The UK Business Continuity Management - Dissertation Example

?Running Head: Research Proposal Research Proposal [Institute’s Research Proposal ? Background During the last decade, the world witnessed turmoil in global market in the form of financial crises that resulted in adverse impacts on almost every country of the world. In specific, a huge number of financial markets are still coping with the effects of financial crisis. Particularly, governments have played a significant role in supporting its financial markets to survive in midst of such financial crisis. In the British economy, retail sector enjoys noteworthy importance due to its contribution in GDP of the country. In the result, the UK government (HM Treasury, pp. 23-25, 2009) has been putting huge amount of efforts to avoid slowing down of retail sector’s performance as it would have easily resulted in adverse impact on the GDP. One of the indicators of major participation of UK’s retail sector is its fourth ranking in the global trade market despite only having 1% of the global population (HM Treasury, pp. 59-63, 2010). This shows that UK’s retail sector does have potential and government is taking every possible step to take care of it by even going for a high budget deficit. To create an understanding of UK’s retail sector, British Petroleum is a well-known entity of the same sector that comes second in European continent and is so far the largest industrial corporation of the country. Besides BP, UK’s retail sector is proud of its mechanical engineering and manufactured goods that have been contributing majorly in the UK’s export market (Hiles, pp. 39-46, 2010). Furthermore, services such as banking, brokerage, etc are few other constituents of UK’s retail sector that have enabled the United Kingdom to fulfill 10% of the global needs. In specific, performance of UK’s retail sector is playing a crucial role in strengthening economy of the country, and from this understanding, it has now become imperative to carry out research on the country’s retail sector that will be indicating efforts of the governments in midst of financial crises to save its retail sector (Kolb, pp. 44-49, 2010). Research Statement In this regard, the proposed research will focus on the following research statement: “To identify and analyse the performance of UK’s retail sector during the global financial crisis while scrutinising the efforts of UK’s government in brining positive alterations in the sector” Aims and Objectives It is an understanding that aims and objectives play the most crucial part in a research process, as they enable the researcher in acquiring a constructive path during the process, and absence of which may result in unnecessary outcomes, as well as misuse of resources. From this understanding, the researcher has given significant importance in the proposed research and will be putting efforts to fulfill them in the most effective manner. Particularly, the researcher will be focusing primarily on the retail sector of the United Kingdom while endeavoring to identify different factors that are playing a critical role in determining performance of the sector that will enable the researcher in analysing the same factors during different periods. In specific, period of the global financial crisis is the focal point of the proposed research, and thus, researcher will be looking at performance of the UK’s retail sector during this specific period. However, to narrow down the research objectives in order to focus on the acquisition of concrete results, the researcher will scrutinise efforts of the UK’s government that enabled the country’s retail sector to survive, and at the same, continue its progress significantly. In this regard, one of the major objectives of the proposed research is to recognise positive role of the UK’s government while relating it with noteworthy performance of its retail sector in the country, as well as in the region. Lastly, the key reason of the proposed research is to recognise loopholes and propose solutions that will help policymakers in ensuring efficient performance of the retail sector in the future. Literature Review This literature review includes extensive research of market and retailing industries in UK. It evaluates the segmentation of retail sector, and overall effect of financial crisis on the retail sector in UK that will be significant in carrying out detailed research according to the proposal. It has been an observation that the market players, government, dealers, clients in addition to other shareholders associated with the industry are under pressure with the external negatives and the overall downturn of UK’s economy is the resultant of these effects (Lynn, p. 65, 2010). Basic Retail Trends in UK Lesser ConsumerConfidence. According to the analysts, there was high consumer confidence in the UK prior to the year 2007. It is mainly because of the fact that there were comparatively steady economic aspects, externalities as well as employment level until 2007. Nonetheless, after September 2007, customer confidence level shows a potential decline with negative customer actions and spending. Considerable stress was having an effect on retailers as consumers have fewer options to borrow available for possible expenditure and less confidence over their potential service. The current slowdown is the cause of decline of customer confidence. Employment and Structural Modifications. The existing global financial crisis and connected outcomes caused by the economic slump in employment can be disturbing for the financial cycle. With the apparent blow on sales, restructuring in the retail sector could have significant controls on employment. In recent times, the UK government has publicised 200 job cuts and Tesco declared that it would be cutting more or less 5,000 jobs at its head office as well as in executive positions. Flat Retail Employment. During the period of 1999 and 2003, the retail sector companies, as well as players in this sector drawn more or less 236,000 fresh employments and by the summer of 2003 retail employment had increased to just more than 3 million (Macneil & O’Brien, p. 88, 2010). Nevertheless, these trends transmitted towards the negative results between 2004 and 2007 when retail employment goes on varying and it has been roughly the same from last couple of years as during 2008 also the UK retail sector provides work for approximately three million individuals (Macneil & O’Brien, p. 88, 2010). Effect of Financial Crisis on UK Retail Sector Analysis of the literature has indicated that groceries and other foodstuff is the most critical division for the retailing sector. The high-end segmentation lines together with safety rations have delivered the major development. However, the price for every unit of