...CASE STUDY 10 | SHRM Table of Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................ 2 ANNEXURE ............................................................................................................................................ 3 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 9 INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPANY ................................................................................................. 9 QUESTIONS ......................................................................................................................................... 10 QUESTION 01: ................................................................................................................................... 10 QUESTION 02 ................................................................................................................................... 12 QUESTION 03 ................................................................................................................................... 14 QUESTION 04 ................................................................................................................................... 16 CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................................
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...brought against Wal-Mart by a female employee. It specified how female employees were not given the same opportunity to advance as their male counterpart even though they had just as must experience or more. They were also denied training for top positions and prohibited from working in certain departments that were designated for men only, which also paid more (McGraw Hill, 2014, p. 582). Wal-Mart developed a system they used to promote, pay, assign and transfer their employees. This system was said to be subjective and had a disparate impact on female employees. Wal-Mart officials knew about this mistreatment to their female employees but still did nothing to correct it. They even went as far as to retaliate against one female employee who complained about the discrimination (McGraw Hill, 2014, p. 583). Another lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart in June 2001 claimed employees were not allowed to get paid for their overtime work. The employees were also approached with intimidation by threats if they did not finish their work within a scheduled amount of time, even if it was impossible for the work to be completed that same day (McGraw Hill, 2014, p. 586). Discussion When Sam and his brother Bud established their first Wal-Mart retail store, the vision was always customer satisfaction. He believed if he treated his employees well, they would in fact return that same treatment or better to the customers causing them to come back again (McGraw Hill, 2014, p. 586). Wal-Mart soon offered...
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...Case Study: Wal-Mart DeLeon A. Rich Management and Strategy Webster University May 15, 2013 Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 Wal-Mart’s Threats and Challenges 2 Priorities of Wal-Mart CEO during the October Address 2 Wal-Mart Board’s Strategic Initiatives 3 Recent Wal-Mart Initiatives 4 Recent Initiatives 4 Comment: Strategy 5 Comment: Personal Relations 5 Wal-Mart’s Social Challenges 5 Conclusion 5 References 5 Introduction Every business organization in the contemporary world continues to face serious challenges and turbulences. Such challenges and turbulences have called on to business enterprises to re-structure and re-engineer their strategic plan in order to establish effective strategic initiatives. Dynamisms and increased competition are some of the challenges that business enterprises continue to face. One example of a business enterprise that has had to re-structure and re-engineer its strategic plan amidst increased dynamisms and competition with Wal-Mart. Late in 2005, Wal-Mart announced a series of sweeping new strategic initiatives. Such strategic initiatives are aimed at enhancing the position of the business within the industry and the market as well as performances. This case study provides an in-depth analysis of Wal-Mart in respect to its current strategy and challenges. Analysis of the threats and challenges coupled with priorities that Wal-Mart CEO, Lee Scott set in the address on “Twenty-first...
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...disadvantages to Wal-Mart of working with unions? Wal-Mart is not known to be union friendly here in the United States. The advantages of Wal-Mart working with unions are most notably the ability to expand into China. With a population of over 1.3 billion people the need to work with China’s union, which our text book notes is a communist monopoly, (Decenzo and Robbins pg 364), is imperative to opening stores there. With this first wave of union employees we can be hopeful that Wal-Mart will start to accept Unions in United States stores and in Canada. Perhaps Wal-Mart can educate the United States Unions on how it would need to be structured in order for Wal-Mart to allow their presence. Wal-Mart being such a large retailer and employer in the United States could potentially revolutionize as well as revitalize the union movement if it would work more closely with it instead of closing stores who speak of unionizing. The disadvantages to Wal-Mart of working with the Unions can include- Higher wages- our text book states that it is common to find 30% higher wages in union businesses. Medical Benefits- Most unions push for medical benefits for its members Loss of the Sam Walton way- By allowing Unions to enter into the Wal-Mart business model the concept of how Wal-Mart does business could change dramatically. Wal-Mart is accustomed to being the Big Dog. They are able to tell suppliers and vendors to change their practices if they want to continue to supply Wal-Mart...
