Walmart: Management Practices and Issues - Individual Project Analysis

This project analyzes Walmart's management practices and issues, focusing on two key areas: managing a diverse workforce and effective leadership communication. The student, acting as a consultant, investigates the company's current practices, identifies challenges such as communication barriers and the need for respect in the workplace, and researches best practices. The analysis includes an examination of Walmart's operations, products, and services, along with interviews of employees and retailers to gather data. The report then provides detailed recommendations, including fostering mutual respect, improving communication through training, and implementing behavioral and contingency leadership theories. The student proposes a plan to share these recommendations with Walmart's management team, emphasizing the potential for measurable improvements in productivity, revenue, and employee satisfaction. The project highlights the importance of leadership in achieving organizational goals and the value of addressing diversity issues to enhance business operations and functions.

Running head: MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND ISSUES
Title of the paper: Management Practices and Issues
Name of the company: Walmart
Course title and number:
Semester:
Year:
Instructor’s name:
Date of submission:

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Table of Contents
Overview of the individual paper....................................................................................................2
Organization- Brief background......................................................................................................2
History of the organization-Walmart...........................................................................................2
Operations....................................................................................................................................2
Products and services...................................................................................................................3
Persons those are interviewed for the individual paper...................................................................3
Areas to be researched.....................................................................................................................3
Recommendations in area................................................................................................................5
Plan to share recommendations to the company..............................................................................7
Summary..........................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................11

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Overview of the individual paper
The report is based on analyzing the selected organization, Walmart with exploring its
management practices and issues from two of areas. One of the areas is issues involved in
managing a diverse workforce and conduct necessary research to address these issues. Second
area is current practices in the organization around how leaders use effective communication.
The researcher also conducts on the area to identify best practices to base recommendations for
making improvement in the business functions of Walmart. Recommendations are provided
based on area and company so that they can manage entire business functions.
Organization- Brief background
History of the organization-Walmart
Walmart is an American discount department store which was founded in the year 1962
with single store within Rogers. It has expanded its store outside Arkansas by the year 1968 and
through rest of the Southern United States by the year 1980s. Sam’s West, Inc owned by
subsidiary of Walmart operates Sam’s Club chain of the membership warehouse store. It is
considered as one of biggest membership warehouse operator within United States (Walmart,
2016).
Operations
Walmart is operated e-commerce as well as retail operations in around 27 countries over
the world as well as source their products to more than 100 countries. There are around more
than 150 distribution centers of Walmart where its distribution operations are largest in world

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servicing stores and provide direct delivery to the customers. The company is shipping dry and
perishable groceries to the customers on daily basis (Walmart, 2016).
Products and services
Walmart provides retail goods in various categories. The customers can purchase
electronic products from the store. Walmart is also provided services like music, movies, and
books and downloads. The Walmart retailer provides baby products, grocery products as well as
sporting products. The company also provides photo lab services both online and offline
(Walmart, 2016).
Persons those are interviewed for the individual paper
In order to gather information for the individual report, the retailers and employees of
Walmart are interviewed. They are interviewed to analyze the management practices and
management issues of the organization. The issues related to involve in managing a diverse
workforce and conduct necessary research and current practices in the organization around
leaders use effective communication. They can provide information regarding operations,
products and services in the selected organization. With help of retailers and internal employees,
it becomes easier to gather data related to internal operations of the company. Critical analysis is
done with help of the collected data from interviewer.
Areas to be researched
In this study, two of the areas are taken into considerations for analyzing the individual
report. First area is issues involved in managing a diverse workforce and conduct necessary