best food lines has been rising as food providers and retailers were keen to insist clients to progress to higher quality, more valuable products. Subsequent to the global financial crisis, the best products become the victims of the negative outcomes where the foods are recorded as a considerable downturn affected by the negative externalities. It is a generally acknowledged fact that the increase in price cut and mid-price garments retailing has been traced as the major raise after the financial crisis consequences (Shiller, p. 203, 2008). Expert retailers such as Primark and supermarkets, for instance, Asda have made choices of fair quality, comparatively stylish garments at very small price points even if retailers like Zara have initiated selling fashionable garments on middle class price points. The key players in this sector deal with a huge challenge in retaining its sales level expansion generated by the negative results as well as issues from existing financial crisis. As a result, the financial institutions have firmly assessed their standards for credit providing procedure that is having an effect on the consumers’ attitude in shopping activity. Since the market unpredictability is significantly disturbing the essential and vital supplies, the producers are under pressure in cost effective issues at the time of producing essential retailing products. It is well suggested that the government in addition to financial institutions must relax their severe standards for lending to stay away from the cycles of negative results until the overall financial system can be stabilised and improved (Cable, p. 76, 2010). Major Challenges in UK Retail Industry due to Financial Crisis Lack of Expert Human Resources. With the negative effects caused by the lesser unemployment level in the UK, there was a lack of expert workers, and it is because of that fact that there might be a difference between the necessary expertise and work force on hand. More or less 40 percent of companies in London have negative views regarding the human resources as a result of the lack of right aptitude for the existing employment opportunities. Even though the decline and negative issues has simplified labor market situations, the lack of expert as well as refined human resource will create the time longer for the UK to deliver the recovery of an entire financial state of affairs (Lynn, p. 108, 2010). Financial Slump and Joblessness. Lower level of customer confidence in the UK has been upsetting provided the financial slump in addition to the poor housing market, at the same time as shortage of expert human resource in the business have negatively influenced the confidence of the UK customer (HM Treasury, pp. 39-47, 2010). Therefore, customers have instituted limiting the level of expenditure and are shifting the cash to repay arrears and make investments. Business plans as well as policies for catching the attention of the customer cannot be operational with making additional negative results. Pricing War in the UK Retail Market. The decline in value added tax in the UK had a few influences on the original war between the key retailing players, with the minor players going on to miss an opportunity in the struggle. Conveying cut rates and altering the labels was costly for small retailers, where the decline in value added tax has made a number of gains for big chains. Retailers, for instance, Asda, Sainsbury and Tesco began reducing costs to create a center of attention for the clients to shop in their stores (Turner, p. 54, 2008). In this regard, brief review of the literature has indicated that the number of job cuts in UK retail sector, as well as insolvencies has led to a boost in skilled executives searching for job. The last three years have witnessed a very small number of mergers and acquisitions activity or private equity investment in the retail sector in the UK, additionally, decreasing demand for senior executives. Retailers have acted in response to weak customer expenditure by placing more or less all key management plans on hold to decrease expenditure. At the same time, as other sectors have been initiating slowed down management plans as the financial system has improved, for the most part, it is only projects that bring investments or that could not be postpone to any further extent have been applied in the retail sector (Paulson, p. 74, 2010). Earlier than the financial crisis, the UK would see fresh global retail brand names setting up a UK presence on a regular basis. As UK retailers would like to carry out a quick roll-out it produced demand for skilled interims that could put their plans into practice. However, that sort of work totally dried up in the financial crisis. Methodology Besides recognition of particular aims and objectives, methodology has been of significant importance as well during a research process. It is very imperative that a researcher should select appropriate methods as it has been an observation that unsuitable methodology results in waste of time. In this regard, secondary research method will enable the researcher to achieve objectives of the proposed research that will include scrutiny of archives of scholarly sources, such as books, journals, articles, magazines, etc. Specifically, the researcher will be analysing different resources that will allow the proposed research to identify factors that play a crucial role in performance of UK’s retail sector. In addition, government resources and publications will be very beneficial in acquiring information regarding efforts of the government in supporting its retail sector. Programme of Work Task Id Task Name Wk 1 Wk 2 Wk 3 Wk 4 Wk 5 Wk 6 Wk 7 Wk 8 Wk 9…. Wk n 1 Project Planning 2 Library Work 3 Submission of Research Proposal 4 Data Collection 5… Analysis 6 Rough Draft of Dissertation 7 Submission of Final Dissertation References Cable, V. 2010. The Storm: The World Economic Crisis & What It Means. Atlantic Books. Hiles, Andrew. 2010. The Definitive Handbook of Business Continuity Management. John Wiley & Sons. HM Treasury. 2009. Reforming Financial Markets. The Stationary Office. HM Treasury. 2010. Maintaining the Financial Stability of UK Banks. The Stationary Office. Kolb, Robert W. 2010. Lessons from the Financial Crisis. John Wiley & Sons. Lynn, M. 2010. Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis. Bloomberg Press. Macneil, I. and O’Brien, J. 2010. The Future of Financial Regulation. Hart Publishing. Paulson, H. M. 2010. On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System. Business Plus. Shiller, T. J. 2008. The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It. Princeton University Press. Turner, G. 2008. The Credit Crunch: Housing Bubbles, Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis. Pluto Press. Read More