Wal-Mart is the worlds largest chain of retail stores it has over five thousand stores in over nine countries, it is also the worlds biggest corporation and was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton in Arkansas. Since then it is worth one hundred fifty billion dollars, and employs 1.3 million people in over 4600 national and international stores (Meek, Palmer Parkinson, 2007, p.56).
The business divisions of Wal-Mart have been segregated into Wal-Mart stores, supercenters, Sams club warehouses and neighborhood markets (Kneer, 2009, p.2). Wal-Mart stores carry general merchandise, a selection of food sections and also include home supplies, mobile stores, gadgets, cash points, a food joint and a gasoline station.
Wal-Mart supercenters are stocked with the same range of products as found in a discount store, the only difference is that they also have a McDonalds joint they also stock poultry and meat products in a range of varieties and also stock pharmaceutical products (Wikipedia, 2009).
Neighborhood markets stand between discount stores and supercenters and although they have a limited selection of food items, they have a pharmacy point and other amenities. Sams clubs have been described by Ferrell, Fraedrich Ferrell (2009) as
Membership warehouse clubs which provide brand name merchandise as members only price for small businesses, nonprofit organizations and personal use for large families(p.293).
The mission statement defines the purpose of the company to remind its workers of the reason behind the existence of the company, and is inculcated into their strategy and plans. The vision statement of Wal-Mart is to Save money. Live better or to help people save money so they can live better (Silber Kearny, 2009, p.99). Wal-Mart explained their mission statement by stating that they act as buyers for their consumers and strive to get the best value for them (Hill Jones, 2007). Though there have been concerns about the achievement of this mission, as Wal-Mart has cut down the healthcare benefits of their employees in order to offer better prices to their consumers.
Their mission is in tandem with their vision statement, which is an image of the goals of the company that the organization strives to achieve over a period of time it serves as a benchmark for the employees of an organization (Graham, Roth Dugan, 2009). The vision statement of Wal-Mart is to become the world leader in retailing (Romeo, 2008, p.5). Wal-Mart has almost achieved this vision, as Craig Johnson, president of the consulting firm Customer Growth Partners, states that Wal-Marts share of the 3 trillion U.S. retail market has edged up to 11.3 percent (Kapner, 2009, para.5).
The importance of an organizational culture lies in its ability to provide cohesion in between the goals of the company and that of the employees, thus a worker is able to put the benefit of the company over hisher own personal gain and it is often considered the accepted behavior and norm in handling situations (Brunn, 2006).
Wal-Mart has an all-encompassing organizational culture as well which is obvious in its artifacts, values and underlying assumptions(Schein,1990) The employees of Wal-Mart wear blue vests with their first names and company slogan printed on the front and back which says We Work For You Always and the back Our People Make The Difference. There are several postures as well that show Sam Waltons picture along with the slogan Pride Though Performance (Brunn, 2006).
The values of Wal-Mart can best be emphasized by the fact that there is a Wal-Mart employee who is always there to greet a customer their values are in providing service to customers and in emphasizes religion, patriotism, a classless collective identity, science, rationality, ecology, progressiveness, and low costs (Andre, 2007, p.448).
Wal-Marts underlying assumption lies in Sam Whartons corporate strategy that emphasizes on competition and accountability of managers and management people. Wal-Mart is also a highly capitalistic corporation that replaces small town culture with new patterns and identity (Andre, 2007, p.449). Wal-Marts values and assumption are based on a consumerism and provide the best possible quality at the lowest price.
The organizational culture of Wal-Mart is in cohesion with its environment as employees show every bit of dedication to customer service and satisfaction. The managers are on the floor and are eager to solve queries that are beyond the job descriptions of executives thus the mission statement and the organizational culture are in cohesion.
All of Wal-Marts strategies are based on its mission statement and they are not only cost competitive but also market leaders in reducing product packaging by keeping the prices that it got from its customer low as well (Dyck Neubert, year, p.237).
It is naturally assumed that in a corporation like Wal-Mart, with its growth, its employees would benefit as well. Since its competitive strategy is based on low prices, Wal-Mart has had to seriously cut down on employee benefits like healthcare (Brunn, 2006).