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research to address these issues. Second area is current practices in the organization around how
leaders use effective communication.
Area 1: Issues involved in managing a diverse workforce and conduct necessary research
to address these issues
In Walmart, diversity in the workplace is managed which is required for the employees as
it can manifest to build a high reputation for the organization. Diversity in the workplace
increases profitability along with opportunities for the employees (Barak, 2016). Management of
the workplace diversity is not a recommendation in the organization. Leaders are required to
spend time required to understand issues which can lead to intended diversity program to create
issues. The business leaders of Walmart face difficulty to understand the value of person’s
innovative abilities (Harvey & Allard, 2015). It results in unintended personal bias along with
business value of differences. Failed to manage diversity in the workplace is resulted in
employee turnover along with loss of talented employees due to bias as well as lack of enclosure.
When the worker is from various regions in the world, then the workers are faced difficulties in
the communication. Some of the workers might speak English and make it critical to conserve.
In other hand, cultural differences also cause a barrier in the workplace program (Greene &
Kirton, 2015). There is required to promote collaboration among the individuals of organization
so that they can communicate with each other regarding concerns they are faced in the
workplace.
Area 2: Current practices in the organization around how leaders use effective
communication

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Effective communication with the employees is required to take effort. Communication is
required to the business leaders so that all the employees can interact with others. The leaders are
used effective communication which is used to send and receive of messages from the employees
(Brunow & Nijkamp, 2018). Leaders are used communication technique to solve problems of the
employees that they are facing. Communication is considered as core leadership functions.
Leaders require becoming skilled communicators in relationships at the organizational levels
(Jyoti & Kour, 2017). Effective leadership is required to communicate with elements of
organization, included employees, customers plus managers. The leaders can adapt based on
group they are communicated with at this time. Both verbal as well as non-verbal
communication is required for the leaders so that they can solve issues of the employees.
Effective communication skills are needed of leader’s portfolio of skills along with experiences.
Ford et al., (2016) discussed that effective communication is important factor for successful
leader and manager. It is required that manager and team should learn how to communicate as it
will help the project teams to complete the project work perfectly. Leaders are one those can take
charge and encourage the team members to work for the project. The leaders are concerned about
practices and use of the diverse leadership style as per requirement of audiences plus personal
leadership qualities.
Recommendations in area
Following are the recommendations which are suggested to the organization so that they
can make improvement in two of identified areas such as:
Respect in workplace: It should require achieving diversified workplace is to establish
teamwork as well as mutual respect among the staffs. Acceptance of the individual differences is

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required to create productive work environment in Walmart. Acceptance should lead to respect
and workplace opportunities.
Communication: Communication is required among the project team members in
diversified workplace so that the workplace leaders and team members can communicate with
each other. Not able to speak English creates communication barrier among the employees,
while the management should hire employees those can speak English as it can increase
productivity of the organization and communication with each other also becomes easier.
Employing of communication training as well as hiring can encourage the workers and also
improves over staff’s interactions.
Implementation of behavioral theories: It should require implementing behavioral
theories in the organization as this style can acknowledge significance of required leadership
skills which can serve as enabler for the leader those can perform and act as ability of leader. The
employees those can serve as democratic leaders can have higher degree of satisfaction,
motivation along with creativity. The leaders should have behavioral skills so that they are
offered with new perspective. One is focused on behaviors of the leaders and their social
characteristics.
Implementation of contingency theories: Walmart should focus on single way to lead
the project teams and each leadership style is based on situations of workplace. Human traits are
related to situation where the leaders can exercise their own leadership skills and style. With
using this theory, leaders can express the leadership when they are feeling that followers can be
responsive. This theory should be useful as it is best way to lead the company and take proper
organizational decisions.

