Organizational Behavior, Wal-Mart

Organization Behavior: Wal-Mart

September 30, 2007

Every organization has its own distinct behaviors, characteristics that portray the company's ways of building harmonious relationships by attaining human, organizational, and social goals. This distinction in the environmental culture is what defines a company. The company's philosophy, values, mission, vision, goals and objectives, communication, capacity to embrace changes, culture and learning sets as its model framework which the company outlines its function. Thus, all the outcomes of the effort of the organization can be traced back to how each individual of the organization feels towards the goals and objectives of the organization as a whole and what efforts were made by the corporation to ensure that everyone in the organization feels the same way towards working the goal.

Every little details of the behavioral aspect in an organization are incorporated in the field of discipline now known as organizational behavior. Organizational Behavior (OB) is a broad study and application of knowledge about how people, individuals, and groups act in their respective organizations. Usually, companies use system approach that construes the people-organization relations from the smallest to the completely social system (Knoster, 2000). Organizational Behavior is in the generic term which includes the diversity, corporate culture, organizational structure, and change management.

Wal-mart Stores Inc (NYSE:WMT), a publicly owned American Corporation, is currently the world's largest corporation (by number of employees) according to the 2007 Fortune 500 (Fortune 500, 2007). This paper aims to present a detailed analysis on the organizational behavior exhibited by Wal-Mart Corporation. Further, it attempts to show how it affects the unwavering success of the company and the crucial factor of the organizational behavior in helping Wal-Mart management attain this success.

Literally, diversity is the gathering together of everyone in the organization having different sets of values and background and yet aiming at the same set of goals. More often than not, diversity in the organization is centered on the issues of equality whether in benefits and opportunities or simply in the treatment of fellow employees towards each other as much as it also the requirement of respect to individualities in the organization to achieve the common goal. There are too many legal issues involved in a diverse workforce that it becomes a core management issue to attend to the needs and demands of such very sensitive workforces to achieve harmony at the work environment.

In process of incorporating diversity to the organization's culture, everyone in the organization has to cooperate in securing that all its needs and expectations are met and express consistency in reinforcing its dedication in the work environment. It becomes imperative for the management to identify and address the needs of the diverse workforce. To be able to understand the impact of the workforce diversity in the individuals within the group, it is necessary to understand these diversities and relate how it affects the organization in general once issues will not be properly addressed.

The number of Wal-Mart stores has grown to nearly 5000 in ten countries and has been voted the most admired retailer. It also has become a symbol of cost leadership and operational excellence over the years. How Wal-Mart was able to handle the diversity issue was not an easy feat. Since Wal-Mart practically exists in almost every State in the US, it caters many employees under its roof. These employees belong to many different cultures and races and keeping conflicts and racism issue from the business was and is given top priority. In fact, Wal-Mart demanded (in a Feb 2007 Fortune Magazine issue) all of their suppliers to give better representation to women and minorities in the departments of the supplying companies that cater Wal-Mart's businesses (Buscemi, 2007). In addition, Wal-mart is aiming on implementing a new system of job classification and pay structure on hourly paid employees (composed mainly of workers from the minority) and is planning to promote higher pay for its women and minority workers. Wal-mart also announced it plans to create programs that will be geared towards the development of a qualified and diverse pool of people (Troy, 2004).

Wal-Mart has also acknowledged the diversity of its clients, in fact, Wal-Mart made steps to extend its US customer base, announcing a modification in its US stores from a, "one-size-fits-it-all," merchandizing strategy to a custom-fitting merchandize assortment designed to, "reflect each of six demographic groups - African, American, the affluent, empty-nesters, Hispanics, sub-urbanites and rural residents (CNBC, 2006). About six months later, the company went public with a variation on their customer profile: "Saving people money so they can live better lives" (Barbaro, 2007). This reflects what Wal-mart identifies as the three main groups that its 200 million customers are organized into: "brand aspiration" (people with low incomes who are obsessed with product names), "price-sensitive affluent" (wealthier shoppers who love deals), and "value price shoppers" (who like low prices and could not afford much more).

No matter how large or how undermanned an organization is there will always be changes along the way as the organization progresses in time. Changes happen with or without enforcing it. Change by definition is any alteration done on the status quo, and changes can introduce many emotions in a person or in an organization - resentment, elation, bitterness and depression are but some of the emotions attached with it. Reality is, change is not always good, nor is it bad in all situations. People change, organizations change, and perspective changes as the world keeps on changing by the second.

The very reason why a great deal of attention is given to changes is that changes can affect each individual in the organization and the organization as a whole if not properly addresses. Once change is inevitable in an organization, all the rules, the culture, the policies, and the programs that have been built over time will be disrupted and could create imbalances leading to conflicts. The necessity to understand change and the privilege of being able to quantify the system and the human factors that is affected by change would prove useful in maintaining focus of