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

An analysis of Wal-Mart�s organizational structure, exploring its impact on global operations and corporate strategy.

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    Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT 1 Organizational Assessment By: Professor: Date: Analyze Wal - Mart's organizational structure, considering its global operations and divisional model. How does this structure align with its mission, vision, and values to support the company's goals of maintaining market leadership and improving customer service? Additionally, compare this structure to other organizational structures, explaining its effectiveness in managing Wal - Mart’s size and scale. Word count requirement: 800 - 1000 words.

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    ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT 2 The Wal - Mart Corporation On May 9, 1950, Sam Walton opened up Walton’s 5&10 in Bentonville, Arkansas. The first 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 save money and live better. Wal - Mart has changed from being a retail store accessible with set hours to be available anytime and anywhere for their 245 million customers. Wal - Mart offer its 245 million 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 considered one 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 warehouses comprise 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 experienced global success, which has led the corporation to be in constant of change of strategies that provide that the corporation continues fulfilling its mission while offering new products, bettering the human resource management and developing its personnel, and expanding its social responsibility by helping the different communities where stores are located. This research will present how the company continues committed to save people money so they can live better in order to continue growing as a global corporation by presenting different analysis of various aspects of the company.

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    ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT 3 Wal - Mart’s Mission Statement They don’t have a formal mission statement. They are most interested in the customer’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 provide quality 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 and services for our customers at everyday low prices. With our innovative technology we strive to have merchandise ranging from food, clothes, music, etcetera on hand 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We are committed to the growth of Wal - Mart and challenge ourselves to be better. We strive to have the best, be the best, and provide quality and assurance to our customers. Our employees are a huge asset to our company, and we would not be the company we are today without 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, which is 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. And really, if you think about it from your point of view as a customer, you want everything: a wide assortment of good - quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with

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    ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT 4 what you buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; free parking; a pleasant shopping experience.” – Sam Walton (1918 - 1992). Their new vision statement is “Our vision is to provide good quality and services to our customers while remaining the market leader and striving daily to be the most admired company. To promote ownership of Wal - Mart’s ethical culture to all stakeholders globally. Since the founding of Wal - Mart Stores, Inc., it has always been a values based, ethically directed company. Wal - Mart’s Value Statement The three basic beliefs are known as the values that guide the decisions made by the leaders. These beliefs are: Respect for the individual, Service to the customers, and striving for excellence. Wal - Mart’s Organizational Structure Wal - Mart is a large international corporation that has stores located in 27 different countries worldwide and employs 2.2 million associates in their stores. Wal - Mart’s corporation consists of superstores that sell grocery and general merchandise items, express stores that are smaller stores and are used in smaller towns, or in big cities where space is limited. They also have Sam’s Club which is a member’s only store that sells items in bulk at warehouse pricing.

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    ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT 5 With a corporation the size of Wal - Mart management needs to reflect the worldwide scope of the stores that they have. Having the proper organizational structure in place helps keep a company like 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 which organizational structure to use. Wal - Mart’s store numbers are staggering; in the United States only Wal - Mart has a total of 3,804 retail locations that made a total of $260 billion in 2011. Wal - Mart international has 4,557 locations for net sales of $109 billion. The Sam’s Club has a total of 609 locations and made a net amount of $49 billion (Wal - Mart, n.d.). With the amount of locations and the amount of money that is made by this corporation the structure Wal - Mart has chosen is the divisional structure. Wal - Mart uses both the product and geographic divisions in their organizational structure. They have divided the corporation into three different lines Wal - Mart U.S., Wal - Mart international, and Sam’s Club, allowing each division to work independent of each other and within the US and international division Wal - Mart has created sub divisions to breakdown the vast number of stores that are within each these two divisions. Internationally Wal - Mart breaks this division down into the countries that have stores located in them such as Japan, Brazil, India, and by regions like Mexico and Central America, and Latin America (“Wal - Mart”, 2012). This gives the control to have specific leaders that know about the each culture and to be able to handle issues and items that may be need in

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    ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT 6 one 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 for their stores in the United Kingdom. Within the U.S they divide not only by geographic areas but also 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 the divisional plan that Wal - Mart uses departmentalization in their structure to break down individual tasks within the company that way the company can have people focus on a specific area instead of having to work on all areas of Wal - Mart’s company and not having a expertise to pull from. The big drawback for using this particular function is that due to size of the corporation as a whole and the amount of area they cover worldwide not having separate divisions within each department would cause the members of each department to lose focus on the company as a whole since the amount of information they need to worry about in their specific department is too great to be able to see all of the information from the different departments as a whole. The matrix function allows for work across different departments to progress products and services which allows for collaboration in the development process with everyone have the proper input in the decision, within Wal - Mart organization this would bring people in across different areas to make sure what is being developed will best help the customer experience which is what Wal - Mart strives for. The drawback to this is each division is more

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