Analyzing Wal-Mart's Organizational Structure and Its Alignment with Global Operations and Corporate Goals

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Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT1Organizational AssessmentBy:Professor:Date:Analyze Wal-Mart's organizational structure, considering its global operations and divisionalmodel. How does this structure align with its mission, vision, and values to support thecompany's goals of maintaining market leadership and improving customer service?Additionally, compare this structure to other organizational structures, explaining itseffectiveness in managing Wal-Mart’s size and scale.Word count requirement: 800-1000 words.

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ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT2The Wal-Mart CorporationOn May 9, 1950, Sam Walton opened up Walton’s 5&10 in Bentonville, Arkansas. Thefirst store with the Wal-Mart name opened in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 and was financed 95%by Sam Walton himself. Since its beginning in Arkansas, Wal-Mart has helped millions to savemoney and live better. Wal-Mart has changed from being a retail store accessible with set hoursto be available anytime and anywhere for their 245 million customers. Wal-Mart offer its 245million customers retail shopping in 11,000 stores under 69 banners in 27 countries and e-commerce websites in 10 countries (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 2013). The company is consideredone of the largest employers in the world; Wal-Mart employs 2.2 million associates worldwide.In the U. S., Wal-Mart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and Sam's Club warehousescomprise the choices of Wal-Mart stores to which customers have access (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.,2013).As Wal-Mart continues growing successfully the corporation has experiencedglobal success, which has led the corporation to be in constant of change of strategies thatprovide that the corporation continues fulfilling its mission while offering new products,bettering the human resource management and developing its personnel, and expanding its socialresponsibility by helping the different communities where stores are located. This research willpresent how the company continues committed to save people money so they can live better inorder to continue growing as a global corporation by presenting different analysis of variousaspects of the company.

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ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT3Wal-Mart’s Mission StatementThey don’t have a formal mission statement. They are most interested in thecustomer’s needs. The culture consists of: Respect for the individual, Service to the customers,and Strive for excellence. If they did have a formal mission statement it would be, “To providequality products at an everyday low price and with extended customer service…always.”They have a new mission statement which is “Our mission is to provide goods andservices for our customers at everyday low prices. With our innovative technology we strive tohave merchandise ranging from food, clothes, music, etcetera on hand 24 hours a day 7 days aweek. We are committed to the growth of Wal-Mart and challenge ourselves to be better. Westrive to have the best, be the best, and provide quality and assurance to our customers. Ouremployees are a huge asset to our company, and we would not be the company we are todaywithout them. They have a huge impact on what our company was, what it is, and what it will be.We also feel it is important to give generously to those who are less fortunate than others, whichis why Wal-Mart donates thousands of dollars a year to different organizations.”Wal-Mart’s Vision Statement“The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want. Andreally, if you think about it from your point of view as a customer, you want everything: a wideassortment of good-quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with

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ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT4what you buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; free parking; a pleasantshopping experience.”–Sam Walton (1918-1992).Their new vision statement is “Our vision is to provide good quality and services toour customers while remaining the market leader and striving daily to be the most admiredcompany.To promote ownership of Wal-Mart’s ethical culture to all stakeholders globally. Since thefounding of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., it has always been a values based, ethically directedcompany.Wal-Mart’s Value StatementThe three basic beliefs are known as the values that guide the decisions made by theleaders. These beliefs are: Respect for the individual, Service to the customers, and striving forexcellence.Wal-Mart’s Organizational StructureWal-Mart is a large international corporation that has stores located in 27 differentcountries worldwide and employs 2.2 million associates in their stores. Wal-Mart’s corporationconsists of superstores that sell grocery and general merchandise items, express stores that aresmaller stores and are used in smaller towns, or in big cities where space is limited. They alsohave Sam’s Club which is a member’s only store that sells items in bulk at warehouse pricing.

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ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT5With a corporation the size of Wal-Mart management needs to reflect the worldwide scope of thestores that they have. Having the proper organizational structure in place helps keep a companylike Wal-Mart continues to grow and streamline the company to make it efficient as possible.This paper with look at the organizational structure while comparing it do other structure models,it will also look at the organizational functions and designs that influence the decision on whichorganizational structure to use.Wal-Mart’s store numbers are staggering; in the United States only Wal-Mart hasa total of 3,804 retail locations that made a total of $260 billion in 2011. Wal-Mart internationalhas 4,557 locations for net sales of $109 billion. The Sam’s Club has a total of 609 locations andmade a net amount of $49 billion (Wal-Mart, n.d.). With the amount of locations and the amountof money that is made by this corporation the structure Wal-Mart has chosen is the divisionalstructure. Wal-Mart uses both the product and geographic divisions in their organizationalstructure. They have divided the corporation into three different lines Wal-Mart U.S., Wal-Martinternational, and Sam’s Club, allowing each division to work independent of each other andwithin the US and international division Wal-Mart has created sub divisions to breakdown thevast number of stores that are within each these two divisions.Internationally Wal-Mart breaks this division down into the countries that havestores located in them such as Japan, Brazil, India, and by regions like Mexico and CentralAmerica, and Latin America (“Wal-Mart”, 2012). This gives the control to have specific leadersthat know about the each culture and to be able to handle issues and items that may be need in

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ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT6one country where they may not be in demand in other countries or may not be the same issue.Wal-Mart has subsidiaries in this group such as ASDA stores which is the name they use fortheir stores in the United Kingdom. Within the U.S they divide not only by geographic areas butalso by products they offer with general merchandise and food having separate divisions (“Wal-Mart”, 2012).When taking a look at the functional structure you do see some similarities to thedivisional plan that Wal-Mart uses departmentalization in their structure to break downindividual tasks within the company that way the company can have people focus on a specificarea instead of having to work on all areas of Wal-Mart’s company and not having a expertise topull from. The big drawback for using this particular function is that due to size of thecorporation as a whole and the amount of area they cover worldwide not having separatedivisions within each department would cause the members of each department to lose focus onthe company as a whole since the amount of information they need to worry about in theirspecific department is too great to be able to see all of the information from the differentdepartments as a whole.The matrix function allows for work across different departments to progressproducts and services which allows for collaboration in the development process with everyonehave the proper input in the decision, within Wal-Mart organization this would bring people inacross different areas to make sure what is being developed will best help the customerexperience which is what Wal-Mart strives for. The drawback to this is each division is more

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