Blog 1 : Organizational Culture creating Innovative culture

Decathlon Case

Decathlon is a French retail group that offers sporting products at a very attractive price created by Michel Leclercq in 1976. This company is very famous in the world about the new management style implement by it. The « Empowering Management ». 

In other words, this style of management is how to liberate work and entrepreneurship while empowering employees. This organizational culture revolutionized the French market. It’s an autonomous management style where each employee of the company can make decisions if he justifies that the decision is adequate for the evolution of the company and he has the right to do a mistake. This is a « self-organization », liberated business concept defended by theorist Isaac Getz and supported by Sophie Floreani (March 2019).

However, even if this corporate culture are efficient since the creation of Decathlon, the company knowns some difficulties in the French market since 2018. The company pioneered low prices since the beginning but in 2018, the culture of people change and this strategy not working anymore. Michel Aballea, Decathlon’s new General Manager France, talks about « the most complicated year of Decathlon ». The new internal organization of Decathlon (supported by Michel Leclercq General Director before M. Aballea) tested in 2018 which was to organize department stores by discipline and by types of sports practices was a failure. This strategy disoriented customers because the most part of them are not expert practitioners. Sales fell 5% in 2018 in the French market.

In order to limit the damage, the company went back on its achievements and decide to reimplement a segmentation by gender / sport discipline and finally sports practices. Michel Leclercq was not agree with the group’s strategy offered by M. Aballea, He left the company. In addition, the group is late on the web. This challenge is important for a company present around the world. According to the newspaper Echos (2019), « the group has built its success through effective networking of the territory, but it is very late on the internet. » Online sales, which started in 2006, are currently less than 5% of the sales turnover.

Student working at Decathlon, I was an actress of the difficulty in 2018 and I knew both issues. A new strategy called « Decathlon United » demonstrated by Michel Aballea was raised in January 2019. He presents a new type of business whose main goal is to respond to increased competition in the e-commerce market by claiming « subsidiarity and omnichannel ». With this strategy, we encountered a clash of cultures with pragmatic collaborators who trust only the results and strategies they always used and on the other side we have visionaries like Michel Aballea who think « long-term strategies » looking for innovation. That’s why I wanted to talk about the Decathlon case. 

The main challenges that a company meets when it wants to implement an organizational change: 

To join and set up a new organizational structure, companies meeting some barriers. According to Researcher Marc Alphonse Forget (published in the JDN newspaper in 2015), the main challenges for a company are :

• People are usually conservative. They have trouble getting out of their comfort zone and are more confident when they are in a familiar environment. As a result, change is something that worries people. And everyone at first, is reluctant to change. WHY ? Because change represents: the unknown, new habits, risk taking and often people associate the new structure with previous changes that did not work. 
• The lack of skills in adequation of the change. Changing a structure often involves new habits, new tools, new ways of thinking and working. The lack of skills / knowledges of employees can be important when a company try to develop an organization change. Some behaviors need to change to be in adequation with the new organisation. Marc Forget (2015) says « the leader must embrace change by providing convincing answers to constraints. » To explain his vision, we are a very significant example: The case of the company Médiamétrie – eStat.

This company is born following an alliance between the Médiamétrie company based in Paris and the EStat start – up of Sophia Antipolis. A new CEO has been appointed following the merger of the two companies. According to him the organization was poorly managed and he decided to implement a new organization. He instituted a strict system with rules and procedures. After that, he lost the motivation of his best technicians. The turnover increased and job satisfaction decreased. According to M. Forget (2015), this is due to a lack of significant understanding of EStat employees’ culture on the part of the management. He didn’t take into account the working methods and wanted to implement the system that worked in his old company. Hence the importance to take into account the existing corporate culture before create a change. 

Strategies to facilitate the implementation of change: 

The change may concern: a reorganization of the company, a restructuring or an innovation. To embrace change, business leaders need not focus on a content dimension but they need to focus on a process dimension (Forget, Janvier 2015). For this, some steps must be respected: 

1. Give meaning to change: Make it relevant and legitimate. If we adopt this strategy in the Decathlon case, the CEO must present the new strategy to the whole of society.
2. Involve actors in change: In Decathlon, we create regular workshops where employees can offer ideas or recommendations for the development of the new strategy. In this case, for example : workshops on « omnichannel & subsidiarity ». They need to be actors of the change and they must feel concerned.
3. Create trainings and make change accessible: Employees need to understand the logic of the new organizational structure. Implement trainings on the new organizational structure is a good way to embrace change and the stakeholders of Decathlon can understand the issues.
4. Inform and communicate about change: « Speak true »! It’s important to inform all stakeholders of the company about the change and it’s important too, to communicate regularly on the new organizational change progress. « Communicating in a transparent way preserves the relationship of trust and employee recognition for the company » (Forget, 2015). 

The desired future vision of the company: 

Decathlon’s goal over the next 10 years is to become the world leader in sporting goods while promoting « The empowering management ». Through omnichannel, the company would be present on all distribution channels and it would go to consumers and not the other way around. Moreover, through the subsidiarity, each actor of the organization manages his responsibilities and can put in place the actions that he wishes, if he justifies that these can increase the efficiency of the company.

Davia Mariotti

References : 

Aldebere & al. (2008), La culture, levier des mariages réussis –Expansion Management Review2008/2 N*129 p.38 to 47  -available at https://www.cairn.info/revue-l-expansion-management-review-2008-2-page-38.htm#

Bertrand, P. (2019), Trou d’air pour Decathlon en France – Lesechos.fr – available at https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/conso-distribution/0600707505725-decathlon-tatonne-et-perd-des-ventes-2245285.php

Dubois, V. (2010), Le modèle français et sa crise : ambitions, ambiguïté et défis d’une politique culturelle – Research paper – Archives-ouvertes.fr -available at https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00498015/document

El Khoury, M. (2018), MANAGEMENT RESPONSABILISANT : L’EXTASE CHEZ DÉCATHLON ? – changethework.com – available at https://changethework.com/management-responsabilisant-decathlon/

El Khoury, M. (2018), L’ENTREPRISE LIBÉRÉE PAR ISAAC GETZ – changethework.com – available at https://changethework.com/entreprise-liberee-isaac-getz/

Forget, M. (2015), Comment faire adhérer à un changement – JDN.fr -available at https://www.journaldunet.com/management/expert/59825/comment-faire-adherer-a-un-changement.shtml

Gueugneau, R. (2018), Decathlonsur les sommets – Lesechos.fr- available at https://www.lesechos.fr/15/06/2018/LesEchosWeekEnd/00127-008-ECWE_decathlon-sur-les-sommets.htm

Homri, S. (2014), Culture de l’organisation, quel impact pour la gestion de connaissances ? –Research paper  – available at https://www.sciencespo-aix.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/homri-culture-organisationmai2012.pdf

Lexpress newspaper (2017), Famille Leclercq: Decathlon court toujours plus vite – Lexpress.fr – available at https://lexpansion.lexpress.fr/entreprises/famille-leclercq-decathlon-court-toujours-plus-vite_1935867.html

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