Productivity Issues and Social Media: A Case Study of Wal-Mart Inc. A Case Study of Wal-Mart Inc.: Productivity Issues and Social Media

Using Social Media and Networking Tools to Address Productivity Issues at Wal-Mart Inc.

First Section: Communication and Productivity Issues at Wal-Mart

A review of literature reveals two issues that have a negative effect on the productivity and competitiveness of Wal-Mart Inc., the organization selected for analysis in week 1. These have to do with workers' rights and customer needs when venturing into foreign markets.

Workers' Rights

Recent years have seen Walmart come under serious criticism from labor unions and civil rights organizations for its large number of violations regarding work hours and wages for its associates. Besides issues of low pay, the company also faces an increasingly large number of lawsuits regarding managers tapering with employees' wage and time records, and forcing them to skip lunch and short breaks and to work off the clock (Brunn, 2006). At one point, the organization had to award pay back to 83 employees who had been forced to work off the clock in Oregon. Such lawsuits and pay back actions affect the company's profitability and reduce its ability to compete.

Wal-Mart additionally faces serious concerns related to unfair labor practices and reward/compensation schemes. For instance, despite making up about 67% of the total population of Wal-Mart associates, women make up less than 10% of the company's top management (Ferrell, 2009). It is not surprising, therefore, that an internal study by a Wal-Mart executive showed that most associates, particularly women, are dissatisfied with the company's appraisal/reward system (Ferrell et al., 2009).

The issue of unions is also a key concern at Wal-Mart. Ferrell and his colleagues point out that the company has spent a considerable amount of resources and time on ensuring that its do not unionize (Ferrell et al., 2009). There have been reports of managers sabotaging unionization attempts and even intimidating pro-union associates (Ferrell et al., 2009). Incidences such as these harm the company's reputation and impede on its ability to compete effectively in the retail market.

Customer Needs and Expectations when Venturing into Foreign Markets

Wal-Mart had been forced to pull out of some key foreign markets as a result of failing to adjust its business model to fit the needs and expectations of customers in those markets. The most famous of these pull-outs are the pull-outs from South Korea, Germany, and China. Studies have shown that the company's withdrawal from the South Korean market was occasioned by its failure to understand local customers' shopping preferences and adjust its business model accordingly (Gandolfi & Stratch, 2009). For instance, South Koreans expected to see local products presented in a localized fashion in Walmart stores (Gandolfi & Stratch, 2009). They expected eye-catching, aesthetically-pleasing displays, yet Walmart provided the western-like box encounter that it uses in the U.S. and Europe (Gandolfi & Stratch, 2009). Moreover, South Koreans are known to prefer fresh foods, and as such Wal-Mart's strategy of focusing on dry goods, clothing, and electronics did not appeal to the local market (Gandolfi & Stratch, 2009).

This failure to understand local markets' expectations and preferences arises from the company's failure to communicate effectively with locals in these foreign markets before venturing in the same. The company operates a number of social media platforms, which it uses to interact with customers in foreign markets to understand their needs and preferences. However, there are numerous opportunities that could be exploited to make this interaction better and more fruitful. These have been explored in section two below.

Section 2: Using Social Media and Networking to Address Productivity Problems

Addressing the Issue of Employee Relations

The solutions proposed in this segment are based on Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation, also known as the motivation-hygiene theory. The theory suggests that employee productivity at the workplace is influenced by two types of factors: motivator factors and hygiene factors (Schermerhon Jr., 2010). In order to have a productive workforce, an organization needs to provide both of these factors (Schermerhon Jr., 2010). Social media technologies could be used to achieve this and increase the overall engagement of employees in Walmart stores:

Employee Blogs: these provide ample platforms for employees to present their views, exchange ideas, advance conversations, and promote their learning and successes. Employees can give their views on what they think the company's reward or compensation systems ought to entail to be more effective, and what they would love to see the organization do to make them feel appreciated and supported. Other employees could comment on the bloggers' posts, adding their voices...

Information from such blogs could then be used to design effective reward/compensation schemes in line with associates' expectations. IBM Ltd. has been able to make effective use of blogs in motivating and giving a voice to its employees (Haneberg, 2012). The company uses employee blogs to obtain a feel of employees' views, as well as their needs and expectations.
Wikis: in-house wikis are another tool that the organization could use to improve relations with its employees. These allow employees to share their ideas with management and coworkers, but also help to build healthy and positive relations among employees as they allow anyone at the company to annotate or edit the page with their suggestions (Keyes, 2013). Employees give contributions regardless of job title. This places managers and employees on level ground, and could go a long way towards nurturing healthy working relationships between top-level management and bottom-level associates. Intrawest Placemaking is an example of an organization that has successfully made use of wikis to enhance relations and collaborations between managers and employees -- there are more than 500 wiki pages, on which employees can provide their ideas and contribute their expertise to the overall shared knowledge (Haneberg, 2012).

Intranets and Discussion Groups: these provide ample platforms for employees to understand why the organization does what it does (Haneberg, 2012). The company's human resource manager could post information on why the company refuses to unionize its associates. Discussions could then be held to make employees' understand the organization's point-of-view, and to also devise ways of ensuring that employee welfare is maintained even in the absence of union activity. If employees and the organization are able to reach common ground through such discussions, negative publicity resulting from unionization issues will no longer be a serious concern.

The proposed solutions would increase employees' motivation, and overall productivity. Moreover, they would enhance relations between the organization and its associates. However, they could create a situation where employees spend hours meant for work engaging with each other on online forums and discussion groups. To prevent this, the organization needs to develop strict guidelines to govern social media use during work hours.

Addressing the Issue of Customer Needs

Adler's model of cultural diversity identifies three ways through which an organization faced with the problem of diverse cultures could react: the parochial approach, the ethnocentric approach, and the synergistic approach (Adler & Gundersen, 2008). Under the parochial approach, the organization simply ignores the cultural differences between markets like Wal-Mart did in South Korea (Adler & Gundersen, 2008). Under the ethnocentric approach, the organization recognizes the differences but does very little to address them because it considers its own culture superior to that of locals (Adler & Gundersen, 2008). The third and most effective approach is the synergistic approach, where the organization adjusts itself accordingly to identified cultural differences (Adler & Gundersen, 2008). This begins with understanding the cultural differences between markets.

Walmart could use social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to interact with people in diverse cultures and understand their needs and preferences before venturing into foreign markets. A good strategy is to adapt social media to reflect the language of the market being eyed. This will help to increase user engagement, and will allow for better collaboration between the organization and users from the potential market. Moreover, it will eliminate the ideology that the organization values its home country's language more than that of the foreign market (ethnocentrism). Dell Inc. has been able to effectively use this strategy on its personal blog and Facebook pages -- the company runs multiple regional pages on both sites, allowing users from different geographical regions to communicate in their own languages. This helps the organization engage more, and obtain more information on what customers in a particular market or geographical location would wish to see the organization offer. Wal-Mart could use the same strategy to interact with, and understand the cultural differences between markets.

This would place the organization in a better position to design its business models in such a way that they respond to the unique needs and preferences of customers in different markets. The main problem with this strategy is the development of standard guidelines governing social media conduct in different geographical regions. Just as cultures differ, so do people's ways of life in different geographical regions. As such, a one-fits-all set of social media guidelines or policies may not work effectively for the different regional pages. The organization will need to develop unique, specific guidelines to govern user conduct…