Organizational Environment - Assignment Example

Tony Webb Dr. Linda Harris BUS 322-Organizational Behavior Discuss the driving forces that shape the organizational environment of the company selected (Wal-Mart) Wal-Mart is one of the world’s leading chains of superstores that comprises of over 3800 stores only in United States. They stand out in comparison with other superstores because of their sheer sizes. According to the statistics, approximately one third population of United States only shops from Wal-Mart on weekly basis. Wal-Mart has the honor to be claimed as the largest company in the history of the world.

In 2012, the total profits of Wal-Mart were calculated to be about $443 billion which was $70 billion more than the performance of its previous year. Competing in the Global Market Wal-Mart has not just become such a giant by implementing simple techniques and strategies. In fact many companies had to face bankruptcies and others who survived had to go through the pressures of wages and retail prices that Wal-Mart was offering. It was one of the core strategies of Wal-Mart that they always had believed in offering the lower prices from others in the market without decreasing the quality of the product and this was their major reason of success as well.

The intelligent move of Wal-Mart of serving as different store for a different folk in each country has been very successful and came up as one of the most successful strategies. The decentralized management style in Wal-Mart has been successfully instilled which resulted in a complete newer version of organizational culture. Wal-Mart is clever enough that they realize the changing dynamics of the business world and they are aware of the major global challenges that the organizations are going to face in near future.

Diverse workforce Wal-Mart has an innovative culture of having a quite diversified workforce as they run their business in different 15 formats such as stores, distribution centers, optical labs, restaurants and other business systems. The number of employees in Wal-Mart is over 2.1 billion employees in over 15 countries with about 8900 locations, which even exceeds the total population of 15 states of United States and the District of Columbia. It is because of their nature of business that they perform in more than one format that they need to have such a huge diverse work force so then they can better serve their customers and fulfill their satisfaction level.

Wal-Mart particularly emphasizes in improving and developing their culture of diverse workforce, and continuous training sessions and motivational sessions are being conducted to train nearly 60,000 managers for the continuous inclusion of this trend. We can clearly get the idea of how much diversified is the workforce of Wal-Mart by observing their number of employees of various national identities such as Wal-Mart has 255,000 African American Associates, 169,000 Hispanic employees, 6000 Pacific Islander associates, over 43,000 Asian employees and more than 14,000 employees from American Indian identity and Alaska native associates only in united states.

Ethics and Character The Wal-Mart has been very much popular in initiating and successfully implementing their ethical practices that may be related to their work force or for their consumers. Although heir prime motive has always been to increase their profit margins but there never has been an unethical strategy that Wal-Mart implemented. Many people debate over this that their strategy of low prices has killed domestic business of many places but in my opinion, the strategy has served as a good character for customer.

The ultimate beneficiary is the customer so that is not any harm as it is claimed to be. They motivate their employees and encourage them to invest in the company so then they can actually feel like they are also the owners of the firm. Technological innovation Wal-Mart is considered as the leader of improving their operational efficiencies through various technological methods. Their strategy of proactive investment has enabled them to follow the path of low prices effectively and without facing any barriers.

Most of their logistics are also been managed by themselves and this saves their costs on distribution networks. Examine the organizations specific practices or policies Wal-Mart is the largest company other than the federal agencies, that employs more people as compare to other organizations in United States and still we may observe the poor conditions of its employees who live their life below the poverty line. There have been many arguments about the policies of Wal-Mart that they initially start up a store or business format in any locality offering lowest prices and as a result the competitors in that area close their businesses as they are unable to fight against such a giant.

And after the competitors are being killed, Wal-Mart closes their stores as well leaving the employees jobless. The company is changing the trend of unions by training their new employees to use the open door policy instead of using the channel of unions because in the past the firm has faced a number of problems because these union issues. Moreover, there were many attempts as well, that were made to form groups of workers of Wal-Mart without forming a union.  Influence of these practices on individual outcomes All these measures to decrease the trend of unionizing is good for Wal-Mart as they can do whatever they want without taking pressures from the employees.

But such policies are badly affecting the employees and workers of Wal-Mart as most of them are unable to speak and fight for their rights and in order to change things on the organizational level, it is necessary for employees to form a group or union and convey their problems to the management. In short, on the individual level, all these labor policies of Wal-Mart are the major reasons of the exploitation of workers of Wal-Mart. Also the wages that are offered at Wal-Mart are very in regard with the idea that Wal-Mart is such a giant of the industry and it should be paying its employees a handsome amount.

Influence of these practices on organizational outcomes All these policies and practices of Wal-Mart are definitely resulting in huge profits as the rights of employees are being violated and their salaries, facilities like healthcare and insurance plans are not offered in a way that they should be offered and that’s why most of the employees do not go for these plans. And the organization ultimately gets the benefit out of it. But this negative vibe about the employee policies of Wal-Mart is not going to do any good for the firm so they should better revise them.

Determine which practices related to work attitudes in U.S. organizations are most strongly affected by diversity In United States, there are people from all over the world that go and live and work altogether with other people in the firms. Many firms, nowadays, are emphasizing in having a diverse workforce to encounter the issues and challenges related to globalization. But there are a number of practices that are related to work attitudes that are being affected by this factor of diversity, such as, in cases it has been observed that people find themselves reluctant in working as a team because the other team members may be is a person from some enemy country.

And also there are situations when employees tend to behave lazy attitude because of their own national culture in their homeland and they find it difficult to adjust in the competitive environment of United States. Determine who the affects could be addressed The key people who are being affected by these practices are the organizations because all these work related issues are eventually going to affect the organizational performance and productivity which will automatically affect the profits of the firm negatively.

References Mujtaba, B. G., & Maxwell, S. (2011). Wal-Mart In The Global Retail Market: Its Growth And Challenges. Journal of Business Case Studies (JBCS), 3(2), 1-10. Walmart: An Analysis. (2008). Yahoo.com. Retrieved 18 April 2014, from Luthans, F. (2014). Globalization, Diversity, and Ethics | McGraw-Hill Answers. Answers.mheducation.com. Retrieved 18 April 2014, from http://answers.mheducation.com/business/management/organizational-behavior/globalization-diversity-and-ethics Anderson, K. (2006). Globalization and the Wal-Mart Effect-Probe Ministries. Probe.org.

Retrieved 18 April 2014, from http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4218005/k.783A/Globalization_and_the_WalMart_Effect.htm Luthans, F. (2014). Globalization, Diversity, and Ethics | McGraw-Hill Answers.Answers.mheducation.com. Retrieved 18 April 2014, from http://answers.mheducation.com/business/management/organizational-behavior/globalization-diversity-and-ethics