Walmart and the Elements of Business

Walmart however claims that their managers can handle complaints and grievance and that their employees do not need to pay a union to advocate for them.

Wal-Mart Corporation is one of the largest retail stores in the world. They serve customers in meeting their needs with low cost saving items. On October 31, 1962, Wal-Mart was founded and incorporated by Sam Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas. Mr. Walton went into business because he felt that items sold were too high for the average customer to afford. His focus was to sell products at low prices to get higher volume sales at a lower profit margin. He bought bulk products from different suppliers so he could incorporate savings into his pricing to lower cost for customers. Under the savings cost concept, Wal-Mart grew rapidly and surpassed its competitors in sales and generating profits.

Wal Mart company strategy is to provide lower prices for their customers. In a small

Walmart’s organizational structure determines the company’s business activities. Its organizational structure also enforces limits on how the business discourses its problems. In relation, Walmart’s organizational culture decides the way people react to challenges in the workplace. The elasticity of the human resources of the company partly depends on the mindset maintained through the organizational culture of the Wal-Mart. Nonetheless, the long history of Walmart in progressing successfully and continually growing internationally proves that the firm’s organizational structure and organizational culture have been very positive in bringing competitive advantage and achievement. Such organizational structure interacts with the organizational culture to maintain the significant competitive advantage of Walmart.

Walmart is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores and grocery stores. Wal-Mart controls over 11,500 stores in 28 countries around the world. It was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton. Walmart’s CEO is Doug McMillon and the Chairperson of Board of Directors is Greg Penner. Walmart as we know it today evolved from Sam Walton’s goals for great value and great customer service. He

Wal-Mart’s sheer size gives it unrestrained economic power which allows it to drive down costs in the retail and manufacturing sectors and to enact its own standards with regards to its work force.

In the late 1940s, a man named Sam Walton was franchising Ben Franklin’s store located in Newport, Arkansas. As a retailer, Walton continuously was in search of suppliers with best deals on merchandise. Usually, if a retailer was able to get a deal from a wholesaler they would leave their store prices at the regular price and pocket the excess money. Being the innovator he was, Walton decided to pass the savings on to the consumer and make his money through the increased volume of sales. This understanding would become the foundation of Walton’s business strategy when he developed Walmart in 1962.

However, in 2008, there was a change from $8.63 to 10.83 per hour. Managers at Walmart do not respect employee's rights, and they sometimes treat employees in a way that is against the law in the United States. Managers even sometimes force employees to work off the clock and skip lunch, and it is again against the law. The CEO needs to pay attention of such a situation. Because of the labor-related issues, there were several lawsuits against the company in 2008 in the following States: Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, etc. There was also a gender discrimination situation where Women claimed in 2007 they were not treated fairly by the company. Even though people consider Walmart the company that employs more than 1.4 employees, it does not pay good salary to its employees. It is against the law to treat people in such a way. In 2002, Walmart used a type of competition that was not normal

Walmart’s history dates back in 1945 when Sam Walton bought an outlet of the Ben Franklin retail stores with the aim of selling products at a relatively low cost, so as to generate huge sale volumes and make profits at a low margin. Although this portrayed the purchased outlet as a crusade for most consumers,

Walmart, one of the largest retailers in the world, was founded by Sam Walton in 1962. The first Walmart opened in Rogers, AR. It has since grown to over 10,300 stores all over the world. Employing over 2 million, it is hard to imagine the largest private employer in the world would ever be accused of being an unfair employee practices. Walmart has seen its share of litigation over the years. Litigation over off the clock work, sexual discrimination, health care benefits, unions, and unfair labor treatment have plagued the company.

With every company there come strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and Wal-mart is no exception. Wal-mart sits at the number one spot when it comes to retail businesses but they have had many issues; in particular labor law violations because they did not allow their employees to take required lunch and meal breaks.

As I sat down several weeks ago to begin writing this case study, I struggled with how I wanted to lay the paper out, however, when I opened Lee Scott’s 21st century leadership speech that was part of the required reading, the following quote struck me as the essence of the whole case study, so I would like to share it with you. You know, we are in uncharted territory as a business. You won’t find any case studies at the Harvard Business School highlighting answers for companies of our size and scope. If we were a country, we would be the 20th largest in the world. If

Walmart’s first store was opened up in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 by Sam Walton. Walton had owned a retail store in the previous store and decided to utilize a unique concept to achieve high sales and rise above his competitors in the town and industry. Walton reduced the prices of his products so that they were lower to those that were being offered by the competitors. By 2007, Walmart had over 3,400 retail outlets throughout the country. The store also had 1.3 million employees and had facilitated about 6.49 % of the country’s sales in retail. Walmart deals in the sale of apparel, music, groceries and some household products. In 2005, Walmart’s end of year profits had exceeded those of other retail stores combined such as Target, Costco, Home Depo, and Sears Holding Company.

Wal-Mart is certainly credited with changing the retail world as we know it with its low prices and big stores with huge selections but it has come at a price. They have struggled with issues that question the ethics as a company and legal issues that question how they manage people. These issues will continue to hurt their organization unless a complete change in management thinking and actions are changed. As a socially responsible organization, their management planning in this area is second to none. Lets hope they take the same effort in improving their image when it comes to ethics and legal issues.

We chose Walmart as the company to focus on for our business model canvas project. Considering that Walmart is the world’s largest retailer, as well as largest private employer, there is a plethora of information on this mammoth company. Sam Walton, Walmart’s founder, had a simple and noble vision for his stores; he said, “[We wanted to] reduce the cost of living for the people who shopped in our stores” (Soderquist, 2016). To this end, he created the big box retail format that we see in Walmart and other stores today. He envisioned a place where consumers could do their all their shopping under one roof and benefit from the discount pricing made possible by buying in bulk. His vision has given the world Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, as well as defining the big box business model that many others have copied.