Wal-Marts Organizational Culture - Assignment Example

Name: Professor: Course: Date of Submission: Question Five: Wal-Mart’s Organizational Culture Wal-Mart is founded on a strong organizational culture observed in all its chain stores regardless of their location. The culture has emerged as one of the key drivers of the growth and sustainability of the chain stores, enabling it to remain firm even amidst challenges associated with business globalization and hard economic times. The primary source of the company’s culture is its founder, Sam Walton, who created the organization to reflect personal values that are imprinted it with his personal beliefs, attitudes and values (Fishman 2006). Organizational members tell company stories that emphasize undertakings and transformations, and stress on events that are aligned with organization’s cultural assumptions, decisions, and actions. The apparently observable culture in Wal-Mart is the commitment to sustain its chain stores as a low-cost retailing business. The founder’s thriftiness, courteous respect and honesty values permeate throughout the company’s workforce and operations. The ingrained attributes form the foundation of the company culture, which has continued to be reflected in its chain outlets in different parts of the world. Through its management, Wal-Mart strives to main its operations at the lowest cost possible in order to sustain the culture of thriftiness founded on the founder’s commitment to have low cost retail store (Cascio 2006). The company also believes in the culture of employee empowerment in which store managers are empowered to free-take some risks their routine service delivery. The culture of employee empowerment has enabled the management to create strategic innovations and success driven modern retailing ideas including blow out sales, the Oreo cookie stacking contests, and the door greeters. Some of these ideas have played an important role in propelling the organization to great profitability and enhanced customer satisfaction. The company’s culture also permits store managers to change production while at the same time allowing employees to create their own personalized displays within their stores through the volume pricing item program. The culture of empowering employees in Wal-mart has played a crucial role of inspiring employees’ loyalty, and provision of significant attention to employees that interact directly with clients. On the other hand, the prudential culture in the company relayed through the systematic transport procedures that cater for the whole human resources community at Wal-mart, and which does not consider the job portfolio. As a way of sustaining affordability by clientele in the chain store operations, all employees including the executive team fly in economic rather than first class or business class (Cascio 2006). In addition, employees on a business tour are encouraged to share rooms as well as seeking accommodation in less expensive motels. Wal-mart only reimburses a third of the meals on business travel expenses. The culture of door greeters and courtesy is observed in all the company chain stores in which sales persons at the retail outlets are expected to smile and warmly usher in the customers. This is one of the widely observed cultures since anyone who has entered any of the Wal-mart chain stores has experienced the warm welcome. The culture at Wal-Mart is maintained through sharing of the founding president’s stories to the employees in the workplace and during general meetings. All store managers are required to remind staff members about the values of the founder and emphasize on the need to embrace and promote the valued principles (Fishman 2006). The management always ensures that induction of new employees emphasize on the legendary concepts and organizational cultural values ingrained by the company’s initiator as the basis of the organization’s culture. The company leadership retells the underlying cultural objects to sensitize the company undertakings and transformational scenarios that promote the culture that is aligned with assumptions, strategies, and actions. The reiterated foundational tales guarantee the sustainability of the founders’ valued attitudes and believes even after they are dead. Sustainability of the Wal-mart organizational culture is guaranteed as long as leaders in the organization continue to uphold the values and believes of the company. Question Four: Stages of Group Development and Implication of Groupthink After the creation of a working team, the group goes through several developmental stages before it matures into a successful social unit. All formal and informal transit through the developmental stages that starting with the formation of interpersonal relationships among the members, and culminating in a mature and productive unit. A mature group is characterized by the ability to work through the necessary interpersonal, authority issues, and tasks to achieve high-level results. The group development process faces various challenging group-breaking points including demographic diversity among group fault lines. Demographic diversity and group fault lines form most potential predictors of the subgroup formation patterns, sense making in the groups, and the nature of conflicts likely to be experienced at different stages of development. The five-stage model of group development purports that the development of team behaviour goes through five levels including the forming stage, storming, norming, performing and the adjourning stages (Denise 2010). The forming stage mainly revolves around orientation where each member of the group tries to become oriented with other members and the group task. This stage is mainly characterized by dependence on guidance and direction from the group leader as members try to avoid discussion of major issues among themselves. Due to lack of clear knowledge of individual roles and responsibilities, team members rely heavily on the group leader to respond to questions about the team’s objectives, goals and relationship with the external environment. The ability to move to the next stage highly depends on whether the team members feel as part of the group. The next step, the storming phase, entails significant competition for positions in the group and often results in many conflicts as power wrangles dominate. In addition, cliques and factions emerge within the group as members become more aware of the groups purpose. The storming stage is also characterized by interpersonal assessments among the group members to determine trustworthiness, emotional comfort, and the ability to fit into the group. The leadership of the group is crucial at this stage as it plays a critical role in determining the possibility of the team remaining intact (Denise 2010). The group then proceeds to the norming stage where agreement and consensus form the basis of every decision reached by the group. At this stage, all individual roles and responsibilities are well outlined and accepted through the group agreement. The focus in the group significantly shifts from interpersonal relationships to task oriented activities and decision making on the way to accomplish the assigned tasks. At this stage, small decisions are delegated to sub-groups or individuals in the team. After allocation of roles and responsibilities within the group, the team is left with the responsibility of leader for amenable coordination and acting as its spokesperson. At the