Kory GillOrganizational comm.

Dennis Sutton11/12/13

Management structure and styles

The company that I am going to do this project on is Wal-Mart since I know a good

amount of things about the company. Wal-Mart use human resources as a way to manage the

company. Some examples of this are: Wal-Mart has a personnel that represent the employees.

The personnel asks upper management for things that would help the employees in the company

(like full-time instead of part-time work). The personnel starts to work for an employee once the

worker proves that he or she is a hard worker. Also, personnel helps management with

promotions. In addition, personnel helps workers get the training they need to become a

manager. The next example is at the middle and end of the year Walmart has a survey asking

how you like all of your managers with a rating survey similar to the end of the semester rating

scale of teachers at Grand Rapids Community College. The last example is Wal-Mart holds

three meetings every day at work to tell workers what is going on in the company, why certain

things are going on, and to ask the employees their opinions on certain topics.

Wal-Mart is a Middle of the road organization. I say this because Wal-Mart recognizes

employees for cleaning up spills with a five dollar bag of candy and the employee’s name,

picture, along with the explanation of why the worker is being recognized on the wall. Wal-Mart

has an employee of the month and recognizes the top performing employees on each shift by

posting a picture of them on the wall along with why they are being recognized. Wal-Mart also

has an My share program in which if the store hits the goal that they want to hit each employee,

that works at least twelve hours per week, gets a bonus. However, Wal-Mart also pushes the

employees to work harder whether if the manager really thinks the work can be done in the time

that they want it done or not. The managers start pushing workers either because the worker is

not going fast enough, manager expect more production out of a certain employee, or there is a

lot of work to be done and not enough employees to do the work.

Corporate Culture

Wal-Mart’s values are: happy customers and hardworking employees. An example of

how Wal-Mart values happy customers is the company has a share plan, whether the company

gives employees bonuses depends on how happy the customers are and the profit margin for the

quarter. The ways Wal-Mart values hard working employees are: Wal-Mart has an employee of

the month for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, shift employees. Wal-Mart promotes from within the people who

work the hardest and know how the store is ran.

The hero of Wal-Mart is Sam Walton. Walton is a hero to Wal-Mart because he is the

founder of Wal-Mart and is the reason why the company is so successful. Walton idea was to

buy a lot of products and sale it cheap in high volumes. Walton also gave free stocks to his

workers in his first retail store and made his workers feel appreciated.

The rituals that Wal-Mart has are: the employee of the month gets their name on the

employee of the month board for everybody in the store to see. Wal-Mart has a magazine that is

worldwide and the top performing workers, in the whole company, are featured in the magazines

for everybody that works in a Wal-Mart store to see. The company celebrates the amount of

years that employees worked for the company after the employee fifth year working at Wal-Mart

by putting them in the magazine.

Cultural network at Wal-Mart is the professionals in the company is coming up with

better ways to sell products. For example, for things like toilet paper Wal-Mart found that they

could sell more toilet paper if they took the top four brands of toilet paper and got rid of the rest

and expanded the section of the bestselling toilet paper. The corporate workers in the company

also comes up with ways to save money for the company. Example, a couple years ago Wal-Mart

bought solar panels and are currently testing them to see if the solar panels will save them money

on their electric build and if the saving would be worth using them in all of their stores. People

that work in the stores of Wal-Mart uses an intercom to tell other workers that there help is

needed or if someone is calling in their department.

People who work in the stores of Wal-Mart, has somewhat of a voice. At the end of every

year everybody in the store rates their supervisors and takes a survey of how the company is

doing as a whole. If Wal-Mart employees have trouble with their boss they can go to their

supervisor’s boss because of the open door policy and keep going up the chain of command.

Dysfunctions

The first dysfunction of a team, is absence of trust. This means people on the team, if not

everyone, lacks confident in the people on their team. This is a major problem because with the

absence of trust it’s impossible for people to be successful on a team together. I noticed the

absence of trust at Wal-Mart when upper management tells me about how bad their co-workers

are at their job or when management has arguments amongst each other about who is going to do

the scheduling. If a certain manager does scheduling, other manager believe their departments’

hours would get cut.

The second dysfunction is the fear of conflict. This is when people fear to have

disagreements with their co-workers. Now, there is a different from productive conflict and

destructive conflict. While the two conflict styles can have some of the same things like passion,

emotion, and frustration, there is a major difference between the two. Productive conflict is

limited to concepts and ideas. While destructive conflict is personal attacks and fighting.

Productive conflict is needed in a business to have the best idea implemented in the company.

