.

Moving forward, the researcher encouraged the data collectors to maintain impartiality during the process of collecting data. The data collectors were warned against fabrication, misinterpretation or falsification of data. Finally, the research ensured the confidentiality of the respondent by ensuring that the questionnaires did have names or any leading information about the respondents.

3.10 Chapter summary

This section of the research has succinctly elaborated on the research methods that the researcher employed in the research. From this methodology, the researcher used positivist research philosophy and inductive approach to conduct the research. Further, the research strategy used in the research was case study strategy as the research focused on one organisation. Moreover, the researcher used interviews and questionnaire survey to collect data and the sampling method used was convenience sampling. The researcher used statistical technique of data analysis to collect data. Furthermore, this dissertation has delved on the reliability and validity concerns that arose as well as the limitations of the research. Finally, this dissertation has discoursed on the ethical considerations that the researcher study upheld.

Chapter 4 FINDINGS, ANALYSIS, and RECOMMENDATION

4.1. Introduction

The focus of this chapter is to present the data findings and data analysis regarding the research topic, the critical analysis of the impacts of organisational culture on strategic management, with a focused study on Tesco. To recap what has already been discussed, the specific objectives of the dissertation were: To analyse the impact of organisational culture on human resource management strategy; To analyse the impact of organisational culture on the customer management strategy; To analyse the impact of organisational culture on the marketing strategy; To recommend ways in which the management can exploit organisational culture to achieve a competitive advantage. In light of this objective, the chapter firstly presents the findings of the report, starting with the demographic information, followed by the data on each of the specific objectives that were presented in chapter one, the chapter also presents a discussion of the analysis of these factors, followed by a brief chapter summary.  

4.2. Data presentation

The research used questionnaires and interview forms to collect data, and the targeted respondents were employees at the Tesco UK retail store located at Union Street, Aberdeen, with the details as expressed in the previous chapter. The collected data was analysed using IBM SPSS statistics analysis software version 20 as this allowed the researcher to carry out detailed descriptive statistics analysis on the data. It is necessary to emphasise that the specific data analysis techniques used to analyse the quantitative data collected from the questionnaires was analysis of central tendency, and specifically the mean. The mean was used because it is not only very easy to calculate, but also it offers to the researchers the best average distribution of data collected for the purposes of analysis. The major shortcoming of the means that the researcher noted is that it is greatly affected by outliers, such as extremely small or large numbers within the distribution range of the data. However, the researcher noted that the data collected did not have any chance of having such outliers as the range of distribution was very small given that the researcher used a five-point likert scale. Specific to this research, the five point likert scale was used such that all scores were distributed in a continuum ranging from 1 to 5, where 1 is least agreeable and 5 is most agreeable, As such, 3 was the middle point such that all scores below three were taken to be a negation of the given statement in the questionnaire. On the other hand, the scores that were more than 3 were affirmation of the statements given, with all scores at 3 being a neutral point, neither disagreeing nor agreeing with the given statement. All information gathered from the questionnaires was buttressed using the information given by the managers during the interview processes. 

4.2.1. Demographics

The research targeted employees of the company, which comprise a range of demographics as follows. In total, 100 employees were approached with the questionnaires and interviews, with ten of these being managers who were requested to take part in the interviews and 90 of them being the rest of the staff who were requested to take part in filling the questionnaires. However, not all of those who were approached participated, as it was found out that two managers were out on business calls, and 20 employees could not participate for one reason or another. Additionally, of the 78 remaining respondents, data from nine participants filling out the questionnaires was rejected because of inconsistencies in filling out the questionnaires, such as leaving some places blank, checking more than one box and other irreconcilable mistakes. In all, the total valid responses that were retrieved from both interviews and questionnaires was 69, which was a significantly high response rate compared to the data reported in previous researches. 

Figure 1: Respondents’ age distribution

Table 1: Respondents demographic details

Demographic	Respondents brackets	Number of respondents
age	18-25	35%
26-35	30%
36-45	21%
	46 and above	14%
Respondents gender	Male	37
	Female	63
Respondents experience	0-5 years	67%
	6-10 years	24%
	11+ years	7%

4.2.2. Data on the impact of organisation culture on HRM strategies

While assessing the impacts of organisational culture on human management strategies, questions related to this aspect were asked the participants both in the interviews and in the questionnaires. In the questionnaires, 71% of the respondents argued that organisational beliefs always affected the process of recruiting process of the organisation in a positive way, whereas 75% agreed to the thought that beliefs and values affect the process of sharing information through training and development. Additionally, it is notable that the performance management process of the organisation was thought to be directly tied to organisations values by some 68% of the questionnaire respondents. In all, of all the questionnaires responded to, it was found out that 71% of the total respondents found out that organisational culture embraced by the organisation affects directly all the strategies that the human resource management adopts.  Figure 1 summarises the findings in a visual set of column bars.