There are other concerns which include its HR strategies, personnel policies, wages and possible gender discrimination. It has been reported that the workers are only paid the minimum wage rate and there have been allegations that Wal-Mart deliberately under-staffs its stores. There also have been rumors that Wal-Mart is biased against pregnant women and often overlooks them on promotions and other opportunities (Brunn, 2006).
The WaltMart store that was visited is a discount store with 200 associates. The store was brightly-lit, with well-stocked aisles the floor was divided into sections according to the items which were being sold. There were separate sections for apparels and separate sections for home products and other categories of products. Every item in the store was properly categorized and kept in its proper place.
The organizational structure of Wal-Mart can be described as divisional in style and has been divided into regions, every region is managed by a regional vice president it is further divided into eleven districts, which are managed by market managers and each district has six to eight stores which are managed by store managers.
The store managers are responsible for the management of the entire Wal-Mart store and have customer service managers working under them, who supervise management trainees and are also assigned to the management of various sections in the store, they form the management hierarchy of the store, below them are the associates, cashier and stocker workers on an hourly basis (Bobby, 2005). Research Methodology
The purpose of the study was to analyze the difference in organizational culture and climate as typified by the Wal-Mart Corporation and the ground realities as projected by the results of the research study. The Wal-Mart discount store which was selected was through cluster sampling and was chosen on the basis of its proximity and size for the feasibility of the study.
The sampling frame consisted of 25 associates and two CSMs who were selected through stratified sampling method as the associates and CSMs were on the floor constantly, and the sampling elements were chosen randomly from the household items and electronic appliances section (Babbie, 2009).
Close-ended questionnaires in explorative methodology were used in this research, as it provided easily analyzable quantitative data which could be easily coded and did not require too much time and effort to complete by the sampling elements in this study .
Self administered interviews were conducted across the aisles of the household and electronic appliances section, the advantage of this method was that the questionnaires were filled in a relatively short period of time and the interviewer can personally filter the sample elements (McNabb, 2002).
The questionnaire was prepared on the basis of clarity, brevity, simplicity, precision, freedom from bias and appropriateness(McNabb, 2002, p. 130) and was constructed in the comparative, interval and ordinal importance rating scales structure based on the Thurstone scale, Likert scales and semantic differential scale.
Thurstone scale is an ordinal importance scale, wherein it is possible to measure the precise amount of difference between one elements attitude towards another one (Mc Nabb, 2002). In this method, the sample is given a range of options and one has to rate these options according to the level of importance one has attached to it (McNabb, 2002).
The Likert scale is the most popular method of extracting primary data. The objective of the Likert scale is to measure the extent of the subjects agreement with each item, this extent is measured on a five point scale as the scaling items are assigned values ranging from 1 to 5. (Mc Nabb, 2002, p.141)
Hypothesis
There is an association between the organization climate as created by the management and the motivation and performance of the associates in Wal-Mart.
Results
From the raw data it can only be concluded that associates are more concerned about their job security. When asked to rank their preferences on the rating scale, associates gave more importance to job security, satisfying the boss, higher salary and more benefits. On the Likert scale, it was observed that employees were more concerned about the evaluation criterion of the boss as their incentives depended on it and also cited the need for more resources and cooperation from their team members. The standard deviation that was calculated for each answer also signifies the fact that the answers more or less cluster around the mean which signifies that the answers of the associates were more or less similar and thus the results that have derived are accurate with Std dev of 0 in some cases.
Thirty three percent of employees believed that they were given promotions and pay according to their performance and are moderately concerned about their jobs, acknowledging that the management has a stressful job. However employee morale is comparatively better as the management tends to listen to their employees. Despite the insecurity of their jobs, employees have shown dedication but feel that associates still have skills that have not been utilized by their employees.
There is a positive note to this research as associates feel that the CSMs are concerned about them and do take their complaints and suggestions on board. Communication between the departments has been rated highly, although associates believe that more efforts are needed in order to improve the frequency and consistency of information update between management and employees.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Organizational climate has been defined as peoples perception and experiences in terms of warmth, trust, dynamism, and other affect laden dimensions (James, 1982). The current state of the organizational culture is such that employees are more concerned about making a good impression on their supervisors than on actual commitment to their job profile, as is commonly known, Wal-Mart has had to make substantial cut-backs on health benefits and had even laid off several employees in order to remain cost effective in their competitive pricing strategy.