When people talk about problems they have with other people ideas, the problem could be

address right away and it creates a better understanding of where you and your teammates stand

on the issue.

At Wal-Mart, there is one women in upper management named Sarah. She has really

good ideas about how the store should be ran but she would not confront her co-workers about

her ideas because she hates conflict. Also, because of this reason she does whatever her co-

workers tell her to do without challenging them. An example of this, is Sarah was told by a

manger that works under her to write a certain worker up for accidently breaking a light bulb.

Sarah did not agree with his reasoning, however, she still managed to write that worker up to

avoid any conflicts with the management team.

Dysfunction number three is lack of commitment. Lack of comment occurs when there is

a lack of certainty about an idea. Also, seeking consensus is a problem and creates a lack of

comment too. A great team knows that reasonable people don’t need to get their way but do want

to be heard and their idea considered. This would, more than likely, get the person in the group

to support the decision that is put into to play.

Some examples of a lack of comment at Wal-Mart are: the store manager made the rule

that night shift managers should work their full shift. However, one of the assistant manager

decided (a lot of days) that he was tired, so he goes home after just working half of his shift.

When the store manager found out what one of his assistance was doing, he put him on day shift

so the manager could monitor his assistant. Another example of a lack of commitment, is when a

manager tells his group, “If all of you don’t signoff your tasks before you leave work, you will

be written up” and then when nobody signoff their tasks lower-management doesn’t write

anyone up. This brings up the fourth dysfunction.

Fourth dysfunction is the avoidance of accountability. This means people at work is not

being held accountable for what needs to be done or about their actions by their peers. This is a

problem because if workers are not held accountable for their work, they would not work as hard

and they will break the organization’s rules more often. If this happen, the structure of the

company will be too loose and things could get out of hand. At Wal-Mart managers sometimes

will not hold certain people accountable if they think the worker would complain too much about

it or if the worker challenge them on their decision.

The fifth dysfunction is inattention to results. This means that members in the group cares

more about their own personal goals more than they care about the group goals. This is a

problem because if everybody cares about themselves in their goals and not the goals of the

group, the group will be more like a group of individuals sitting at a table with their own options.

What I mean is if nobody cares about the survival of the group than the group will not survive

and as a result the business will fail (if it’s a group of higher managers). This happens rarely at

my store. However, I have five managers and all of them will tell me a different way of how to

do things and what to do based on what makes their own departments run better (since receiving

is the beginning process in retail).

Training

Training at Wal-Mart is an ongoing process. Walmart’s training for new workers

involves listening to how your particular job is performed on a day to day basis and taken tests

on the computer about how to do your job and how to handle customers. A good example of this

is when I started at Walmart, I spent three working days learning how to run the cash registers

correctly on the computer (I worked in Lawn and Garden my first three months). You watch a

video about how the whole store should be ran on a day to day basis. The video is about an hour

and half long. The video gives you a good idea of how the retail store would run if we lived in a

perfect world.

The problems with Wal-Mart training are, after you pass the computer test, management

won’t train you further and they will yell at you once you make a mistake. The reason why this is

a problem is because the computer training is a bit different than doing the work with real people

waiting to get rung-up. Also, yelling never solves anything and the only thing it helps is a

headache. When employees move from one department to another, management will teach you a

certain job that they think you will be good at but don’t manage to train you on the other jobs

that your job consists of. This is a problem because if you don’t know how to do a job that one

of your co-worker does, it won’t get done correctly if your co-worker calls in sick for the day.

Would you believe me if I told you that Wal-Mart re-trains all employees around

Christmas time? That’s right every employee is re-trained during the Christmas season. It don’t

matter if you been in the company for 25 years, Wal-Mart still re-trains you. This is to make sure

that everything goes to plan and nobody is killed during black Friday. Christmas time is one of

the only times that Wal-Mart don’t care how much they are paying their workers as long as

employees are doing their jobs. The training around the holiday is to make sure nobody steals

from us and rules are being followed by employees and shoppers as well. Management does even

more training during the Christmas season because they have to manage the whole store during

the holidays (even if they are just department managers).

The last training I would like to talk about is when employees get promoted to managers.

Before you even get considered to be promoted to a manager you have to take a personality test.

The fact I passed this test, is the reason why Alpine and Grandville Wal-Mart was fighting over

which store is going to get me. I passed the test to be the second highest manager in the store. I

point this out because while department and zone managers get trained. The assistant manager is

responsible for everything that the store manager does not get to. This means a lot more money

needs to be spent to train assistant managers than department and zone managers. The fact that I

manage to pass the assist management test, told them that I have good management skills and I

would take less money to train if they decided to promote me to assistant manager. The assistant

manager is one of the few managers that get trained by going to different Walmart stores.