Figure 1: Assessing the impacts of different aspects of culture on HRM

 In the interviews, the participants responded in a quite similar manner. One manager responded by saying that the organisational beliefs and the company’s process of recruitment had a  lot to do with each other, with good recruitments being the result of upholding years of good cultural values.  Other managers also added that without culture, an organisation could not easily influence the rate at which employees work.  In so arguing, these and other interviewees pointed out the implication that organisational culture was a critical element that was necessary in the organisation if it was to achieve the targeted human resource management goals. In all, in the management as was in the junior employees, all the managers interviewed responded that organisational culture has direct impacts on human resource management strategy.  

4.2.3. Impact of organisation culture on performance management strategies

Another task in the questionnaire was to assess the impacts of organisational culture on performance management strategies adopted by the organisation. To make this possible, the various elements of performance management strategies were assessed including reward programs, job promotions as well as decisions regarding the endowment of job titles. Moreover, the questionnaire captured the decision about wrongfulness and rightfulness of actions, as well as the aspect of teamwork and sensitivity to gender.  It was found out that the majority of the respondents favoured the opinion that organisational culture directly impacted on performance management strategies.

In essence, when asked about how the behaviour patterns of employees related to the reward programs, a total of 87% of the respondents said that the reward programs had a direct impact on their behaviour patterns towards the organisation. Moreover, 78% of all the respondents agreed that the decisions regarding promotions and job title decisions were affected by the belief system.  A lot of agreement was also witnessed during the interview in which only 3 out of the managers interviewed though that the management of performance was not directly associated with culture of the organisation. Figure two captures the feedback from the questionnaires regarding this aspect of human resource management.

Figure 2: Impact of culture on performance management

4.2.4. Impact of organisation culture on customer management strategies

In the findings regarding the customer management strategies and culture, the various elements that were investigated included the question whether it is necessary for the organisation to manage its customers by changing its organisational culture. Additionally, employees were asked whether the organisation had an efficient customer relationship program, or if the customer relationship program is completely lacking in the organisation. Lastly, the participants were asked to give their opinion on whether the present organisational strategies have increased the number of customers or not. As seen in figure three, the reactions to these questions were very mixed, unlike the first two already investigated above.   

Figure 3: Impact of culture on customer management

4.2.5. Impact of organisation culture on marketing management strategies

Marketing management strategy was also significantly impacted by the organisational culture as was found out in the research. Precisely, the three critical questions that needed the answering in this regard included the question whether employees thought that the organisation used the correct language in marketing of its products. Moreover, there was also need to understand whether the choice of target market was equally dependent on organisational culture. Lastly, there was the question whether the process of selection of the market and the marketing mix were dependent on the organisational culture. In all, the findings of these questions are presented in the figure 4 below.

4.3. Data analysis

Following the findings of the research as presented in the above data, the research also undertook a critical analysis of the findings as elucidated in the following sections.  The first part presents the analysis of demographic information, followed by the analysis of the various aspects of management strategy.

4.3.1. Analysis of demographics

From the data, it is evident that a majority of the employees are the youth as the group aged between 18 to 25 years and 26-35 years formed the majority of the staff. This is not only very appropriate but also agreeing with the expected statistics from previous researches. It reflects the activeness of the retail industry which is tedious and requires youthful people who are both innovative and always on toes. Additionally, it is not totally devoid of older people, which shows that there is a transfer of knowledge taking place from the ageing staff to the new staff (Jelinek, Smirich& Hirsch, 2013).

Additionally, it is undisputable that there are more female employees than there are make employees in the place, with the research revealing that more than 50% of the total number of employees is females. This can be explained because, as the retail industry is strongly driven by the number of sales that an organisation might make. Tesco therefore depends on having a strong marketing and sales team, as does any other retail company in the UK and the rest of the world. As researchers have previously observed, the elements of psychological selling comes into play when the customer attendants, cashiers and other customer care executives are mostly comprised of beautiful ladies that have attractive physical features. This has been demonstrated in other researches discussing the concept of marketing in which a woman’s sexuality is used by marketers to gain more clients.

In matters regarding experience, the least experienced group are the majority, whereas the most experienced group are the least. This can be attributed to the high employee turnover in the retail industry, as most of the employees are young people who are highly likely to be fresh from college and looking for a temporary employment as they organise their further education or better jobs.  In previous researches, it was noted that many recent graduates preferred to hold jobs in retail stores and hotels only on a temporal basis, as most of them usually have different career paths from those offered to them by the job descriptions in these industries.  On the other hand, those who stayed longer are people who studied the relevant courses needed to rise in the ranks available in the retail industry as well as those with management roles (Jelinek, Smirich& Hirsch, 2013).

