Wal Mart : The Challenge Of Managing Relationships With Stakeholders

There are many opinions on the ethics of the Wal-Mart model, both favourable and unfavourable. The article “ROB Ranks Wal-Mart Among Canada’s Best Employers” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 287) offers a favourable viewpoint of the model, and the article “The Cost of Walmartization” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 288) offers an opposing unfavourable view. This paper discusses the theoretical approaches used in each article, along with the supporting evidence that was used in an effort to be convincing.

The following report will discuss American retail giant, Wal-mart’s current ethical and business objectives. The report will look at Wal-mart’s employee relations in regard to discrimination and other various issues involving their employees. It will look at how their ethical stance contradicts with what has gone on in the past regarding associates (employees) and management.

para. 7). Track 1 basically tells there are two players: winners and losers, players would have to design a strategy to win the game or in this case the win the market. Wal-Mart’s motto “always low prices”, attracts customers from other businesses, which is totally normal in organization for profit. Also, you mentioned Wal-Mart employed children to manufacture products; fact that proves ‘Greed’. Richardson, Tim. (2015) states “greed…striving for ever-bigger rewards and bonuses; loss of perspective; trappings of success” (ch. 6, p. 2), which is what companies usually look for, but this is why there is track 1 and 2. Finally, Wal-Mart’s business practices affect employee satisfaction, according to a survey conducted by Wal-Mart, 70% of employees leave within the first year of service, due to the lack of recognition and reward system (PBS, n.d., para. 5). It is important to understand the lack of engagement between employers and employees leads to high stress, turnovers and disinterest in persuading organizational goals, which is a clear evidence of ‘stress-related issues’. Richardson, Tim. (2015) states “ Stress-related issues: exhaustion through overwork; long-hours culture; burnout; illusion of busyness; substance abuse to maintain unnatural energy levels; 'never

Companies must be able to provide environmental scanning. It is the monitoring of an organization 's internal and external environment. It helps to detect early signs of opportunities and threats that may influence its current and future plans. Some strengths Walmart has internally is its cost leadership and variety. However some internal weaknesses are the current labor related lawsuits, which lead to high employee turnover. This also creates negative publicity. Within the store these is sometimes little product differentiation making it difficult for customer to get exactly what they desire. Some opportunities available for Walmart externally are the rising acceptance of private label, trend of healthy eating, and increase in online shopping. Walmart is currently working on growing on the opportunities though their strategic management. Threats that are external to the company are the increasing competition and resistance from local communities. Walmart is working on defeating these threats though their competitive advantages and the increase in Neighborhood Walmart.

Wal-Mart's stance on not allowing unions can also be accredited to their cost leadership approach. When I outline Wal-Mart's business policy at the start of this essay, I suggest that they were a central-control based organisation that tried to ensure it controlled all aspects of the firm. This is linked to cost leadership, by having tight control they know exactly where money is going and where it is coming from which allows for better development of efficiency.

Initially Walmart presumed that their age old strategy that has worked for them for many years would be easy to replicate in a global setting. The question you have to ask yourself is, why wouldn’t it? Part of the problem is that Walmart failed to focus on the four elements of a global organization; Organization Structure, Management Processes, People, and Culture (Yip & Hult, 2012). When Walmart decided to make their first move in the early 90’s to enter the global market, they were lacking mostly in organization structure, management processes, and culture. The mentality of being the biggest retailer in the United States was not enough, operating in the global arena is different.

Wal-Mart is one of the world's greatest assets to most people. It provides consumer's a place they can go to virtually get anything they need from, car repairs, to groceries, prescription's, even the latest toys and electronics. With all that said, this paper relates to the different forces in business that affects business: competitive, economic, political + legal + regulatory, technological, cultural + social, demographic, and natural forces. Although there are technically seven we are going to focus on competitive, political, technological, and natural forces.

For the final group project we chose to complete a management analysis on Wal-Mart. Covered in this paper are the issues of productivity, hiring practices, corporate social responsibility and culture, diversity and affirmative action, the use of information technology, leadership, teamwork, and managing ethics.

In business, three major strategies comprising of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategies exist. The focus strategy emphasizes on providing services and products to a specified buyer group or market segment within a given geographic market. The differentiation approach is often defined as provision of services or products that are perceived to be unique in the market place. Wal-Mart emphasizes on the long-term strategy of cost leadership. Through this strategy, the company ensures that it offers customers with quality products at relatively lower prices than other providers in the industry. Through overall cost leadership strategy, Wal-Mart has been offering better quality products at a lower price than any competitor can offer. For the organization to achieve this goal, it has developed long-term supply chain management, which ensures that products are made available to the market at the required time (Enz, 2010).

Walmart serves customers and members more than 200 million times per week at more than 9,826 retail units under 60 different banners in 28 countries. With their fiscal year 2010 sales of $405 billion, Walmart employs 2.1 million associates worldwide. Walmart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton, with the opening of the first Walmart discount store in Rogers, Ark. The company incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., on Oct. 31, 1969. The company's shares began trading on OTC markets in 1970 and were listed on the New York Stock Exchange two years later. In this term paper I will be discussing the different ethical questions that arise about Walmart and some of the ethical concerns that people have about

The global player Wal-Mart operates in 14 different markets all around the world, serving 176 million customers every week. Today, the second biggest company of the world, concerning turnover which amounts to 312,427 million US-$, categorizes its operational facilities into five divisions. Among those divisions are the Wal-Mart discount stores, offering convenience and low-priced goods. Wal-Mart supercenters are the biggest stores, being open 24/7 hours and employing a workforce of 350 people, selling all kinds of groceries and general merchandise at the lowest possible price. Wal-Mart neighborhood markets are specified in

There are few companies that have become household names all across the Americas and many parts of the globe. One such company is Wal-Mart. Since its’ birth in 1962, there have been over 4,700 company locations opened, employing over 1.4 million people in the continental United States alone. (WALMART STORES.COM 2011)

The stakeholders in the retail giant Wal-Mart would consist of the investors, the employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and the society at large. Each stakeholder has a different set of needs. Investors will want a return on their investment while customers will desire quality products at fair prices for example. Management must balance the needs of each group by first recognizing their individual needs and then trying to meet as many of them as possible.

Wal-Mart is one of the biggest retailer of its time who was known for being the major private sector employer worldwide. It has become an enormous company by identifying the market gap regarding customer services. They have tried to fulfill this gap through their market research of both small and large towns. As quoted in the case study Wal-Mart’s focus was on building up an efficient supply chain management system as it claims “Supply chain management is moving the right items to the right customer at the right time by the most efficient means.”

Wal-Mart’s primary competition in US includes department stores of the likes of Target and Kmart. Costco offers competition to Sam Club format of Wal-Mart. In niche small markets, dollar stores are offering strong competition to Wal-Mart.