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... Read the following case study thoroughly and answer the questions given at the end. (Consult course syllabus for writing guidelines. Total length should not exceed five pages) C A S E 22 Submission Deadline: 16-02-2015 Wal-Mart: But We Do Give Them a 10 Percent Employee Discount "l I Tal-Mart began as a simple dream by its founder, Sam Walton: to provide low l' l' prices for customers every day. That philosophy has taken Wal-Mart in fortyfour years from one five-and-ten store in Bentonville, Arkansas, to the largest retailer in the world with estimated annual sales of close to $300 billion. In 2005 it was the largest company in the world based on revenue and slipped to number two in 2006 when Exxon/Mobil took over the number one position. Wal-Mart has more than 1.5 million employees worldwide, including 1.3 million in the United States, and generates more than 2 percent of the gross national product in the United States. On December 19, 2005, the results of a Pew Research survey showed that 81 percent of the 1,502 people who responded to the survey considered Wal-Mart a good place to shop. In addition, 69 percent of the respondents stated that they had a favorable opinion of Wal-Mart. However, 31 percent of the respondents stated that they had an unfavorable image of Wal-Mart. Furthermore, 68 percent of the respondents believed that having a Wal-Mart store in their area was good for the community, and 64 percent said that Wal-Mart was good for the United...
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...The culture and organizational behavior of Wal-Mart has many consumers questioning the integrity of the company. Wal-Mart has seen itself in some of the nations largest suits. Wal-Mart has been harshly criticized in the public eye for over a decade now. The companies brand is a stake and Wal-Mart is fighting to change their reputation it day in and day out. It appears that Wal-Mart grew too big too fast and never planned on this rapid growth. They were not prepared for what the growth entailed and made several large detrimental mistakes along the way. Wal-Mart opened its doors in 1962 by founder Sam Walton. In just 5 short years he had expanded his company to 24 stores in its home state of Arkansas. Wal-Mart saw increasingly rapid growth in the United States and expanded to international territories in the 1980s. Wal-Mart has become the world’s largest corporation and is consistently listed as a Fortune 500 company. Given its size Wal-Mart handles relationships with stakeholders, unions, communities, religous affiliations, and political groups. Wal-Mart is constantly in the public eye and is being criticized for its business policies and procedures. These complaints have stemmed from worker’s compensation law suits, employee benefits lawsuits and failure to comply with the equal employment opportunity act. Advocacy groups called Wake-Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch were formed in 2005 in efforts of bringing realization to Wal-Mart’s disgrunteled employees (cite pg3#3)...
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...spirit. Incidents or abusive behavior, harassment, accounting fraud, conflicts of interest, defective products, and bribery and employee theft can happen at any business. Corporations have a social responsibility, an organization obligation to maximize its positive impact on stakeholders and to minimize its negative impact. Background Wal-Mart was founded in the early 1960s’ and today have stores nationwide providing goods and services to millions of consumers. The steps taken by this company in regards to addressing and correcting allegations of unethical issues greatly impacted their reputation and sustainability. The founder of Wal-Mart Sam Walton’s success was attributed to his belief in customer satisfaction and hard work. Associates had to abide by the “ten-foot-rule, look the customer in the eye, greet him or her, and ask if he or she needed help with anything. Over the next 40 years the company grew from a small chain of stores into the largest nongovernment employer in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Today Wal-Mart focuses on keeping cost low to achieve its “everyday low prices”. Findings Unfortunately, Wal-Mart also applied this same philosophy to its employees in the form of low wages, poor benefits, unfair treatment of employees in the workplace, discrimination; using illegal immigrants and sweatshops all to save a buck. Wal-Mart claimed early on that a formal ethics program was unnecessary because it had Mr. Sam’s ethics...
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...Running Head: WAL-MART STORE INC Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chrisp, Courtney; Richardson, Maria E.; & White, Sherri Leadership & Org Behavior GM591 Professor: Robert Churilla mariae.richardson@yahoo.com DeVry/Keller University Online 02/17/2013 Introduction Wal-Mart Stores Inc., founded by Sam Walton in 1962, is one of America largest discount department stores. Wal-Mart’s primary mission is to bring consumers high quality goods at a low, discounted price. Wal-Mart operates more than 8,692 retail units across three business segments of retail worldwide that offer a wide array of general merchandise, including groceries, apparel, electronics, and small appliances. In addition, the company is the world’s largest retailer and grocery chain according to sales volume and just over half of their sales comes from grocery items. Over 54% of the company’s stores are located in the United States, with the majority of international stores located in Central and South America, and China. (Jaeah, 2012). Wal-Mart was started in Rogers, Arkansas during the early 1960’s. Sam Walton traveled all around the country researching what consumers wanted in a retail store. When Walton first opened Wal-Mart he “built it under the foundation of honesty, respect, fairness and integrity”. Walton tried to create a culture that shared the same beliefs as he did. Out of his beliefs he chose the three strongest which he felt best suited his store: respect...
