Organization’s foundations of Leadership

Organization’s foundations of Leadership

 

Introduction

Walmart Inc. is an American based multinational corporation operating a chain of supermarkets, grocery stores, and discount stores (Lombardo, 2018). The company has its main headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Having been founded in 1962, Walmart had defied all odds to appear among the best 500-Fortune companies. Popular products include but not limited to: electronics, movies and music, clothing, footwear, home and furniture, health and beauty products and party supplies. As of the 2020 financial year, its revenue stood at US$523.964 billion. Walmart Inc. had total employee number of more than two million workers in 2018 across the globe. According to the Fortune Global 500 list of 2019, it was the world’s largest company in terms of revenue. The company is the best case study of effective human resource management. Walmart is anchored on best transformational participative and ethical leadership style of management.

Mission

Walmart has the best corporate mission statement that has enabled it to attain a unique competitive advantage in the highly competitive retail industry. The corporate mission statement reads, “To save people money so they can live better”. Indeed, this is a clear image of Sam Walton, who is the founder. The company uses the best product pricing strategies to attract and retain customers.

Vision

Wal-Mart’s vision statement was articulated in 2017 during the community setting. Its corporate vision statement reads, “Be the destination for customers to save money, no matter how they want to shop”. This is a strong emphasis on the company business flexibility in accommodating customers from all walks of life.

Strategy and Tactics

Walmart has leveraged the best generic strategy tailored specifically towards the attainment of unique competitive advantage. Cost leadership plays a pivotal role in enabling Walmart to remain relevant in the industry that is dominated by other multinational companies (Ferguson, 2018). According to Porter’s model of leadership, Walmart has been able to compete due to low product pricing strategy. The company has emphasized the culture of automation of internal operations, minimization of spending for human resource management and effective management of the diversified organizational workforce (Ferguson, 2018). There are low-level market segmentation and low product differentiation. To reach out to as many people as possible, Walmart has emphasized on process efficiency, intensive growth strategies and other best management approach.

Market Penetration Strategy

Market penetration is the primary genetic strategy and tactic embraced by senior management to reach out to many customers across the globe. The company sells goods and services as per the current markets (Ferguson, 2018). More goods and services are sold to customers through discounts and other related offers. This is essential in attracting and retaining a huge pool of loyal clients. Online presence has been a core component of ensuring that many customers access company products and services conveniently. This has been of great impact in increasing the company share, especially in the biggest retail markets such as the United States of America, Europe and China.

Diversification

Corporate leadership emphasizes on providing entirely new products in new market segments. This strategy is meant to search and acquire new companies to be fully integrated into company operations (Ferguson, 2018). There is the use of disruptive technology, such as the use of big data analytics to understand consumer patterns. Company leadership stresses on merging with other firms exuding high efficiency and supporting low-cost operations across the globe.

Market Development

Walmart corporate leadership has focused its energy towards offering quality products and services to new markets. This has always been accomplished by the online presence of company transactions, low product prices and ability to attract and retain a huge customer base. Product development strategy is meant to supplement market development generic strategy (Ferguson, 2018). Walmart has had minimal investment development into new products and services. It focuses more on streamlining its supply chain vehicles to improve its sales and marketing. Cost leadership generic strategy focuses on product development at the same time considering new products that are of less cost to customers.

Wal-Mart’s Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is essential in determining how employees respond to unlimited workplace challenges (Lombardo, 2018).  There is indomitable human resource resiliency supported through the corporate culture. Cultural features have enabled Walmart retail business to adapt to numerous global challenges. Indeed culture has enabled Walmart to maintain its coveted competitive advantage in the industry dominated by many multinational corporations.

Hierarchical organizational culture has worked well for Walmart (Lombardo, 2018). There are vertical lines of command and authority throughout the organization. Every employee has a direct superior for effective decision making. Middle-level managers are responsible for the implementation of company management aspects. Function-based organizational culture encompasses a group of employees accomplishing specific functions such as sales and marketing of products within a given market segment.

The culture at Walmart has four basic components as determined by the senior management. They are service to customers, respect for all individuals, and strive for excellence and action with integrity (Lombardo, 2018). Walmart has placed prioritization satisfaction of customer needs. Employee contribution to the success of the company is highly valued. Walmart strives for individual excellence of the workers, teams and the entire organization. Cardinal virtues of honesty, impartiality and fairness in decision making are highly emphasized. Despite the ideal nature of the organizational culture at Walmart, it has been heavily criticized for failing to manage a highly diversified workforce effectively. According to Moussetis (2011), senior management should put in place the best measures to fulfil respect for the individual as a key component of the organizational culture.

Leadership skills and Attributes

Good organizational leadership streamlines corporate management within an organization (Hickman & Silva, 2018). Walmart adopts transformational and participative leadership style. Participative leadership style values input of team members and peers but the final responsibility to make informed decisions rests upon the participative leader (Lombardo, 2018). Therefore, communicative reasoning, integrity and honesty are skills leaders are supposed to have. Participative leadership has always increased employee morale because their inputs are part and parcel of decision making. There is an open-door policy that has reduced incidences of internal conflicts. Transformational leadership is premised on a high level of communication. Top management enhances productivity by encouraging employees through highly streamlined communication channels.

Transformational leadership theory takes the centre of organizational management at Walmart. All team leaders are encouraged to work with individual employees to identify needed change, create the best vision to guide company trajectory, inspire employees and execute agreed change in tandem with various group members (Lombardo, 2018). Transformational leadership theory at Walmart manifests itself through idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration (Northouse, 2013). Entire leadership is people-focused such as spending time to motivate junior employees, understanding special needs of the employees, effective coordination across functional areas and comprehensive analysis of the situation when faced with a problem as recommended by Berkovich (2016). However, Walmart should expeditiously develop a best employee management system to address the needs of the employees that have concerns from all angles. A hybrid leadership style is required at Walmart Inc.

 

 

 

References

Berkovich, I. (2016). School leaders and transformational leadership theory: Time to part ways?  Journal of Educational Administration. 

Ferguson, E. (2018). Walmart’s Generic Competitive Strategy and Intensive Growth Strategies.  Business Management.

Hickman, C. R., & Silva, M. A. (2018). Creating excellence: Managing corporate culture,  strategy, and change in the new age. Routledge.

Lombardo, J. (2018). Walmart: Organizational Structure & Organizational Culture. Business  Management.

Moussetis, R. (2011). Ansoff revisited: How Ansoff interfaces with both the planning and learning schools of thought in strategy. Journal of Management History, 17(1), 102-125.

Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage  Publications. ISBN-13: 978-1483317533 ISBN-10: 1483317536