Leadership and Strategic Management in Walmart

Business Management and Strategic Management

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Overview of company..................................................................................................................3
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................4
1.1 Critical analyzes of the concept of managers as effective leaders.........................................4
Management versus leadership................................................................................................4
1.2 Critical analyses of the concept of leaders as effective managers.........................................5
Leaders as effective managers.................................................................................................5
1.3 Evaluation of the balance needed between the demands of strategic management and
leadership.....................................................................................................................................7
Strategic management and leadership.....................................................................................7
Maintaining a balance between leadership and strategic management...................................7
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................8
2.1 Leadership of the Wal-Mart influenced the strategic direction of the company...................9
Role of leadership....................................................................................................................9
The contribution of leaders in the organization.......................................................................9
Examples................................................................................................................................10
2.2 Analyses of the personal energy, self- belief and responsibility impact leadership styles
and their relative success...........................................................................................................12
Organisational citizen behaviour...........................................................................................12

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2.3 Leadership can engender empowerment and trust and how ethical stance affects that and
the overall impact on organizational practice............................................................................13
Leadership can engender employee’s empowerment and trust.............................................13
Ethical stance affects that and the overall impact on organizational practice.......................13
Task 3.............................................................................................................................................14
3.1 Critical Evaluation transformational leadership and the impact on organizational strategy
...................................................................................................................................................14
3.2 Evaluating the transactional leadership and its impact on organization strategy................16
3.3 Situational leadership and the impact on organizational strategy.......................................17
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................19
References......................................................................................................................................20

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Introduction
The aim of the report is to explore the link between the leadership and management of the
company at the strategic level. This report is based on the current case scenario in which a person
is undergoing leadership training within the organization with the hopes of ascending to a mid-
level managerial role within the company. The report includes the leadership and its different
styles that can affect the strategy of the selected organization. This is described with the support
of different theoretical models and frameworks related to the leadership and strategic
management. The organization that has been selected for this assignment is Walmart Company.
Overview of company
Walmart is an American multinational retail company that operates and manage the chain of the
hypermarkets, discount department stores, and numerous grocery stores in the market. The
company came into existence in the year 1962 by Sam Walton with the headquarters in
Bentonville, Arkansas (Walmart, 2018). The company is known as the world’s largest privately
owned firm as the company has stores at numerous places which show that it is a multinational
company. The strategy of the company is to implement the everyday low price so that they can
enhance the shopping experience of the customers. The company is currently operating its
business over 11,700 retail units under 65 banners in more than 28 countries (Walmart, 2018).
This shows the effective management of the company by the leaders of Walmart. Recently, the
company is one of the growing companies in the retail market. This growth can be said with the
evidence of rise in the sales of company’s product. According to report it was found that digital
sales of company jumped to 33% last quarter May 2018 (Meyersohn, 2018). The sales is
expected to increase more in the coming few years. The company walmart announced their

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leadership team in which the field structured will aligned to three very successful operation
divisions which include Logistics, store operations and real estate for the three distinctive
geographic business units which include Wal-Mart west, north and south. The leaders include in
the team are Raul Vazque for the west side, Hank Mullany for north side and Rosalind Brewer
for south side. Talking about the relationship of with the owners; Mr. Sam always believed that
these associated are the reason behind the success of company (Walmart, 2018). The leadership
team of the company will focus on picking up the pack to fulfil the challenges faced by the
company.

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Task 1
This task will evaluate or analyze the relationship between strategic management and leadership
from the context of the organization.
1.1 Critically analyse the concept of managers as effective leaders
Leadership is a set process in which the managers of company influence other employees to
support goals of a company. In other words, the leadership is the ability of company's
management in accomplishing goals by taking corrective decisions (Nanjundeswaraswamy and
Swamy, 2014). The managers of the Wal-Mart company make use of some theories of leadership
for managing the operations of the business. These theories support the managers to become the
effective leaders.
Management versus leadership
The management of the Walmart includes different functions that are performed with the help of
leadership for accomplishing the goals. The activities that Walmart managers perform include
budgeting, planning, organizing, problem solving and staffing. The major function of the
management is to bring consistency in the work that helps the company. On the other hand, the
main function of leadership is to bring the adaptive change by permitting the direction through
visioning, motivating and inspiring the people. This can be easily understood by the quote of
Peter Drucker, 2018 that is: -
“Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a
higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”