Mission statement

“People, saving money, living a better live” Wal-Mart mission statement tells a lot about

the business. People is in the mission statement to say the people that shop here is the reason

why we are in business, so they are the most important part of our business. The meaning of

saving money in the mission statement is we have the cheapest prices of all of the retail stores

and if we don’t have the cheapest price we will price match it. Also, the reason why Wal-Mart is

so big is because they had the cheapest prices in the retail industry. I mean no other company

goes from borrowing $50,000 to having over a trillion dollars in assets. The thought on living a

better live part in the mission statement is simple, by Wal-Mart saving customers’ money on

groceries customers can by better quality products and in return they will live a better life.

Internal Communication

Internal communication is communication between people in the same organization. In

the store, Wal-Mart upper management talks to the bottom management and the bottom

managers talk to their associates and tell them what needs to get done. Management will tell

employees how much profit the store earned every quarter by either telling the employees

verbally or putting the information in a letter on the break room wall. Management will normally

hold a meeting to tell employees how we are doing as a company, what the store goals are, and

what we can do to help profitability. In addition, management will select two people to

participate in Wal-Mart’s shareholder conference. This is so everybody that works in the

company can feel like a shareholder. This helps drives profitability because it makes employees

feel like they have an entitlement to the company.

The ways that our Wal-Mart communicate to other Wal-Mart’s is usually by a computer

or phone. Wal-Mart has a computer program mainly so if an employee wants to move from one

Walmart to another to be promoted or because it’s closer to their house. If an employee wants to

move to a different Walmart or Sam club, the employee will fill out the online form and that will

get sent to the Wal-Mart or Sam Club that the employee wants to transfer to. The next step is for

the employee to visit and talk to the manager of the store that the employee wants to go to. The

last step is for the manager, from the store the employee wants to transfer to, to call the manager

of the Wal-Mart that the employee wants to leave to make sure it’s ok to transfer the employee.

The way that things are communicated from Wal-Mart stores to the corporate office in

Aransas is by the Marketing manager. The marketing manager is the boss of everybody in the

store level including the store manager. Corporate tells the Marketing manager what needs to be

done (but corporate lets the M.M. pick the marketing strategies) in the store. The marketing

manager makes sure the things are done in the stores that corporate wants done by any means.

The lower employees communicate to him by starting and completing the tasks we did for that

day on the computer.

External communication

External communication is communication with people outside of the organization. The

most noticeable way that Wal-Mart use external communication is by commercial on why you

should shop at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart use to have Mr. Rollback, before getting sued by the

government, to tell the customers what they are going to make cheaper at certain times of the

year or if a price was rollback. Also, Wal-Mart is careful of how they rollback prices. For

example, if Wal-Mart knows they want to roll back the price of five dollar bug spray to two-fifty,

Wal-Mart would roll back the bug spray fifty-cents each week until it get to two-fifty. This is so

customers don’t think that something is wrong with the bug spray. Big price signs is also a way

Wal-Mart communicate to shoppers on the price of merchandise.

Wal-Mart communicates with possible future suppliers by meeting up with executives of

the other companies. The executives will tell Wal-Mart executives what price they are selling the

product for, and how many units their company sold of this particular product in the past. Wal-

Mart executives gives the executives from the other company a chance to plead their case.

Walmart executives try to figure out if the product is worth what they are asking for and if

whether or not they think the product would sell quickly. Wal-Mart executives take in

consideration of how many units of the product that the other company was able to sale along

with testing a sample of the product. Wal-Mart have People who knows about a particular

industry better than people who are in high positions in that industry. Normally, Wal-Mart will

ask the other company to cut their cost.

Once Wal-Mart reaches a deal with a company to sale their product, the company comes

in to put their products on the selves. Management are responsible for telling vendors where to

store their merchandise and what time of the day they should come (if the vendor’s company did

not already tell them).

Wal-Mart gets other companies to test their employees on how to do their jobs. The

person may just sit and watch employees work or asked them questions. The guy would than

report how well the employees knows their job and how to perform it to the store and marketing

manager. On top of that my store is in the process of expanding, so my store is using temporary

workers along with construction workers. The temporary workers are through labor ready,

however, Wal-Mart management tells them what needs to be done. The construction workers got

hired based on the fact that they had the lowest bid.

Appendix

Internal communication examples

External Communication examples