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Wal-Mart Organizational Structure
The most successful companies have something to teach us. Wal-Mart has proved its successful business approach by adapting with changes throughout the years while maintaining a certain organizational system. The purpose of this essay is to examine Wal-Mart and its organizational structure methods. I will specifically analyze three different organizing functions for this company. I will evaluate the organizational structure of Wal-Mart and compare it to other forms of structuring. Next, this essay will evaluate Wal-Mart in terms of its organizational functions. Finally, I will demonstrate how Wal-Mart's organizational design suits its business model.
Defining Wal-Mart
According to Wal-Mart's corporate web site, this company serves over 200 million customers a week providing consumer items including groceries, clothing, electronics and more. Wal-Mart sells its goods to customer through various outlets including retail, online and mobile devices. Wal-Mart employs more than 2 million people throughout the world and its 2012 sales tallied at over $444 billion. Wal-Mart is one of the most powerful and successful multi-national corporations in the world. The corporate headquarters for Wal-Mart is Bentonville, AR.
Wal-Mart's Organizational...
This form of structure suits this company for many reasons. Corporations hold certain advantages over other forms of organization. Unlike sole proprietorships and partnerships, corporations have limited liability. In essence the corporation is like an imaginary person that holds no responsibility. The personal economic affairs of the employees of a corporation are separate from business affairs in this type of organizational structure.
Another advantage of Wal-Mart being a corporation is that this business will be afforded to accumulate larger amounts of capital for investment. Corporations are useful structures that larger companies can operate under. Corporations can become public and receive investor capital to help them invest in making their company stronger. Wal-Mart is a publicly traded company that takes advantage of this structural benefit.
Wal-Mart's Organizational Functions Influence on Its Structure
Wal-Mart is a giant organization that needs to have many resources available in order to function properly. Gereffi & Christian (2009) explained Wal-Mart "focuses on its discount format, location strategy, and corporate culture. Its rise as a retail leader embodies its…
Works Cited
Gereffi, G. & Christian, M. (2009). The Impacts of Wal-Mart: The Rise and Consequence of the World's Dominant Retailer. Annual Review of Sociology, 2009, 35: 573-91. Retrieved from http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115947
Hartung, A. (2012). Wal-Mart's Wrong-Headed Reorganization. Forbes, 30 Jan 2012. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2012/01/30/wal-marts-wrong-headed-re- organization/2/
Wal-Mart Corporate Web page. "Leadership." Viewed on 25 Jan 2013. Retrieved from http://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/
Wal Mart Over the last several years, Wal Mart has been a story that is focused on continuing successes and challenges. This is because the company was impacted by issues such as employee rights, costs and fierce competition. Yet, at the same time, they were able to experience continuing increases in their bottom line results. This is despite the fact that consumer spending has remained stagnant in the aftermath of the
The remainder of employees are part-time and work approximately 20 hours a week (Wal-Mart, 2007) This staffing decision by WalMart of the mix of full and part-time employees is also complimentary to their organizational structure as it is hierarchical in design yet needs to be flexible in responding to supply chain, seasonal selling demand, and economic change. As a result, this has been very effective for the company and
The Price-Sensitive Affluents, Wal-Mart has learned (Wal-Mart Annual Reports) is more interested in finding an exceptionally good deal and not necessarily concerned about the shopping experience. This is particularly true as one of the strongest factors influencing the execution of their strategy, the emerging global recession during this timeframe, takes hold. Again as with the Price Value Shopper and the paradoxical purchasing patterns of the Brand Aspirational segment show,
This program helps the development of the employees which leads to the culture that Sam Walton wants at Wal-Mart attaining them the competitive advantage. (Charles, 2006) The HR practices of Wal-Mart are aligned with the trends of the HR practices of the top companies of the world who have responded to the dynamic changes in the field of Human Resource Management. One of the upcoming trends in HR is to
Bargaining power of customers: Our main question here is whether Wal-Mart customers can walk away from buying a product at Wal-Mart and find it cheaper elsewhere. For the most part, the answer is no. Wal-Mart has built its reputation by providing products at a considerably lower price than its competitors (Is Wal-Mart good, 2005). Certainly, customers can try to find lower prices at other retailers; and the proliferation of the
Organizational Culture of Wal-Mart Since the year of 2008, Wal-Mart has been branded that name but before then, it was an American international trader company that runs chains of big discount department stores and warehouse supplies. Wal- Mart has turned into the world's third biggest public corporation, dependable with the Fortune Global 500 list in the year of 2012.This business has also turned out to be a private employer in the