performing stage, purpose and missions of the group are strategically clear to every member of the team. The team should have also successfully resolved interpersonal, authority and tasks issues, and evolved an indication of the potential to work on its own with little directives from the leader (Denise 2010). At the level, the team can resolve arising disagreements positively and impose sanctions to tame unruly behavior by any of the team members. The final stage is referred to as the adjourning stage, where after the group has accomplished its mission and objectives members can be released to embark on new and different roles in the organization. At this stage, all team members have the sense of accomplishment and celebrate their achievement as a team. However, most formal groups especially in organizations remain at the performing state of development. Implications of Groupthink on Decision Making and Group Behavior The consequences of groupthink include an incomplete survey of alternatives, failure to evaluate the risks involved in a preferred course of action, biased information processing, and overall failure to have contingency plans (Martyn 2011). The groupthink phenomenon results in overall defective decision making process or costly decisions. Groupthink often results in rebellious behavior and ineffectiveness in addressing group objectives. Other negative behaviors associated with this concept include delays in the decision making and frequent conflicts among the group members. In some cases, groupthink can also result in corruption or embezzlement of funds allocated to such groups. Question 9: Sources and Consequences of Stress in Workplace and how they can be Managed The great source of workplace stress revolves around workplace conditions such as role conflict where unclear role expectations exacerbate the pressure on the workers. Work roles may contain internally contradictory expectations. Stress may also result under circumstances where work role expectations conflict with an individual’s preferences, goals, and values (Xianyu & Lambert 2006). Role ambiguity, which involves lack of clear and reliable communication as regards the rights, obligations, tasks and duties, may also trigger stress within the working environment. Another source of stress in the working environment includes inhibitive challenges on personal freedom and autonomy in individual job and environment. Rigidly structured work and bureaucratic interference at times reduce perceived individual autonomy leading to stress among the workers. Working in environments with such limitations often result in more stressful experiences especially where workers cannot influence the rule or guidelines established by the organization. Workloads further lead to stressful experiences among workers. Workload stress manifests in different ways including shear number of tasks for which a staff is responsible, and high expectations for task performance (Xianyu & Lambert 2006). Task load and performance expectations emerge as the greatest stressors especially when they interact with time constraints. Long, excessive, and inconvenient hours, deadlines, and pressure culminate in increased levels of stress. Stress can also result from task complexity, difficulty, and simultaneity. Stress can also result from inadequate wages or wages that do not match the amount of work done. Inadequate wages trigger family related stress in the workplace as workers fail to meet their family needs and expectations. Workplace stress is associated with numerous negatives on the organization as well as the affected individuals. High stress levels affect the morale and motivation of the employees, lead to fatigue, irritability, poor communication, and compromise on the quality of work. Stress further impacts on the productivity of individual employees as well as the overall organization due to stress-related illnesses, increased absenteeism and increased attrition (Stuart 2008). This in turn affects the profitability of the organizations. Workplace related stress also produces job dissatisfaction, moodiness, depression, and lower organizational commitment. Prolonged exposure to work-related stress further leads to stress job burnout that extremely affects job performance and efficiency in the workplace. Stress at workplace affects working environment indirectly through pushing the affected workers into unhealthy behaviors such as excessive consumption of alcohol, smoking and other forms of substance abuse. Stress among the leadership team lead to poor decision-making and overall decline in performance of individual workers. Prolonged exposure to stress eventually lead to multiple physical and mental disorders, which completely make workers unfit for their roles. Continued exposure to stress leads to depression, insomnia, heart diseases, and stress induced gastrointestinal complications. Organizations address the issue of workplace stress through establishment of stress control mechanisms such as development of clear job roles and proper match of skills with employees’ tasks (Stuart 2008). Workplace stress can also be managed through encouragement of flexibility in the working environment and abolition of rigid job structures. Workers should be allowed to make various choices concerning their roles as well as questioning existing practices that may jeopardize their autonomy. Organizations should also control the amount of work allocated to all workers to eliminate chances of work overload, which contributes towards increased work-related stress. This is because unrealistic job performance expectations contribute to increased stress among employees especially when combined with time constraints. Organizations can also establish mechanisms of dealing with stressful conditions in the workplace such as counseling services to aid victims overcome stress (Xianyu & Lambert 2006). Other than the organizations, individuals exposed to stressful working conditions can also deal with such situations through personal efforts such psychological preparations, dealing with family issues away from the workplace, and creating additional ways of supplementing their incomes. Because of the increasing workforce diversity owing to globalization, organizations are increasingly investing on strategic human resource management principles that enhance staff welfare, productivity, and retention. References Cascio, W 2006, ‘Decency means more than “always low prices”: a comparison of Costco to Wal-Mart’s Sam’s club’, Academic of Management Perspectives, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 26-37. Denise, B 2010, ‘40 years of storming: a historical review of Tuckman’s model of small group development’, Human Resource Development International, vol. 13, no. 1, pp.111-120. Fishman, C 2006, ‘The Wal-mart effect and a decent society: who knew shopping was so important?’ Academic Journal of Management Perspectives, vol. 20, no.3, pp. 6-25. Martyn, K 2011, ‘Governance groupthink’, New Zealand Management, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 55-56. Stuart, S 2008, ‘Workplace stress management intervention: what works best?’ Academy of Management Perspectives, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 111-122. Xianyu, Y & Lambert, V 2006, ‘Investigation of the relationships among workplace stressors, ways of coping, and the mental health of Chinese nurses’, Nursing and Health Sciences, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 147-155. Read More