4.3.1. Analysis on the impact of organisation culture on HRM strategies

From the data above, it has been seen that culture has a strong influence on the human resource management strategies. The findings agree with literature as human resource management and organisational culture have been noted to have a link by various scholars, including Schein (1990), Klein (1996), and martins &Terblanche (2003) among various others. Specifically, is has been observed that one of the major reasons why employees felt that the organisational beliefs affected the recruitment process was because there are some standards which the organisation naturally sets for potential employees. These standards differ from organisation to organisation, but they are critically important in determining whether an employee being recruited will be absorbed or not (Homburg &Pflesser, 2000). Additionally, it has been shown that the organisation has the responsibility to determine whether, apart from the academic qualification of the employee, there are any personal characteristics that are aligned with the desired working requirements in the organisation. As such, culture comes in very strongly, as Tesco wants people who are focused on achieving the dreams and aspirations of the organisation, and will not consider recruiting anyone who does not abide by these goals and most employees seem to be aware of this.

Information sharing is also impacted positively by the culture at Tesco as per the data above. This can be explained by the fact that Tesco has a decentralised management system, where all departments and branches are semi-autonomously run. As such, the organisation relies heavily on efficient training and development programs aimed at equipping the employees with all the necessary skills and making employees well conversant with all their roles. In fact, employees and managers felt that there is a strong relationship between the culture of transparency and the success of the organisation. Additionally, the organisation adapts the pay structures that make it synchronised with the other aspects such as performance and willingness of employees to work, since employees admit that the payment system relate with the values of work. In all, this research gave evidence that the culture within the organisation is strongly influential in the human resource management decisions, with 71% agreeing that the influence can be felt (Homburg &Pflesser, 2000).   

However, what Tesco might have failed to observe is that not all of its employees and management shares in the sentiments of its idea of culture and human resource management. While 29% is a statistically lower number of people to have refused, researchers contend that any feedback from such as qualitative approach cannot be ignored. Since nearly a third of the employees think that there is no connection between the culture that Tesco adapts and the recruitment strategies, job tittle plans and promotional activities carried out in the organisation, Tesco should show concern to address their views.    

4.3.2. Analysis on the impact of organisation culture on performance management strategies

As it has been reported, the performance management strategies, which includes the creation of plans that are necessary to increase the output of the company without increasing the amount of resources used in production, is also influenced by the culture within the organisation. The data shows that 82% responded that organisational culture has direct impacts on performance management strategy. The findings are supported by Watkins (2013) who further notes that the permeation of culture is also a shared process of collectively held belief and holistic comprehension from various staff’s view and interests. It also offers a criterion for combination intention and shared behaviour. With this view, the role of organisational culture on the existing company performance management strategies is made very crucial.

Additionally, the findings may be as a result of Tesco being a retail company, and as such, is heavily reliant on using reward programs to motivate its employees into working harder. In the theory of motivation, it was noted that the employees who work in cultures where their works are recognised deliver more heartily than those whose extra time at work do not earn them any recognition or additional stipend. Additionally, the theory X and Theory Y also demonstrated that humans are by nature lazy and unwilling to take responsibility or to work. However, one way in which Tesco has managed its performance is to create policies that are aligned with its culture, thereby enabling most of the employees to feel that they are favoured with the organisation’s goals. 

The slight differing opinion held by employees who thought otherwise might be explained by the comments from the interviews. One manager noted, for example that “the company holds such high regard for its organisational culture that some employees have been unable to cope, as they imagined Tesco would be reluctant to take punitive measures for those who did not strictly adhere to its organisational policies. Sadly, the goals of the organisation are bigger than individual goals, and such employees will from time to time dislike the idea of aligning the performance of the organisation so close to the age old culture.” 

4.3.3. Analysis on the impact of organisation culture on customer management strategies

From the data above, 62% responded that organisational culture has direct impacts on customer management strategy. The high response of positive relation despite the clearly defined strategic goals that a company may have, there is usually a shift in responsibility in the process of strategic fulfilment form the strategic level up to departmental or functional manager. One reason why the results are as observed may be because Tesco is a customer-intensive organisation, and all the important decisions must pace customers at the centre if they are to even remotely succeed. Research has shown that almost 80% of organisations in the retail industry of the UK has some form of customer management strategies that are tied to the organisation’s values and belief systems., thereby making the practise universal too the entire market.

The products and services produced by Tesco and such minded companies must ensure that they not only have a customer-friendly culture, but that they are also quick to enhance all customer relations where necessary. The managers responded that the heart of Tesco is the customers, without whom the company is as good as dead. Emphasising this point, the marketing manager underscored that, in fact, their customer relationship program is not as efficient as it should be, which is why the company is considering doing an overhaul of its strategies, which is targeted at creating a more centralised management system, and adopting an online-based kind of retail store that will take the consumption closer to the customers than they are already doing (Geoghegan, 2011). 

Agreeing with scholars such as Porte (1998), the close relationship between the customer management strategies observed in Tesco can also be attributed to the need to influence customers’ attitudes towards the company as well as their loyalty towards the products sold by the company. Additionally, there has been a lot of emphasis by other scholars on the need for transparency between the organisation and the clients, as well as the demand for high level of integrity.  From the frogging, the reactions of the employees and managers regarding the close and positive relationship between the organisation’s culture and customer management strategy is understandable. Moreover, it is supported by exisiting literature as something that is necessary, and it will be critical to see the organisation maintain an even higher level of culture management in these lines.

