Wal-Mart Inc.'s Organizational Behavior: A Case Study Report

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Organizational Behavior
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Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 4
LO1.................................................................................................................................. 5
P1 Analyse how an organization’s culture, politics and power can influence individual
and team behavior and performance...............................................................................5
M1. Critically analyze how the culture, politics and power of an organization can
influence individual and team behavior and performance................................................7
D1 Critically evaluate the relationship between culture, politics, power and motivation
that enables teams and organisation to succeed, providing justified recommendations..9
LO2................................................................................................................................ 11
P2 Evaluate how content and process theories of motivation and motivational
techniques enable effective achievement of goals in an organizational context............11
M2 Critically evaluate how to influence the behavior of others through the effective
application of behavioral motivational theories, concepts and models...........................13
LO3................................................................................................................................ 16
P3 Demonstrate an understanding of what makes an effective team, as opposed to an
ineffective team..............................................................................................................16
M3 Analyse relevant team and group development theories to support the development
of dynamic co-operation.................................................................................................18
D2 critically analyze and evaluate the relevance of team development theories in the
context of OB concepts and philosophies that influence behavior in the workplace......20
LO4................................................................................................................................ 21
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P4 Apply concepts and philosophies of OB within an organisational context and a given
business situation...........................................................................................................21
M4 Justify and evaluate a range of concepts and philosophies in how they inform and
influence behavior in both positive and negative ways..................................................23
Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 25
References:....................................................................................................................26
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Introduction
Organizational behavior is a process to set a proper human behavior in an organization.
It maintains a strong relationship between an organization and an employee. The
organizational behavior could be understood in three levels. These are micro level,
Meso level, and macro level. This report will describe the organizational behavior of
Wal-Mart Inc. Wal-Mart is an American multinational corporation. They are having their
chain of departmental stores, grocery stores, and hypermarkets. Headquarter of this
company is in Bentonville, Arkansas.
This company founded in 1962 by Sam Walton and it was integrated on October 31,
1969. It also runs it’s Same’s club retail warehouse. Wal-Mart having the chain of stores
in the UK called ASDA. ASDA is the second largest supermarket in the UK.
Wal-Mart has almost 11,348 stores worldwide. Wal-Mart’s chairman is Greg Pannier;
the president of the company is Doug McMillan. This is also the world’s largest
company in comparison with company revenue. The company’s total revenue in the US
$500 billion. Wal-Mart is having 2.2 million employees at the present time. The company
is totally over control by the Walton family. So it is totally a family owned business. The
company also listed in New York stock exchange. The total assets of the company are
almost US $219.295 billion (2019). A company is having almost 7, 00,000 employees
outside the US. Here in the report, the organizational behavior of Wal-Mart will be
described.
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LO1
P1 Analyse how an organization’s culture, politics and power can influence
individual and team behavior and performance.
The organizational culture, politics, and power always effect on an organization’s
productivity. An organizational culture describes how all the activities will be classified
and the goals would be achieved. In an organization, the culture and behaviour of
employees and senior management also reflects on the organization. Wal-Mart having
almost 2.3 million associated with it who manage its Wal-Mart stores, e-commerce
business, and logistics. The leaders of this company have the belief that all the
employees of the company needs to understand the company’s value and should try to
get the business for the company and for themselves also. The Walton family always
said that “Try to listen to your associates because they could generate your best ideas”.
The associate of the company can come up front and could suggest a big idea for the
future. Wal-Mart always believes in working together and this always helped the
company to represent that which they want to execute in front of the people. The
leaders of Wal-Mart always believed in action. They have better services for the
customers and they gave respect for their associates and their customer’s also.
Wal-Mart uses its corporate culture as a key business strategy. The politics in an
organization is always harmful. Wal-Mart does not support any type of politics in their
company and they maintain equality with their employees and customers. Politics
always decreases company productivity. It always affects on concentrate of an
employee. It spreads negative impact on an organization. It increases the
disappointments in the employees and spreads the wrong information among all
employees. It increases the stress level also. But in the case of Wal-Mart, they don’t
believe in any type of politics in their business. They try to involve positive energy and
positive culture in the working environment. Wal-Mart always tries to stay out from any
type of politics in their work environment. They did not support any type of unnecessary
comments on their employees. The leaders always try to maintain a good verbal
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communication policy with their employees and try to understand what they are facing in
the organization.
The structure and company culture always support Wal-Mart. They always try to build
support from their customers as well as from the employees. The company’s brand
value is the most important power of them. Wal-Mart contains many types of verity in
their products and customer can choose the things accordingly their choices. Because
of these things Wal-Mart is maintaining a good position among the people and
maintaining its brand value by controlling their strategies and planning. (Taylor, 2018).
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M1. Critically analyze how the culture, politics and power of an organization can
influence individual and team behavior and performance
The CEO and leaders of the company always believe that company culture could reflect
its actions on the productivity of the company. They always try to maintain a healthy
culture in the organization. Almost 82 % of surveys said that the culture of an
organization plays a good role in maintaining the company properly. A good culture
always needed in an organization and Wal-Mart having a good company culture always.