The attrition rate in Wal-Mart is at thirty three percent, which is much higher than the rate in any of their competitors. The cost of training and recruiting staff is much higher than actually retaining long term employees. As signified by the analysis, employees motivation is at all times low, caused due to low scale salaries, possible unemployment and lack of promotion options currently available at Wal-Mart.
The two customer service managers who were interviewed believed that employees were highly motivated and employee goals and company objectives were in cohesion with each other. They also believed that employee motivation was strong and they were satisfied with the work environment. However, the statistical analysis and standard deviation showed other results. The organizational culture is changing as the company adjusts itself to maintain its retailing edge over other competitors.
Various stratagems have been suggested in order to increase employee motivation and retain qualified associates
Re-introducing Wal-Mart It includes comprehensive training sessions with the associates wherein the employees are reacquainted with Wal-Mart goals, objectives, and strategies. They can also highlight Wal-Marts latest international accomplishment, in order to instill a sense of pride and belonging among the employees.
Daily Competitions In order to foster a healthy competitive environment within the company, it is suggested that daily fun competitions be held wherein a nominal prize is offered to the employees who provide the best customer service in one day.
One to one Sessions These are especially useful when there are rumors floating via the grapevine about negative company strategies. Thus CSMs and store managers can have team meetings and one-to-one sessions to assure employees and various initiatives taken for employee retention, increasing employee benefit.
Mentoring Employees are mentored on the job and given adequate training to complete their job in an effective manner and given periodic feedback on their performance and methods of improvement.
Employee Participation it is believed by organizational theorists that increasing employee participation in decision making has a direct impact on their job satisfaction and helps reduce role conflict and ambiguity in communication (Jackson, 1983).
My suggestions were met with a fair amount of skepticism as the CSMs insisted that the changes and programs that I recommended were already being implemented in the organization. However they acknowledged, after scrutinizing the results of the analysis, that the motivation amongst the hourly workers was low and action would be taken to improve employee morale after discussing with their market manager.
The business divisions of Wal-Mart have been segregated into Wal-Mart stores, supercenters, Sams club warehouses and neighborhood markets (Kneer, 2009, p.2). Wal-Mart stores carry general merchandise, a selection of food sections and also include home supplies, mobile stores, gadgets, cash points, a food joint and a gasoline station.
Wal-Mart supercenters are stocked with the same range of products as found in a discount store, the only difference is that they also have a McDonalds joint they also stock poultry and meat products in a range of varieties and also stock pharmaceutical products (Wikipedia, 2009).
Neighborhood markets stand between discount stores and supercenters and although they have a limited selection of food items, they have a pharmacy point and other amenities. Sams clubs have been described by Ferrell, Fraedrich Ferrell (2009) as
Membership warehouse clubs which provide brand name merchandise as members only price for small businesses, nonprofit organizations and personal use for large families(p.293).
The mission statement defines the purpose of the company to remind its workers of the reason behind the existence of the company, and is inculcated into their strategy and plans. The vision statement of Wal-Mart is to Save money. Live better or to help people save money so they can live better (Silber Kearny, 2009, p.99). Wal-Mart explained their mission statement by stating that they act as buyers for their consumers and strive to get the best value for them (Hill Jones, 2007). Though there have been concerns about the achievement of this mission, as Wal-Mart has cut down the healthcare benefits of their employees in order to offer better prices to their consumers.
Their mission is in tandem with their vision statement, which is an image of the goals of the company that the organization strives to achieve over a period of time it serves as a benchmark for the employees of an organization (Graham, Roth Dugan, 2009). The vision statement of Wal-Mart is to become the world leader in retailing (Romeo, 2008, p.5). Wal-Mart has almost achieved this vision, as Craig Johnson, president of the consulting firm Customer Growth Partners, states that Wal-Marts share of the 3 trillion U.S. retail market has edged up to 11.3 percent (Kapner, 2009, para.5).