4.3.4. Analysis on the impact of organisation culture on marketing management strategies

43% responded that organisational culture has direct impacts on performance management strategy. While only 43% reputed to agree that organisational culture has a direct impact on the marketing management, the aforementioned researches in literature presented contrary evidence. As Umoren (1996) later noted, one of the defining elements of culture is language, as it serves as a vehicle for driving culture, and this makes language an important tool for influencing consumer behaviour. On the other hand, the low response can also be analysed using the findings of Cheng, 2007 and other scholars who thought culture did not heavily affect marketing. While there is evidence to the effect that culture affects the marketing strategies that an organisation might adopt, there have been observed tendencies by organisations to prefer product standardisation and other marketing techniques that might not be in favour of cultural diversity (Cheng, 2007; Doz, 2011; Griffith, 2010).

Tesco’s lack of alignment between the culture and the marketing practices adopted might also be explained by the company’s scope. It is readily noticeable that Tesco’s major operations are mostly in the UK. The company’s trading profits as of 2011 revealed that Tesco’s income from its UK operations were nearly as much as twice the profits from all other regions of the world combined. This shows that the company has stuck to the cultural standards of the UK, and tried to tailor these standards to its operations in the rest of the world (Heide& John, 1992). Not only that, it can also explain the tremendous failure that Tesco has had to deal with in the US, by refusing to consider changing its organisational culture to suit the predominant culture of its market. The failure by Tesco in the US market should show Tesco and other retail organisations that marketing is indeed a critical aspect of determining the success of the organisation that they cannot afford to ignore it (Geoghegan, 2011).    

For instance, organisational culture should impact the management strategies of the organisation such that it sees which organisational culture fits with the national cultures of the people as pointed out by the theories of national cultural dimensions . If there is a misalignment, then the organisation can consider embracing the foregoing culture, if just for the particular market, as was done by other organisations such as McDonald’ the undisputed game-changer  in the food industry. The culture of Tesco in the UK has made it be recognised as a luxury store, stocking the most impressive consumer items, and emerging as one of the most respected brands in the UK, but trying to adapt a no-frills strategy in the US ensured it totally failed. The management and the employees seem not to have noticed this as they still emphasise that the organisational culture is not important to their marketing strategy (Heide& John, 1992).  

4.4. Recommendations

From the findings and analysis, critical issues have been noted, which makes it worth offering a battery of recommendations to the company. Firstly, it has been noted that Tesco has done very well, and the management as well as the staff seem to agree that culture had a very central role to do with this success. The first problem however is the high number of employees who are in the organisation only for temporal basis, which is causing the organisation a very high turnover, and in the same note, costing high very high expenses in recruitment. This is as a result of the high number of employees who lack experience, vis-à-vis the number that boasts more than six years of experience (Jarratt& Fayed, 2011).  As culture is something that takes years to build in the minds of employees, it is advisable for Tesco to consider finding strategies that will help it retain its employees, such as the provision of long term employment for even the junior staff that works in any capacity. This can also be done by opening up promotional opportunities not only based on the academic qualifications of an individual but also the performance of such individuals. Tesco can also consider offering rigorous on the job training services, which will help the group of employees who work at the company despite never having studied related courses. Moreover, it will help employees who did not study to very high levels to stand a chance of increasing their knowledge and land better promotions.

Additionally, the company’s lack of unanimity is noted in various instances, where some employees have sentiments that are quite different from those of their colleagues. This shows that there may be a gap in cultural appreciation in the organisation, thereby necessitating the need for cultural appraisal. In light of this the human resource management should consider adapting values that can unite the older generation of employees with the younger generation.  This will increase the unity of reason, thereby enhancing the support that employees can give to the organisation, and this translates directly to organisational success.

Another critical point that the marketing department need to urgently work on is the question of the relationship between the marketing strategies used by the organisation and the organisational culture. It has been observed that a very large number of employees consider there to be no association between marketing strategies and the culture that the organisation practices. This explains why Tesco’s marketing strategies have failed, leading the company to bankruptcy in some regions of its US operations.  It is therefore recommended that the marketing team device new strategies that are both in line with the culture of the organisation and the national culture of the regions in which it operate (Hofstede, 2007).      

4.5. Summary

This chapter has presented the data gathered from the research, the analysis of such data and the recommendations for improvement of the company’s organisational culture for strategic management purposes. It has been seen that Tesco has understood the role of culture in various aspects of strategic management, which might explain the astounding success that the company has registered over the years. Additionally, the company is criticised for failing to observe a number of critical issues which tie culture to strategic management and the company’s failure in the US is cited as an example why organisational culture is important in marketing strategy. With this, the company and all organisations are advised on what to do to perform better.