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Plan to share recommendations to the company
It is seen that all the recommendations which are suggested for the company is shared
with them so that Walmart should make improvement in the business. All those
recommendations are shared with the management team of Walmart and after getting those
recommendations; the management team ensured that they should take possible actions for
making improvement in the business functions (Chuang, Jackson, & Jiang, 2016). The
organization ensured that they should follow leadership theories and lead entire organization so
that their productivity would increase. It is recommended to implement strategic realignment for
increasing efficiency of the organization along with effectiveness (Motschnig, Ryback, &
Motschnig, 2016). When all the recommendations are implemented on time, then it will result in
measurable savings for the coming year of Walmart. Most of savings of company will realize
over budget years. Most of the identified recommendations emerge from strategic planning of the
organization so that Walmart should increase their productivity, profit by 10% and revenue by
20% in coming years.
The leaders play a key role in the organization so that they can motivate the employees to
work, lead to increase in organizational productivity. Implementation of those recommendations
retains as well as builds strengths in addition to commitments in the organization (Hill & Bartol,
2016). The leader is responsible to guide the employees as they are involved in project
completion. They are also responsible to develop and implement timeline as the team member
should reach the end goals of the project work. The leaders are ensured that they have reached
organizational goals by delegating the tasks to the project team members (Macdonald, Burke, &
Stewart, 2017). A leader throughout leadership traits can help to integrate personal goals of their
employees by means of organizational goals.

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Summary
From the entire project, first the team learned about the role of leader in the project
towards achievement of organizational goals. It is seen that the leadership motivates people to
high level of the performance throughout stronger human relations. Second is the leadership
theories are also summarized in this project so that the reader can gain an understanding of how
leaders play a key role to achieve productivity and profit for the organization. As Walmart is a
large organization, therefore the leaders should have high skills and knowledge to motivate the
employees for working in the project. Third is the diversity workplace issues are also analyzed in
this paper so that the reader should identify those issues and mitigate them on time before it
affects the business operations and functions of their organization. The skills which are required
among the leaders are excellent communication to interact with the team members related to
issues which they are facing in the organization. Competence, problem solver and team builder
skills are also required among the leaders so that it leads to increase in organizational
productivity. Fourth is overcoming with the issues by implementing communication plan and
providing respect to the employees in the workplace. Therefore, the reader should learn how the
leadership style helps to raise productivity in the selected organization.

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References
Barak, M. E. M. (2016). Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage
Publications.
Brunow, S., & Nijkamp, P. (2018). The Impact of a Culturally Diverse Workforce on Firms’
Revenues and Productivity: An Empirical Investigation on Germany. International
Regional Science Review, 41(1), 62-85.
Chuang, C. H., Jackson, S. E., & Jiang, Y. (2016). Can knowledge-intensive teamwork be
managed? Examining the roles of HRM systems, leadership, and tacit
knowledge. Journal of management, 42(2), 524-554.
Ford, K., Menchine, M., Burner, E., Arora, S., Inaba, K., Demetriades, D., & Yersin, B. (2016).
Leadership and teamwork in trauma and resuscitation. Western Journal of Emergency
Medicine, 17(5), 549.
Greene, A. M., & Kirton, G. (2015). The dynamics of managing diversity: A critical approach.
Routledge.
Harvey, C. P., & Allard, M. (2015). Understanding and managing diversity: Readings, cases,
and exercises. Pearson.
Hill, N. S., & Bartol, K. M. (2016). Empowering leadership and effective collaboration in
geographically dispersed teams. Personnel Psychology, 69(1), 159-198.

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Jyoti, J., & Kour, S. (2017). Cultural intelligence and job performance: An empirical
investigation of moderating and mediating variables. International Journal of Cross
Cultural Management, 17(3), 305-326.
Macdonald, I., Burke, C., & Stewart, K. (2017). Systems leadership: Creating positive
organisations. Routledge.
Motschnig, R., Ryback, D., & Motschnig. (2016). Transforming Communication in Leadership
and Teamwork. Springer.

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Bibliography
Carter, D. R., Seely, P. W., Dagosta, J., DeChurch, L. A., & Zaccaro, S. J. (2015). Leadership for
global virtual teams: Facilitating teamwork processes. In Leading global teams (pp. 225-
252). Springer, New York, NY.
Chin, R. J. (2015). Examining teamwork and leadership in the fields of public administration,
leadership, and management. Team Performance Management: An International
Journal, 21(3/4), 199-216.
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Top, M., Akdere, M., & Tarcan, M. (2015). Examining transformational leadership, job
satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational trust in Turkish hospitals:
public servants versus private sector employees. The International Journal of Human
Resource Management, 26(9), 1259-1282.