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...Case analysis on ‘Human resource strategy and productivity at Wal-Mart’ Course: MGT 489 # 7, Fall 2015 Submitted To Dr. Muslima Zahan Assistant Professor Submitted By |Name |Student ID | |MD. Zahid Hossen |111 0104 030 | |Mehedi Hasan |121 0212 030 | |Mohammed Irfan |121 0823 030 | |Nujhat Nakiba Khushbu |123 0279 030 | School of Business and Economics North South University Date of Submission: 13/10/2015 Letter of Transmittal October 13th, 2015 Dr. Muslima Zahan Assistant Professor Strategic Management (MGT 489) School of Business North South University Subject: Submission of the case analysis on “Human resource strategy and productivity at Wal-Mart” Madam, We would like to thank you for assigning us with this course-work for the course of strategic management. This case study has given us the opportunity to combine our theoretical...
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...Improving Wal-Mart’s Employee Relations GM591: Leadership and Organizational Behavior April 20, 2010 INTRODUCTION The Organization that we selected as our topic of discussion in our Project Paper is the Wal-Mart Corporation. Sam Walton is the founder of Wal-Mart. He opened his first store called Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas in July of 1962. Their corporate office is currently located in Bentonville, Arkansas. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. incorporated its stores on October 31, 1969. In 1972, they started selling stock on the New York Stock exchange. Although, though the company has had controversial operational business practices they have grown to be the largest Retail Corporations in the world. In 1997, Wal-Mart was able to become the largest private employer in the United States. In that same year, their annual sales totaled over $105 billion. In 2010, Wal-Mart has over 2.1 million employees worldwide. There 2010 fiscal year sales exceeded $400 billion dollars (Wal-Mart About Us, 2010). I have been a loyal customer of Wal-Mart for years. Therefore, I was shocked when I found out about some of Wal-Marts questionable unofficial policies through talks with friends and family members who worked for them in the past and some who currently employed by them. My mother in law worked for them from 2006 thru 2008. She was required to work 8-hour shifts without a lunch break on a regular basis. One of my cousins was required to clock out because...
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...Wal-Mart is one of the many businesses that practice the Organization Function of Management. Their organization vividly recognizes the significance of its technology, human resources, monetary and physical assets. They’ve been so successful because they combine their resources and use them effectively in satisfying their customers and employees in every possible way they can. Their management has been able to utilize the organization function by doing those things and maximizing their full potential. In addition, this is what has allowed Wal-Mart to earn the name of the greatest retail store. Wal-Mart includes the latest technology in relation to the needs and interest of customers. It is the greatest tool this organization has to stay ahead of their many competitors, as well as stay up to date with the many expectations of their customers. Their company has developed better technologies to change ways the customers shop. They’re there largest retailer in the world who provides various opportunities worldwide with projects, investments, training and development. Wal-Mart also helps improve resources for customers such as operations, back room systems and providing products for customers all across the globe. Technology is constantly changing and Wal-Mart is able to keep up with it as fast as possible. That opportunity is what helps continue to save people money so they can live better. With the help of enhanced data analysis, Wal-Mart can predict what technologies customers...