The importance of an organizational culture lies in its ability to provide cohesion in between the goals of the company and that of the employees, thus a worker is able to put the benefit of the company over hisher own personal gain and it is often considered the accepted behavior and norm in handling situations (Brunn, 2006).
Wal-Mart has an all-encompassing organizational culture as well which is obvious in its artifacts, values and underlying assumptions(Schein,1990) The employees of Wal-Mart wear blue vests with their first names and company slogan printed on the front and back which says We Work For You Always and the back Our People Make The Difference. There are several postures as well that show Sam Waltons picture along with the slogan Pride Though Performance (Brunn, 2006).
The values of Wal-Mart can best be emphasized by the fact that there is a Wal-Mart employee who is always there to greet a customer their values are in providing service to customers and in emphasizes religion, patriotism, a classless collective identity, science, rationality, ecology, progressiveness, and low costs (Andre, 2007, p.448).
Wal-Marts underlying assumption lies in Sam Whartons corporate strategy that emphasizes on competition and accountability of managers and management people. Wal-Mart is also a highly capitalistic corporation that replaces small town culture with new patterns and identity (Andre, 2007, p.449). Wal-Marts values and assumption are based on a consumerism and provide the best possible quality at the lowest price.
The organizational culture of Wal-Mart is in cohesion with its environment as employees show every bit of dedication to customer service and satisfaction. The managers are on the floor and are eager to solve queries that are beyond the job descriptions of executives thus the mission statement and the organizational culture are in cohesion.
All of Wal-Marts strategies are based on its mission statement and they are not only cost competitive but also market leaders in reducing product packaging by keeping the prices that it got from its customer low as well (Dyck Neubert, year, p.237).
It is naturally assumed that in a corporation like Wal-Mart, with its growth, its employees would benefit as well. Since its competitive strategy is based on low prices, Wal-Mart has had to seriously cut down on employee benefits like healthcare (Brunn, 2006).
There are other concerns which include its HR strategies, personnel policies, wages and possible gender discrimination. It has been reported that the workers are only paid the minimum wage rate and there have been allegations that Wal-Mart deliberately under-staffs its stores. There also have been rumors that Wal-Mart is biased against pregnant women and often overlooks them on promotions and other opportunities (Brunn, 2006).
The WaltMart store that was visited is a discount store with 200 associates. The store was brightly-lit, with well-stocked aisles the floor was divided into sections according to the items which were being sold. There were separate sections for apparels and separate sections for home products and other categories of products. Every item in the store was properly categorized and kept in its proper place.
The organizational structure of Wal-Mart can be described as divisional in style and has been divided into regions, every region is managed by a regional vice president it is further divided into eleven districts, which are managed by market managers and each district has six to eight stores which are managed by store managers.
The store managers are responsible for the management of the entire Wal-Mart store and have customer service managers working under them, who supervise management trainees and are also assigned to the management of various sections in the store, they form the management hierarchy of the store, below them are the associates, cashier and stocker workers on an hourly basis (Bobby, 2005). Research Methodology
The purpose of the study was to analyze the difference in organizational culture and climate as typified by the Wal-Mart Corporation and the ground realities as projected by the results of the research study. The Wal-Mart discount store which was selected was through cluster sampling and was chosen on the basis of its proximity and size for the feasibility of the study.
The sampling frame consisted of 25 associates and two CSMs who were selected through stratified sampling method as the associates and CSMs were on the floor constantly, and the sampling elements were chosen randomly from the household items and electronic appliances section (Babbie, 2009).
Close-ended questionnaires in explorative methodology were used in this research, as it provided easily analyzable quantitative data which could be easily coded and did not require too much time and effort to complete by the sampling elements in this study .
Self administered interviews were conducted across the aisles of the household and electronic appliances section, the advantage of this method was that the questionnaires were filled in a relatively short period of time and the interviewer can personally filter the sample elements (McNabb, 2002).
The questionnaire was prepared on the basis of clarity, brevity, simplicity, precision, freedom from bias and appropriateness(McNabb, 2002, p. 130) and was constructed in the comparative, interval and ordinal importance rating scales structure based on the Thurstone scale, Likert scales and semantic differential scale.