CHAPTER 5:  DISCUSSION

5.1. Introduction

From the onset, the aim of the research was very clear, as the study focused on finding out the impact of organisational culture on human resource management strategy, the impact of organisational culture on the customer management strategy, the impact of organisational culture on the marketing strategy, and to recommend ways in which the management can exploit organisational culture to achieve a competitive advantage. As such, and from the prevailing information in chapter one, the problem statement indicated the need to emphasise on the role of culture on strategic management. The detailed context of the research gave the researcher an opportunity to explore the much literature from recent and old archives on the subject. In either cases, it was seen that the management of organisations is not only dependent on the existing structures of organisational culture, but it is also depending on the steps that the organisation as a whole might take in order to ensure that there is a reliable culture guiding employees. This chapter presents the discussion of the study findings majorly, and aims to perform a critical review of whether the research questions have been answered. Additionally, the chapter also intends to perform a critical appraisal of the research design as well as the impact of this on the ability to consider the study results valid and reliable. Briefly, the chapter also aim to find out the relationship between the presented results and the works that had been done earlier by other scholars of organisational culture and business performance. Another critical necessity covered by this chapter is the evaluation of the research with regards to the ways in which the research could be improved by future researchers.

5.2. Critical review of whether the research questions have been answered

As already noted, the research aimed at fulfilling three specific objectives as follows:

1. To analyse the impact of organisational culture on human resource management strategy

2. To analyse the impact of organisational culture on the customer management strategy   

3. To analyse the impact of organisational culture on the marketing strategy

4. To recommend ways in which the management can exploit organisational culture to achieve a competitive advantage.

In other words, the study was focused on the question whether or not organisational culture impacts the three core elements of management, which are marketing, customer management, and resource management strategies. Based on the data findings and analysis presented in chapter four, the study has very adequately answered these questions, and this is self-evident. As literature showed, the most important elements of customer management strategies include the organisational beliefs that the company adhere to whenever they are planning to carry out their recreation process. As such, by determining that the employees felt positive or negative about the organisation process, the research was adequately tacking the question of human resource management. Moreover, it is known that the values that are held in the organisation are also influential in influencing the process through which the information is shared.

During the data collection process, employees were questioned regarding their view on influence of value on information sharing. Their response therefore captured the essence of the question, as well as the element of pay structures on the strategies that the organisations choose to adopt. Combined, the responses of the employees towards these questions, which covered the first to the fifth points of the questionnaire, answer the questions of the relationship between human resource management strategies adopted and the organisational culture that is being practiced therein. From the analysis of the statistics received, it was found that the majority of the respondents checked boxes market four and five on the likert scale. As per the given introduction to the analysis, it had been observed that four and five demarcated an agreement with the stated point. On average, if the score of the people were more than 3, then it implied that the response was highly agree and given the average score for this part, it is given, therefore, that the management strategies related to human resource and the culture of the organisation at PepsiCo are directly related. This adequately answers the question the researcher sought to answer in the first place.

The question of the relationship between organisational culture and the strategies used in performance management were also adequately answered. From the literature, it was gathered that the most critical issues that could be used by managers included reward programs, beliefs and values, as well as organisation policies. As such, by determine the response of the employees based on these core determinants, the study was sure to capture the full scope of the relationship between culture and performance. Once again, as their opinions and a majority answered that they felt there was a strong relationship between the culture adopted and the performance models that the organisation was adopting. In order to capture the full extent of this part, the data collection material was designed with the third section (section C) devoted to answering the research question given for this part. As such, it was well answered as per the objectives of the paper.

Managing customer is one of the challenging yet crucial investment strategies that a management must consider into place before even considering how it will even run its units of manufacturing and distribution. Taking this advice, the literature considered some important issues and it was found that the question of customer management in relation to culture could be further broken down into easier form. The questionnaire at part D sought to ask respondents and their response was underwhelming as most employees agreed fully that it was necessary for an organisation to create customer relationship programs, and customer relationship. Based on the way in which the questions were answered, and the prevailing analysis that showed the link between the customer management strategies and the performance of the organisation, it is agreeable that this question has fully been answered. In fact, the same goes for the question on marketing strategy, which was also fully answered based on the given literature, as well as the prevailing data and analysis.  

5.3. The relationship between the present research and earlier work

In their research, Brannen and Doz (2010) described organisational culture as determines and reflects the beliefs, values and attitudes of its members, the three of which foster norm that influence employees’ behaviour, and this definition was closely related to that offered by Hosfetede et al. (1990), and Kotter and Heskett (1992). From this research, as all the elements that were investigated showed that there was a strong relationship between organisational culture and various behavioural patterns of both the employees and the managers, it can therefore be agreed that the findings of this research agree to all the important findings in literature. Not only the definition, but, from the prevailing research, it was also noted that the issues such as staff motivation, working quality, productivity and efficiency, relationship between staff and company, attitude of staffs, reformation (Campbell, 2002). This opinion, which was shared by the evidence given by Shukla (2011), Hofstede (1990) and Wardrobe (2005), has also been affirmed in the findings of this study. In fact, as Katsikeas, Samiee and Theodosiou (2006) notes that other areas of strategic management that have been proven too rely on national cultural dimensions include international management, negotiations and international marketing, this study also emphasises the same point.