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...Introduction a. Thesis statement II. What is Domestic Partner explained by law a. Regional/State Laws b. Federal Law c. Defense of Marriage Act III. Cost Analysis of Benefits a. Cost to Employer b. Cost to Employee IV. Pros and Cons of offering Domestic Partner Benefits a. Employee benefits b. Company Gains V. Conclusion Wal-Mart (WM) is the largest retailer in the world and operates in all 50 states. Recently passed laws that allow same sex marriage couples to marry legally and this has caused the company to reevaluate its domestic partner benefit offerings. Studies done by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) also show that 62% of fortune 500 companies offer domestic partner benefits to their employees. (Hoenig, 2013) Wal-Mart must continue to be at the front of employee relations and it will be necessary to cover all employees, regardless of lifestyle, in order to maintain those relations. It is important that we define what Domestic Partner is as defined by the government. The Office of Personnel Management states, "For purposes of ensuring consistent implementation of the President’s memorandum, a “domestic partner” is defined in OPM regulations (e.g. 5 C.F.R. § 875.213) as a person in a domestic partnership with an employee or annuitant of the same sex. The term “domestic partnership” is defined as a committed relationship between two adults, of the same sex, in which the partners— (1) are each other’s sole domestic partner and intend...
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...Executive Summary Employee relationship is a very important issue in the modern business world. All the managers must maintain a good relationship with the employees attain the organizational goal. It will enhance the firm reputation and productivity of the firm. The employees will be ethically stronger. To maintain good flow of the business the manager must maintain a good employee relationship. So, managers must be aware of this issue. He/she can follow a lot of theories for maintaining a healthy and strong relationship with the employees. Learning Objective 1: Understand the context of employee relations against a changing background Task 1: Understanding Unitary and Pluralistic Approach Unitary Frames Unitary frame of reference is defined as a way of thinking, asset of assumptions, attitudes, views, values that are related with the management and organizational membership. The main theme of this frame is though the employees have different views based on their learning and education; they must have some common goals to be achieved while working in an organization. It finds expression by the implementation of the mission statements and it measures the success through the achievement of actually got. Unitary frames starts from the values and assumption. It says that workplace conflict is not expected at all between the manger and employee in the working environment [ (Dicker, 2003) ]. A conflict starts from two people’s behavior or occurrence that have a huge influence...
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...Donald Tiffany Retail Marketing Mid Term alternate assignment CASE 3 Wal-Mart’s Sustainability 360 1. Is Wal-Mart good for society? Would society be better off with or without Wal-Mart? The debate on whether Wal-Mart has done more good or bad for society has been a longstanding one. Apologists of the world’s largest retailer defend its business strategies, touting it as the prime example of unfettered American capitalism, the epitome of free market efficiency with low costs and high quantities of production and consumption. Opponents argue that the retail behemoth has led to the transfer of millions of jobs to less-developed countries like China, the exit of many small-to-medium businesses, and also infringement of employee rights. There are two sides to this debate depending on the stance one takes, along with how “society” is defined. From an economic standpoint, society refers to, collectively, the common person; the consumer. Consumers would benefit from low prices and an increase in quantity of goods consumed. Wal-Mart’s strategy of “everyday low prices” has certainly served society well in that respect. Due to its enormous economies of scale, notably its bargaining power with suppliers and the establishment of its own distribution centers, Wal-Mart has managed to offer very competitive low prices to its consumers due to the low costs. This has resulted of millions of Americans – especially the low-to-medium income consumers it traditionally targets – being able...
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...STEPS IN STAGE I STAGE I: STEP I - Brief Summary Founded in 1945 and based in Bentonville, Arkansas with 10,773 retail units under 69 banners in 27 countries, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is a department store chain of retail goods and services operating in various formats worldwide. The company’s operation is divided in three main segments: Wal-Mart U.S., Wal-Mart International, and Sam's Club. It operates retail stores, restaurants, discount stores, supermarkets, supercenters, hypermarkets, warehouse clubs, apparel stores, Sam’s Clubs, neighborhood markets, and other small formats, as well as walmart.com; and samsclub.com. The company’ s retail stores produce, deli, bakery, dairy, frozen foods also offers meat, alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages, and floral and dry grocery; health and beauty aids, baby products, household chemicals, paper goods, and pet supplies; and electronics, toys, cameras and supplies, photo processing services, cellular phones, cellular service plan contracts and prepaid service, movies, music, video games, and books. Its stores also provide stationery, automotive accessories, hardware and paint, sporting goods, fabrics and crafts, and seasonal merchandise; pharmacy and optical services, and over-the-counter drugs; shoes, jewelry, accessories, and apparel for women, girls, men, boys, and infants; and home furnishings, housewares and small appliances, bedding, home décor, outdoor living, and horticulture products. In addition, the company’s stores offer...
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