Working in Wal-Mart Case

In “Labouring the Wal-Mart Way”, Deenu Parmar discusses Wal-Mart’s poor business practices and mistreating of their employees. Parmar is biased in that she focuses primarily on the negative aspects of Wal-Mart and discusses mostly from the employees’ point of view. The essay attempts to sway people to stop shopping at Wal-Mart because the author portrays it as unethical by focusing on the poor wages, anti-unionization, and paying off charges instead of properly addressing the laws being broken. Parmar does point out that people will continue to shop at Wal-Mart, seemingly guilt-tripping those who do shop there. The whole article relies heavily on an emotional appeal, which forces the reader to sympathize for the employees of the company without

Question 1: What were the rights of Walmart, the employer, during these two organizing drives?

As stated on the corporate website (2017), “Walmart is the largest retailer in the world, where 2.3 million associates meet the needs of more than 260 million customers every week.” These numbers are huge, and with so many locations around the globe, they have had allegations been made by employees regarding their dissatisfaction about poor work conditions, gender discrimination, low wages, poor benefits, and inadequate health care. Walmart has been criticized for its policies against labor unions and this issue has prompted public outrage, (Johansson, 2005) which is of great concern for the market. The company has also faced criticism for being anti-union, but it has claimed that it is rather pro-associate, whereby employees

This report summarizes the history of work attitude for hourly workers and managers, who controlled the quality of the products and sale growth, at Ford Motor Company during and before Economic recession. It is representative of how Ford Management has run the manufacturing sector since 60s in order to meet demand. The purpose of this report is to analyze how Sharonville Plant of the Ford Motor Company can advance work behaviors, enhance training, establish work environment, and motivate workers.

Is Wal-mart the ideal store to shop it? Austrian economic and business professional Karen De Coster and banker Brad Edmonds believe that Wal-mart improves the lives of people in rural areas because it gives them access to a lifestyle that they would not have if Wal-mart did not exist.

Wal-Mart should comprehend that employee’s work motivation has significant influence on the organization’s effectiveness. We can use several motivation theories to investigate Claude’s motivation and identify Wal-Mart’s management hypothesis.

Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) were introduced in 1980 with the purpose of saving energy. They initially were very expensive and consumers were aware of many flaws that made them hesitant to purchase the bulbs and bring them into their homes. The positive effects of switching from alternative bulbs to CFLs were overshadowed by media attention highlighting the issues that remained unresolved. Wal-Mart pushed promotional programs in 2007 that were very successful. They introduced a private label at a lower price, offered online ordering, posititioned the products well, installed interactive displays and engaged with new partners to promote energy efficiency. In 2009 the CFLs were redesigned and

Ragan Fretwell - Case 23: Walmart: But We Do Give Them a 10% Employee Discount

Wal-mart is the number one retail store in the U.S. and was founded by Sam Walton in 1962. Wal-mart has expanded to include the U.S., Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, China, and various other places. In 1988, Wal-mart developed the Supercenter concept to meet the growing demand for one stop family shopping. Supercenters combine grocery and general merchandise all under one roof. Their purpose is saving people money to help them live better (Wal-Mart, n.d). Even their success Wal-mart has still had many lawsuits for violating labor laws and

McGregor (1960a) assumed workers refer to Theory X are lazy, hate to work, responsibility aversion and more concern about lower levels of human needs rather than pursuing self-achievement. McGregor (1960a) suggests that managers should supervise and control the workers in order to adjust their behaviour and neutralise heir negative attitudes toward work, even punish and push them to achieve a minimal level of performance. Punishment is necessary because of the nature of inherently lazy. Managers would find encouraging them to perform better by reward maybe only valid in a short-term as lazy workers eventually submit adequate effort as they do not pursuit self-actualisation (McGregor 1960a). in a word, managers centralise the decision making power, set rules, SOPs and procedures to guide workers what they should process and monitor the process in order to safeguard the minimal requirement of performance is achieved

Wal-Mart is a company which operates in the service sector, more specifically in the “Discount, Variety Stores/Retail” industry. The company’s superior performance is demonstrated through the fact that it was America’s largest company (in terms of revenue) in 2002, and the reputation of the company is reflected in the opinion of “Fortune” who have identified Wal-Mart as one of the world’s most admired companies. In 2004 Wal-Mart had been hiring 1.4 million employees – making it the largest corporation in the world. Wal-Mart’s share prices have also been stable at time of stock market volatility. There are

According to Herzberg, the factors leading to job satisfaction are distinctly different from those that lead to job-dissatisfaction. Therefore, the managers who seek to eliminate factors that create job-dissatisfaction can bring about peace at the workplace but cannot motivate the employees. These factors are termed as hygiene factors comprising administration, supervision, working conditions, salary and wages etc. While absence of hygiene factors will lead to dissatisfaction, mere presence of these factors will not satisfy (i.e. motivate) the employees. In order to motivate the employees, managers must resort to ‘motivators’ (those factors that motivate the employees towards better performance) such as recognition, challenging assignment, responsibility, opportunities for growth and self-fulfillment etc.

We would like to show our gratitude to Resp. Prof. Mr. Sham Sharma, for providing us with the golden opportunity to prepare an intellectual report, on Distribution & Logistics Management of “wal-mart”.

The study, as reported in the journal, was using Herzberg’s Hygiene Factors and Motivators to examine (a) what motivates employees in the retail industry and (b) their levels of jobs satisfaction. Tan & Waheed (2011) stated that the survey was done by way of convenient sampling to select sales personnel from women’s clothing stores at Bandar Sunway shopping mall located at Selangor, Malaysia. One hundred and eighty selected sales personnel of heterogeneity were surveyed by a questionnaire written in English. The questionnaire included a series of statements and questions pertaining to determinants of job satisfaction. The survey candidates were requested to indicate their degree of agreement to each. According to the researchers, linear regression analysis was performed to test the relationship between Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory and job satisfaction and further analysis was done evaluating the relationship between money and job satisfaction.

The scientific management theory have an assumption that workers are lazy, not smart in analyzing tasks, only prefers simplified work and only works for money (Miller & Form, 1964). According to Taylor (2004), workers are unable figure out the most efficient way in doing work. Therefore, they are thought as replaceable working parts like a machine in the production line and can be trained to specialize in a certain procedure in the production. They are assumed to adopt the Protestant work ethic, working for long hours and not taking any breaks. Whenever a worker or a ‘part’ failed to perform its tasks, they