Theories such as those advanced by Charles Handy, Hosftede and other theorists in suppor of the relationship between culture of the organisation and the strategies that must be adoped by the organisation are also critical. As Schein (1990), Klein (1996), and martins &Terblanche (2003), noted that there is a critical link between the impacts of organisational culture and the strategies that the organisation finally chooses there is evidence in this research that agrees with all the aspects of human resource management, marketing, customer relationship, as well as performance management.

5.4. Implications of the research and proposed improvements

The research has various implications both to the present reader as well as to the future researchers. As this research has mostly narrowed down on the strategic management and culture relationship, there remains a wide gap that literature still lacks. As such, it is important for the future researchers to investigate on other organisational factors that affect organisational management. These factors include styles of management, structure of the organisation and clients and the external parties among other factors. Further, future researchers should ensure that they are well versed with the methodologies of data collection and analysis they intend to use before embarking on conducting the research. By so doing, they will save on the time required to conduct the study, and the research process will be efficient. Additionally, The findings of the study found that cultural factors such as religion and language play a critical role in determining the marketing strategy that Tesco applies. These findings make it imperative that future researcher first need to try and understand the concept of the religion of the people they are investigating.

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

6.1 Introduction

The aim of this dissertation was to examine the impact of organisational culture on strategic management. To achieve this aim, the study used four objectives which included analysing the impact of organisational culture on human resource management strategy, as well as, the impact of organisational culture on the customer management strategy. They also included evaluating the impact of organisational culture on the marketing strategy as well as, offering recommendations on ways in which the management can exploit organisational culture to achieve a competitive advantage. This section of the research dissertation aims at summarising the key findings of the research from the introduction chapter to the findings and analysis chapter. The researcher compares the findings of the study and objectives relative to the literature available on the impact of organisational culture on strategic management. Subsequently, the chapter discusses the main limitations of the research together with the future considerations that future researchers can pursue.

6.2 Conclusion

The first objective of the study was to analyse the impact of organisational culture on human resource management strategies. Using a structured questionnaire, the researcher established that there was a direct correlation between organisational culture and human resource management. Precisely, the study has established that organisational culture influences the process of recruiting employees including training, recruitment training and hiring of workers. The study has established that in the process of recruitment, HR managers at Tesco are very keen to hire employees whose values and beliefs concur with the value of the company. For instance, the company has great value for employees who are dedicated towards the conserving the environment. This is because one of the organisational policies of Tesco involves environmental conservation. Further, the analysis of the data revealed that organisational culture plays a pertinent role in the process of formulating polices. However, the analysis has revealed that the formulation of the established policies is the prerogative of the employees and if the employees do not have a good understanding of the organisational culture, then the policy is likely to fail. The findings agree with the literature review of this study as human resource management and organisational culture have been noted to have a link by various scholars, including Schein (1990), Klein (1996), and martins &Terblanche (2003) among various others. Moreover, the findings have revealed that culture is closely tied to the performance of employees in Tesco. The analysis has revealed that when Tesco employees understand its organisational culture, they are motivated to be royal and dedicated to their company.

The second objective of the study was to analyse the impact of organisational culture on customer management strategy at Tesco. A structured questionnaire designed along the personalities presented by Piekkari and Welch (2011) investigated the personalities of motivated, fervent, slack, apathetic and humdrum employees and their on influence customer management. The findings have relieved that notwithstanding the established strategic goals that Tesco has; there is a change in responsibility in the practice of strategic fulfilment in all levels of the company from junior employees to the functional manager or departmental manager. This is an impediment in the attainment of the established organisational strategies.  Further, the findings reveal that differences between employees in an organisation affect customer management due to lack of team work and devotion towards meetings the needs of the customers. Further findings from the study showed that there is a link between the personality of the employees and the attitude of the customer towards a company. The study has showed that cultural differences or similarities between the employee and the customer play a tremendous role in shaping the loyalty of employees towards the organisation. The finds also revealed that the penetration of culture is a shared process of collectively held belief and holistic comprehension between employees and the customers. The findings also provide a criterion for combination of intention and shared behaviour between employees and customers. With this view, the role of organisational culture on the existing company performance management strategies is made very crucial. These findings are in congruent with the literature by Watkins (2013) and Piekkari, Welch and Paavilainen (2009).

The third objective of the study involved analysing the impact of organisational culture on the marketing strategy. The findings of the study found that cultural factors such as religion and language play a critical role in determining the marketing strategy that Tesco applies. The findings of the research has revealed that all forms of marketing, including advertisements, promotions and sales, as well as personal selling, are all dependent on culture.  While there is evidence to the effect that culture affects the marketing strategies that an organisation might adopt, there have been observed tendencies by organisations to prefer product standardisation and other marketing techniques that might not be in favour of cultural diversity. To this end, in most markets, Tesco prefers to use product standardisation as its main product strategy across the market. Tesco applies product standardisation mainly because of its well established image across the international market and the efficacy of product standardisation in helping the company to save on the cost of production.