Thurstone scale is an ordinal importance scale, wherein it is possible to measure the precise amount of difference between one elements attitude towards another one (Mc Nabb, 2002). In this method, the sample is given a range of options and one has to rate these options according to the level of importance one has attached to it (McNabb, 2002).
The Likert scale is the most popular method of extracting primary data. The objective of the Likert scale is to measure the extent of the subjects agreement with each item, this extent is measured on a five point scale as the scaling items are assigned values ranging from 1 to 5. (Mc Nabb, 2002, p.141)
Hypothesis
There is an association between the organization climate as created by the management and the motivation and performance of the associates in Wal-Mart.
Results
From the raw data it can only be concluded that associates are more concerned about their job security. When asked to rank their preferences on the rating scale, associates gave more importance to job security, satisfying the boss, higher salary and more benefits. On the Likert scale, it was observed that employees were more concerned about the evaluation criterion of the boss as their incentives depended on it and also cited the need for more resources and cooperation from their team members. The standard deviation that was calculated for each answer also signifies the fact that the answers more or less cluster around the mean which signifies that the answers of the associates were more or less similar and thus the results that have derived are accurate with Std dev of 0 in some cases.
Thirty three percent of employees believed that they were given promotions and pay according to their performance and are moderately concerned about their jobs, acknowledging that the management has a stressful job. However employee morale is comparatively better as the management tends to listen to their employees. Despite the insecurity of their jobs, employees have shown dedication but feel that associates still have skills that have not been utilized by their employees.
There is a positive note to this research as associates feel that the CSMs are concerned about them and do take their complaints and suggestions on board. Communication between the departments has been rated highly, although associates believe that more efforts are needed in order to improve the frequency and consistency of information update between management and employees.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Organizational climate has been defined as peoples perception and experiences in terms of warmth, trust, dynamism, and other affect laden dimensions (James, 1982). The current state of the organizational culture is such that employees are more concerned about making a good impression on their supervisors than on actual commitment to their job profile, as is commonly known, Wal-Mart has had to make substantial cut-backs on health benefits and had even laid off several employees in order to remain cost effective in their competitive pricing strategy.
The attrition rate in Wal-Mart is at thirty three percent, which is much higher than the rate in any of their competitors. The cost of training and recruiting staff is much higher than actually retaining long term employees. As signified by the analysis, employees motivation is at all times low, caused due to low scale salaries, possible unemployment and lack of promotion options currently available at Wal-Mart.
The two customer service managers who were interviewed believed that employees were highly motivated and employee goals and company objectives were in cohesion with each other. They also believed that employee motivation was strong and they were satisfied with the work environment. However, the statistical analysis and standard deviation showed other results. The organizational culture is changing as the company adjusts itself to maintain its retailing edge over other competitors.
Various stratagems have been suggested in order to increase employee motivation and retain qualified associates
Re-introducing Wal-Mart It includes comprehensive training sessions with the associates wherein the employees are reacquainted with Wal-Mart goals, objectives, and strategies. They can also highlight Wal-Marts latest international accomplishment, in order to instill a sense of pride and belonging among the employees.
Daily Competitions In order to foster a healthy competitive environment within the company, it is suggested that daily fun competitions be held wherein a nominal prize is offered to the employees who provide the best customer service in one day.
One to one Sessions These are especially useful when there are rumors floating via the grapevine about negative company strategies. Thus CSMs and store managers can have team meetings and one-to-one sessions to assure employees and various initiatives taken for employee retention, increasing employee benefit.
Mentoring Employees are mentored on the job and given adequate training to complete their job in an effective manner and given periodic feedback on their performance and methods of improvement.
Employee Participation it is believed by organizational theorists that increasing employee participation in decision making has a direct impact on their job satisfaction and helps reduce role conflict and ambiguity in communication (Jackson, 1983).
My suggestions were met with a fair amount of skepticism as the CSMs insisted that the changes and programs that I recommended were already being implemented in the organization. However they acknowledged, after scrutinizing the results of the analysis, that the motivation amongst the hourly workers was low and action would be taken to improve employee morale after discussing with their market manager.
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