Organizational Structure of Walmart
Doshiemae Johnson
MGT/230
Patricia Ford
February 1, 2016

Introduction Walmart’s humble beginnings started in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 by Sam Walton. Today, Walmart has evolved into a multibillion dollar company earning 486 billion dollars (Wikipedia.com (Entreprenuer, 2016) (Entreprenuer, 2016), 2015). Walmart is currently located in over fifteen countries and have over eleven thousand six hundred twenty stores (wikepedia.com). Their slogan is “Save Money, Live Better.” Walmart’s success could not have happened without strategic planning of the company’s business processes. These factors decide which organizational structure would be appropriate for the company to use. This paper will discuss the organizational structure of Walmart and their corporate processes that include marketing, human resources, products, and geographical locations.
Organizational Structure Walmart’s organizational structure is divisional. Under this type of structure, each division has its own executive, which is the vice president. The vice president is responsible for their own budgets, advertising, and hiring (Bateman, 2011). Each division is given enough resources and autonomy to function alone. Unlike other organizational structures such as functional where divisions are departmentalized based on common job functions and matrix where both employees and managers from different company departments work together to achieve goals and solve problems (Bateman,2011), the divisional organization has a greater impact on the company as a whole but it can run into high cost. In regards to Walmart, their organization consists of five teams of CEOs different subsidiaries of Walmart. The CEOs are in charge of several vice presidents. The vice presidents are in charge of different business divisions for the Walmart organization. These subsidiaries act like separate organizations, but they are still part of Walmart (walmartstores.com). They are Walmart Stores Inc., Walmart USA, Sam’s Club and Global E-commerce (walmartstores.com). The divisional structure of Walmart is open and allows for each division to focus on specific goals such as services, products, and customers. These different responsibilities require many different sets of skills and specialized methods. Another company in competition with Walmart is Target. Target is also a leader in industry merchandising. The regional vice presidents supervise between ten to fifteen district managers. Walmart’s divisions are categorized into four. They are products, geographic, human resources and markets.
Products
Employees are grouped based on the specific products that Walmart produces. For example, having three different products (Product Red Product Blue, Product Orange) and each product has its own division.
Markets
The marketing structure of Walmart is based on the specific market which it competes. Here also, employees are grouped together. Walmart sells products to individual consumer, business customers. Consumer sales and consumer customer service both function together and corporate sales and corporate customer service work together (panamore.com, 2016). Unlike other retailers, Walmart opens stores in small towns before moving to bigger metropolitan areas. Also all store locations are within two hundred miles of their distribution center. In Asian markets, Walmart has had some problems with competition. In South Korea, Walmart had to sell sixteen of their stores to a local retailer and this retailer renamed the stores “E-marts.” In China, Walmart had problems trying to reproduce their business model, but they did find out that Chinese citizens preferred to choose their own live fish and seafood, as a result Walmart installed fish tanks and this increased their profits (Wikipedia.com, 2015). Walmart is now online. Their website can reach millions of people around the world where individuals can place orders over the internet.
Geographical
The geographical structure groups employees together based on geographical locations. For example, a company can have headquarters, a European division and a division in South Asia. Walmart has stores in many areas around the United States and abroad. Walmart has operations in Africa, Europe Canada, India, and Latin American Countries. Technology, Innovation, and Globalization help Walmart to open stores in foreign countries and increase their profit margins. Walmart also uses the foreign markets to purchase their merchandise at a much lower price. One way Walmart achieves its goals is through delegation within and throughout the organization. Delegation is the assigning of responsibilities and tasks to other individuals within an organization (www.entreprenuer.com/encyclopedia). It is the responsibility of the top manager to see to it that the task has been completed. In Walmart, delegation comes from the regional manager to the store manager to the assistant manager to the store employees.
Human Resources Walmart’s human resources division must take into consideration how the structure of the organization is affected internally. Human resource planning takes place at the corporate level. Each individual store has its own human resource manager and this manager must interpret the corporate human resource plan. If there is an employee surplus or shortage, Walmart uses different software products that can track store data. This data is then sent to a central database where it is analyzed. With the use of this system, Walmart can tell what kind of workforce changes will take place or is trending (Wikipedia, 2016). There is an ongoing process of hiring and training new employees. This ensures that any open positions are getting and can get filled. This is a centralized organizational structure combined with a partial decentralization. Centralization integrates Walmart’s organization so it functions as one entity. Decentralization makes the organization more malleable enough to stand up to any new problems within the company(panamore.com, 2015). In recruitment, Walmart does a person-organization fit analysis. This analysis shows if the potential employee fit the needs, demands and the expectation of the company. It also shows if this potential employee is a fit with the organization. This is important to human resources because it lowers the cost on recruitment and the training of workers who are not a fit with the organization (walmartstores.com, 2016). When the company expands, this means more growth and potential career opportunities for individuals whether presently working at Walmart or wanting to become an employee of Walmart. Conclusion With a corporation like Walmart, a good and sound organizational structure must be in place. Many companies try to pattern themselves after Walmart hoping to achieve the same results, but it must be understood that one must choose the right organizational structure. By using the divisional organizational structure, Walmart can take advantage having smaller businesses within a larger one. Walmart is one of the largest retail corporations in the world today. I believe the divisional structure is best suited for Walmart because this organizational structure can adapt to new environments more so than the functional and matrix organizational structures. Customer satisfaction is high because of product availability.

References
(2016, January 31). Retrieved from http://www.walmartstores.com
(2016, January 31). Retrieved from Wikipedia: www.wikepedia.com/walmart
(2016, January 31). Retrieved from Panamore: www.panamore.com/walmart
Batemen, T. S. (2011). Management: Leading and Collaborating In a Competitive World (9th ed). New York: McGraw-Hil.
Entreprenuer. (2016, January 31). Retrieved from www.entreprenuer.com/encyclopedia