You are required to produce a critical report discussing the issue questions specified below.
Issue options:
• Does diversity management enhance the innovative capacity of a global business?
• How can cross-cultural management issues affect performance in international teams?
Multi chain business organizations have gone a long way in establishing their brand world – wide and they have chosen various ways of establishing their brand in the US and many other international locations in the world. They have had a humble beginning in the initial stages as a small retailer and Rogers Walmart has paved way for a business in a retailer setup to expand internationally. Innovation has been their mantra for a long standing business to allow their customers to shop any time and at different huge super market chains in the world. They have brought a retail shopping chain into the mobile phones and electronic gadgets where shopping has become a stress free arena for a lot of working lot in the world (Boddy, D, 2011)
Walmart has started their retail revolution in 1962, went through different ways and became national in1970, became America’s top retailer in the 1990 and became internationally well established in 2000. They are a chain of warehouses and departmental stores and with the majority of private employers.
The company hosts a variety of products like baby products, furniture, electronics, movies, music, books, house hold goods, clothes line related to men and women, children sports items, medical, toys, jewellery, grocery and all the items related to furnishings. Being a large super market chain they have also established themselves as a big online shopping store.
They sell all types of products which are labelled products with exceptionally great value and they sell them with a labelled warranty. They are among those companies which have started a great innovation in terms of maintaining good quality for the food products in order to maintain their nutritional value.
Walmart is basically known for their exceptionally great prices and they are not producers of any product which means that they don’t own any brand however they maintain a good network of sellers and producers of various products in almost all the categories which are used in daily lives. They are well known for maintaining their brand which can offer the lowest prices for the Customers which cannot be offered anywhere else. Their prices are 15% lower than the prices of the products offered by other companies. The true mark of their business is their price or quality. The producers who are in business with Walmart are bound by a specific rule which says that they should either reduce their price or increase their quality.
Their online business fetches them much of a revenue where the shipment of the products to the customer’s desired locations is a major advantage in the nature of such businesses. The website of Walmart functions in an effective way. The discount prices of the products are a major catch for the customers where the store offers major discounts for the products throughout the year and they also fix some low prices for most of the products for a fixed period of time (Stefan Groeschl, 2003).
There are a large number of competitors in the grocery business of Walmart like Dollar tree stores, Family tree stores, Dollarama Inc, Lawson Inc, Don Quijote Holdings, Burlington Stores and many other stores.
Walmart being the largest grocery chain in the world still faces issues like lowering price factors, cost cutting factors which keep the traffic at bay and fails to attract a certain population in the US. Walmart also faces lost in traffic due to its empty shelves inspite of them lowering their prices to a great extent. Most of the long standing customers of Walmart have been complaining constantly that they have been finding decreased amounts of stocks in the Walmart stores like for example they don’t find more than 5 or 6 types of cosmetics, creams, lotions, medicines even the ones which they require frequently like for cold.
Walmart stores have been reducing since the recession times and they have not been able to recoup much ever since. Walmart has also not been increasing their stores in comparison to the numbers they used to increase in the past. Also the stocking challenges especially in a business like Walmart reduces the sales growth as people’s expectations reduce
It has been proven that diversity management is the most critical factor towards growth. Diversity should be viewed at carefully and lip service is not major factor to promote the growth of the business as the population has started viewing at a specific brand with major expectations and they view a brand with more authenticity and if the brand does not maintain it they end up tarnishing their brand almost for extended periods of time (Bovee, C, and Thill, JV, 2012).
Diversity is not about representation of a brand in various locations where diversity should be embedded in a brand. Diversity should be able to promote and respond to the needs of the customers in an effective way.
If we consider the example of a consumer brand industry they are significant with their presence in various locations and they are getting more effective in their presence with their marketing initiatives. Diversity is simply viewed as a multi – cultural aspect where the business is done in multiple locations. Diversity is all about embracing different types of people along with various cultures they come from and it is about supporting different types of people who are believed to be known for various ideas and thinking. Diversity is to have spread into various business organizations however the different ways in which the management implements their business matters the most (Renee, D, 2013).
It is the result of diversity that most of the business organizations are able to maintain their innovative nature and they are able to expand their business in different ways.
Culture plays an important role in an organization especially in multinational and international organizations which has expat employees. It is important to understand the impact of culture on the performance of the teams in such environment. The most well known cultural dimensions like authority, cultural differences, bureaucracy, creativity and accountability act in different ways on different aspects and on people especially in the work place environments in the world. These attributes play a major role in influencing the internal and external environments and also in managing the human resources of the organization. For a multi – national organization the culture of the parent company is more critical in deciding the nature of the work standards of the organization. Their corporate policies influence the work cultures of the same company which is present in the other countries. The factors like industrial resources, market attributes, various branches present in the country and their corporate codes of conduct also play a major role in deciding the ethical culture of the organization. The social and the cultural environment also plays a major role in impacting the culture of the organization (T.J. Watson, 1997).
These days with the growing no. of companies making their presence in the international markets and with them increasing their business transactions in the international locations cultural attributes are getting exchanged between the countries. One more growing advantage which can be taken into account in these types of scenarios is the global base of the customers which most of these companies share as the more and more globalized the customer base becomes the countries in which the companies expand their businesses get an opportunity to share the cultural differences with their employees of that country. This helps in promoting more and more understanding and it also promotes a nature of accepting the cultural differences between various countries and as large no. of business organizations have a varied employee base they keep interacting with each other and they tend to accept the fact that cross cultural differences promote a greater sense of understanding between people and by exchange of ideas they tend to cooperate with the other employees to enhance their performance (Adriana Victoria Garibaldi de Hilal, Ursula Wetzel, 2009).
The globalization integrates the world’s economies and provides an opportunity to promote their business in terms of technology which can narrow the gaps of understanding between various cultures.
References
Official Website of Walmart. https://www.walmart.com /. Online retrieved on March 2, 2011.
“The Wal-Mart Timeline.” Wal-Mart (published on walmartfacts.com). Retrieved on March 3, 2011.
Stolberg. S.G. (2011). “Wal-Mart Shifts Strategy to Promote Healthy Foods”. The New York Times. Online retrieved from:https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/business/20walmart.html
Staff Writer. “Sam’s Choice Climbs Beverage Brand List – Wal-Mart’s Sam’s American Choice Beverage Brand.” Discount Store News.
“Wal-Mart 2010 Annual Report” Wal-Mart. 2010.
Triandis H.C. (1982). Review of culture’s consequences. Human Organization, 41:86-90 [17]
T.J Watson (1997), Human resource management, industrial relations and theory – standing back and starting again. New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations, 22(1), 7-21.
Boddy, D, (2011), Management: An Introduction, 5th Edition, FT Prentice Hall
Bateman, TS, and Snell, SA, (2012), Management: Leading and Collaborating in a
Competitive World, 10th Edition, McGraw-Hill International Edition
Bovee, C, and Thill, JV, (2012), Business in Action, 6th Edition, FT Prentice Hal
Alfred A. Jaegar & Rabindra Nath Kanungo (1990), Management in developing Countries,
Stefan Groeschl (2003), Cultural Implications for the Appraisal Process, Cross Cultural Management, An International Journal, Vol. 10 Iss: 1, pp.67 – 79
Adriana Victoria Garibaldi de Hilal, Ursula Wetzel and Vicente Ferreira Organizational culture and performance: a Brazilian case, Management Research News, Vol. 32 No. 2, 2009, pp. 99-119
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