The company culture of Wal-Mart is positive and they provide the freedom of their
company members to say about the issues and problem in an organization which they
are facing or not. Organization culture could be changed by the people in an
organization. The leaders of Wal-Mart has the responsibility to maintain the
organizational culture in a better way and they have the power when they saw the
situation which is not supportive for the company’s productivity at that time they need to
maintain it carefully and try to understand the needed factor which can increase their
productivity ratio.
Politics in Wal-Mart is not making its attention and Wal-Mart always tries to stay away
from the politics in the organization. It is a big brand and because of this they always
receive good and bad reviews of the public. These reviews tell the owners that what are
the strength and weakness of their product and they could try to create them better in
the sense of quantity and quality. Wal-Mart can support politics for increasing their sales
ration and they could use these politics as a weapon of company strategy. Some
political issues could e created by the owners for a limited choice. So, the politics of the
company could be helpful for some time and also it could be harmful for an
organization.
Wal-Mart is a privately owned business company and the owner has total control on this
organization. The family-owned business always contains more political errors in it. The
reason behind this because a family-owned business has many opinions from different
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members. The most negative point is that the family-owned base business has many
owners and it could be confusing for the employee to understand the different type of
suggestions and complaints from different people. Wal-Mart also haves political errors
but sometime these political factors could be made by the owners because they want to
increase their productivity and the sales ratio. So, it could be a company strategy also
by the owner of Wal-Mart. (Nuckcheddy, 2018).
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D1 Critically evaluate the relationship between culture, politics, power and
motivation that enables teams and organisation to succeed, providing justified
recommendations.
 Culture, politics, and power of Wal-Mart plays an important role to maintain this
company and its brand value in the running market. These are the factors which
are balancing the company and its culture. In the working culture of the present
time a company involves all these factors and implements them in their working
culture. The company culture always effective in organization formally and
informally. It impacts on the day to day operations of an organization. The
organizations also indicate how the tasks will be divided and how the strategies
will be applied for getting the decided target.
Wal-Mart creates some good strategies for encouraging its employees to achieve
their target and earn more. In their motivational strategies, they include these
stapes;
 Empowerment of employees
 Selection and training process
 Incentives
 Benefits/ Profit
 Quality programme
 Managerial roles
 Objectives and goals
 Appraisals of performances
 Design of job
 Another work schedule
 Stress management
• Style of leadership.
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Wal-Mart includes all the above characterize in their working strategies and they select
those who had some desires for their future and who those have the ability to earn more
for a company and for him also.
Here are some points which could be helpful to create a good organizational culture:
 Communication; Communication is the best key for any type of issue in an
organization. Wal-Mart should try to maintain good communication policy in their
working culture and they need to provide freedom to its workers to present the idea
which they feel could be helpful for the organization. They should try to describe the
problems and issues which are reflecting their working strategy.
 Be transparent; Wal-Mart needs to be clear about their working strategies and their
policies. They need to try to maintain the things clear in front of the customer’s and the
workers because if they do so it will be better for them to maintain the beliefs of the
customers and the workers also. If the worker believes the company completely, it will
be easy for them to encourage the workers and get the best result which they want to
get for their organization. Workers also try to give their best for achieving the company’s
goals. (Nizam, 2016)
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LO2
P2 Evaluate how content and process theories of motivation and motivational
techniques enable effective achievement of goals in an organizational context.
There are many theories of motivation and they could be helpful for the organization to
classify their goals and the strategies for achieving the decided goals and targets.
These theories classified the basic needs of workers. Here are some theories which
may help the organization:
ERG theory: ERG theory was introduced by Clayton Alderfer. This is a theory about
human needs. This theory explains about organizational behaviour and human
behaviour. Alderfer said that basic need of a human could be defined in three parts,
existence, growth and relatedness. Existence is related to physical and safety needs of
Maslow, relatedness is related to societal needs and Growth relates to self-
actualization. ERG theory does not contain any rank specialization. It could be operated
in the given time. This theory has frustration regression. This explains that if someone
is getting frustrated by the reward and growth opportunity of the company, then he
needs to spend more time with his colleagues. By the implementation of theory, an
organization could find the problems of the workers and by understanding their
behaviour towards organization they could motivate them by solving their issues and
could maintain faith in their minds regarding the organization.
Two- factor theory: The two-factor theory was produced by Frederick Herzberg. He
introduced different ways about the motivational questions. By asking the workers that,
what are their problems from the organization and after that solving these issues in a
better way? Herzberg had a think about the employees that there are not any similarity
between the problems and solutions of an employee. The way of the problem and the
solution are not the same. Herzberg gave a tag to the problems of employees as
“hygiene”. These factors are in the performance area and it could be harmful to the
company. Hygiene factors of the company include a condition of working, supervision,
safety, salary, policies, and security in the job. Like for an example if an employee is
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facing some problem in an organization like his office is too hot in summer and too cold
in winter, also he is misbehaved by his higher authority. So, if these problems of that
employee will be solved then he will motivate or not? There are some things and
problems in the organization which could be taken for granted when the present at the
front of the authority of the organization. In short, motivation is a necessary factor for an
organization and the things such as reward program, preconisation, an increment of
responsibilities, advancement, and growth opportunities are likely to be done in an
organization. (Osabiya., et. Al., 2015).
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