6.3 Limitations of the study

 The research was faced with a myriad of limitations as presented herein. One of the key limitations is that the sample size used was too big. Tesco has an approximated number of 510,444 of employees in the world. However, this study sampled 69 employees to respond to the questionnaire and 3 interviews on three senior managers. Evidently, the sampled size is too small, therefore, presenting the question of reliability of the study given that the small number cannot be taken to be representative of the general Tesco employee population.

Another limitation of the study is that it is limited to one organisation only, in this case, Tesco PLC.  To this end, it may be hard to generalise the findings of the study to the entire retail industry in the UK. Additionally, the relationship between organisational culture and strategic management has been limited to the UK market. For this reason, it may not be possible for the researcher to make generalisations of the findings in relation to the other cultures and countries. Furthermore, the study is limited to the impact of culture on organisational management failing to take into account other organisational factors that affect the operations of a company.

 Furthermore, the study used secondary sources of data to complement the primary sources of data collection. Some of the secondary sources relied on subjective rather than objective evidence. Moreover, important data that could have aided in analysing data using numerical figures was not readily available, thus making the findings to be subjective. In the same vein, the researcher used questionnaires and interview questions to collect data from the employees in Tesco. The use of these questions subjected the study to biasness in case the employees and the managers felt that they were revealing too much information about the operations of the company.

Another limitation that affected this study is that the researcher lacked enough knowledge and experience in conducting a research study. For this reason, the researcher found it cumbersome to collect and analyse data. Furthermore, the lack of experience of the researcher made the research to consume a lot of time as the researcher consulted with their tutor and other resourceful sources. Additionally, the researcher was limited in terms of the resources available to conduct the study. The researcher, being a student, did not have sufficient money to cater for the transports and to pay the persons who were helped with the data collection.

6.4 Future research directions

From the above discussed limitations, future researchers should consider to use a sizeable sample in their research that will facilitate generalisation of the findings. This means that future researchers should increase the number of employees relative to the general population unlike in the case of this study. Furthermore, future researchers should consider conducting researches in more than one retail store in the UK market to ensure that the findings are indicative of the situation and generalisable to other retail companies in the UK.

Moreover, it is important for the future researchers to investigate on other organisational factors that affect organisational management. These factors include styles of management, structure of the organisation and clients and the external parties among other factors. Further, future researchers should ensure that they are well versed with the methodologies of data collection and analysis they intend to use before embarking on conducting the research. By so doing, they will save on the time required to conduct the study, and the research process will be efficient. Moving on, future researchers should thoroughly plan for the research so as to be effective in time and resource management. These researchers can make use of the gnat chart that helps researchers to plan on resource, check on the progress and to make adjustments in case of eminent changes in the process of conducting the study. Finally, in case future researchers use secondary sources, they should consider using empirically reviewed secondary resources so as to boost the reliability of the research, as well as, to mitigate subjectivity that stems from biased secondary sources.

References

Adèr, H. J., Mellenbergh, G. J. and Hand, D. J. (2008) Advising on research methods: A consultant’s companion.Huizen, The Netherlands: Johannes van Kessel Publishing.

Alexander, J. C. (2014) Positivism, Presupposition and Current Controversies (Theoretical Logic in Sociology). London: Routledge.

Alvesson, A. (2013) Underdstanding Organizational Culture. London: Sage Publicstions Ltd.

Bell, J. (2002) Learning from Research. Celtic: Open University Press.

Bell, J. and Opie, C. (2002) Learning from Research.Open University Press.

Bernard, H. R. and Bernard, H. R. (2013) Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks:Sage.

Boyce, C. and Neale, P. (2006) ‘conducting in-depth Interviews: A Guide for Designing and Conducting In-Depth Interviews’, Pathfinder International Tool Series

Bryman, A. (2012) Social research methods. Oxford: Oxford university press.

Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2011) Business Research Methods. 3^rdedn.Oxford: Oxford University Press

Burns, R. B. and  Burns, R. A. (2008) Business research methods and statistics using SPSS. Los Angeles: Sage.

Campbell, D. (2002) Business Strategy. Oxford: British Library Cataloguing

Collis, J. and Hussey, R. (2003) Business Research: A Practical Guide for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cooper, D.R. and Schindler, P.S. (2008) Business Research Methods. Boston, MA and Burr Ridge, IL: McGraw-Hill.

Creswell, J. W. (2012) Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Thousand Oaks: Sage publications.

Crossan, F. (2003) ‘Research philosophy: towards an understanding’, Nurse researcher, 11(1), pp. 46-55.

