Information System Strategy - Essay Example

Wal-Mart, today has more than 9,600 retail stores in over 30 countries, employing some 2 million employees with 1.3 million in the US alone and annual revenues of approximately $430.349 billion as of 2012. Wal-Mart is an unavoidable and irresistible retail force that, as of the present, has not met any immovable objects. Larger than Tesco, AG, Metro, and Carrefour combined, Wal-Mart is the world’s top retail store (Roberts & Berg, 2012: p26). It ranked first in the Fortune 500 list of the largest organizations by revenues.

Its main competitors were Carrefour in Europe that has annual revenues of approximately $121.27 billion, Target Corporations with annual revenues of $68.44 billion, Costco Corporations that has annual revenues of approximately $88.92 billion, as well as variety and discount stores, which have annual revenues of approximately $6.24 billion (Roberts & Berg, 2012: p28). An organizational structure refers to the typically hierarchical framework through which organizations arrange their communication and authority lines, as well as allocate duties and rights, determining the extent and manner to which the roles, responsibilities, and power are coordinated, delegated, and controlled and how the information moves between the various management levels.

The structure of an organization is dependent entirely on the strategy and objectives that the organization chooses. In centralized structures, the power of decision-making is concentrated within the management’s top layer and tight control they exercise over divisions and departments that are evident in Wal-Mart’s organizational structure. Since all paths of decision making at Wal-Mart begin from the CEO to the executive and on to the branches, Wal-Mart uses a centralized structure (Roberts & Berg, 2012: p34).

The top of their structure is Mike Dune, the CEO, who oversees the executive committee that includes the CFO, CIO, and Executive Vice Presidents. The Board of Directors puts in place the