David, R. (2013) Strategic Management Concepts: A Competitive Advantage Approach.[Online]. Available From: https://www.inkling.com/read/strategic-management-david-14th/chapter-1/benefits-of-strategic-management

Denzin, K. (1994).Handbook of Qualitative Research. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y. (2000) Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S. (2011) The SAGE handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Easterby- Smith, M., Thorpe, R. Jackson, P. and Lowe, A. (2008) Management Research. London:  Sage

Gill, J., Johnson, P., and Clark, M. (2002) Research Methods for Managers. London: Sage.

Goddard, W. and Melville, S, (2004) Research Methodology: An Introduction.2^ndedn. New Jersey : Blackwell Publishing.

Gray, D. E. (2013) Doing research in the real world. Thousand Oaks: Sage

Holden, M. T. and Lynch, P. (2004) ‘Choosing the appropriate methodology: understanding research philosophy’, The marketing review, 4(4), pp.397-409.

Keith, P. (1998) Introduction to social research: quantitative and qualitative approaches. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Luck, M. (1999) Your student Research Project Gower: Gower Publishing Limited.

Neuman, W.L. (2003) Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

publications.

Remenyi, D., Williams, B., Money, A., and Swartz, E. (2003) Doing research in business and management: An introduction to process and method. London: SAGE Publications.

Riple, R. (2008) Strategic management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ritchie, J., Lewis, J., Nicholls, C.M. &Ormston, R. (2014) Qualitative Research Practice. 2^nd ed. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Saunders, M. N., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2011) Research methods for business students.New Delhi: Pearson Education India.

Snieder, R. and Larner, K. (2009) The art of being a scientist: a guide for graduate students and their mentors, Cambridge University Press

Thomas, J. R., Nelson, J. K. and Silverman, S. J. (2011) Research methods in physical activity. Illinois: Human Kinetics.

Thompson, J. (2001) Understanding Corporate Strategy. Oxford: The Alden Press.

Williams, M. (2000) ‘Interpretivism and generalisation’, Sociology, 34(2), pp.209-224.

Yin, R. K. (2014) Case study research: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks:Sage.

Appendix 1 – Questionnaire

Questionnaire

Instructions

Kindly check the boxes to give your answer to the given questions

Part A: Respondent profile

Gender                        ☐ Male                                               ☐ Female

Age                             ☐ 18-25 years            ☐ 26-35 years ☐ 36-45 years            ☐ 46 + years 

Marital status              ☐ married                                           ☐ single        

Work experience         ☐ 0-5 years            ☐ 6-10 years  ☐ 11 + years 

Part B: Organizational culture and Human resource management 

Kindly check the boxes to give your answer to the given questions. 1 means definitely disagree  and 5 means definitely agree.

1. Organisational beliefs always affect the process of recruiting process of the organization in positive way

1	2	3	4	5

2. Organisational beliefs and values affect the process of sharing information through training and development

1	2	3	4	5

3. Organisational values positively affect the job performance management

1	2	3	4	5

4. Pay structures depend on the organisational values that the company upholds

1	2	3	4	5

5. The culture that the organisation embraces directly affects the human resource management strategies adopted

1	2	3	4	5

Part C: Organizational culture and performance management strategies

5. Organisational reward programs are directly related to the behaviour patterns of employees

1	2	3	4	5

6. Organisational beliefs determine the organisation’s promotion and job title decisions

1	2	3	4	5

7. Organisation values are positively linked to what the organization considers as right and wrong

1	2	3	4	5

8. Organisation policies determine the likelihood of emphasis on teamwork and gender sensitivity

1	2	3	4	5

Part D: Organisational culture and customer management strategy

9. It is necessary to have organisational culture to manage customers

1	2	3	4	5

10. The organisation has an efficient customer relationship program

1	2	3	4	5

11. The organisation’s customer relationship program is totally lacking

1	2	3	4	5

12. The current strategies of the organisation has led to increased number of customers

1	2	3	4	5

Part E: Organisational culture and marketing strategy

13. The language used in marketing strategy is affected by organisational culture

1	2	3	4	5

14. Organisational culture affects the choice of market target

1	2	3	4	5

15. The market selection process and the marketing mix an organisation uses is dependent directly on the culture of the organisation

1	2	3	4	5

Appendix 2 – Interview protocol

Part one: Interviewee profile

1. How long have you worked in the retail industry?
2. How long have you worked at Tesco Inc.?
3. How long have you held your current position?

Part two: Impact of organisation culture on HRM strategies

• What are the guiding principles that you follow when hiring new employees?
• How would you describe the management system at Tesco? Is centralised or    decentralised?

Part three: Impact of organisation culture on performance management strategies

• How do you assess the performance of your employees?
• How do you motivate the hardworking and loyal employees in the company?
• How do you maintain discipline among the employees?

Part four: Impact of organisation culture on customer management strategies

• Do you think the organisational culture of the company influences the loyalty of your customers?
• What strategies have you employed to boost customer loyalty?

Part five: Impact of organisation culture on marketing management strategies

1. What cultural factors do you consider when deciding the marketing strategies to use?
2. What marketing strategy do you normally use across different markets? Adaptation or standardisation?