Each company has a unique culture and its own personality.

Each company has its

own folklore that illustrates company values, and its own ways of dealing with
problems, making decisions, doing things. Ingrained in Wal-Mart culture, for
example, is dedication to customer satisfaction, pursuit of low costs (nurtured by
stories of the founder's frugality), and employee empowerment

Wal-Mart culture emphasizes religion, patriotism, a classless collective identity,

science, rationality, ecology, progressiveness, and low costs. The company’s
values are embodied in the life and myth of Sam Walton

The strong culture of wal mart lies in its three basic beliefs

1. Respect for the Individual

2. Service to the Customer

3. Strive for Excellence

Respect for the Individual

Every associate's opinion is respected. Managers are considered "servant leaders"
who help new associates realize their potential through training, praise and
constructive feedback. An "open door" management philosophy encourages
associates to raise questions and concerns in an open atmosphere.

Service to the Customer

The customer is the boss. Everything possible is done to make shopping at Wal-
Mart and SAM'S CLUB a friendly, pleasant experience. The "Ten-Foot Attitude"
means that associates are to greet each person they see. The "Satisfaction
Guaranteed" refund and exchange policy allows customers to be fully confident of
Wal-Mart and SAM'S CLUB's merchandise and quality.

Strive for Excellence

Wal-Mart and SAM'S CLUB associates share an exceptional commitment to

customer satisfaction. At the start of each day, store associates gather for the Wal-
Mart or SAM'S CLUB cheer and review sales from the previous day, as well as
discuss their daily goals. "The Sundown Rule" requires a continual sense of
urgency, with questions asked in the morning answered before the end of the day.
One of the key factors to keep business culture is to define the culture you want to
create from the beginning, and integrate it into how you hire people, how you treat
employees, the type of customer service you provide, and the general environment
of your organization.

As you grow it is important to integrate old employees who understand your

values, concepts, and culture with the newer employees who will learn to
implement them and bring some of their own culture.

To ensure a culture that lasts through growth and change, the upper managers
should take following steps

 Define the culture and how it is different from other concepts.

 Develop a strategic plan for implementing that culture.
 Make sure employees at all levels know what the culture is and that they buy
into it.
 Have seasoned employees train new employees and develop a system where
new employees learn the written and unwritten parameters of the culture.
 Constantly evaluate progress and success as you grow.
 Be open to change and inform employees and customers of any changes and
how they will benefit.
In spite of being generally applauded for its culture, Wal-Mart was also severely
criticized for certain aspects of its culture.

Overtime Woes

Although Wal-Mart had a very strict policy on overtime and the company's rules
forbade it, it was observed that, at most of the stores, employees worked between 5
and 15 hours overtime per week. (The company had a 40 hour work week). Since
the company was very strict about not allowing overtime (there were instances
where store managers who paid overtime were demoted and in cases, even
dismissed), it was usually done on an unofficial basis.

Wal-Mart has been criticized for its policies against labor unions. Critics blame
workers' reluctance to join the labor union on Wal-Mart anti-union tactics such as
managerial surveillance and pre-emptive closures of stores or departments who
choose to unionize

With close to two million employees worldwide, Wal-Mart has faced a torrent of
lawsuits and issues with regards to its workforce. These issues involve low wages,
poor working conditions, inadequate health care, as well as issues involving the
company's strong anti-union policies. Approximately 70% of its employees leave
within the first year.

The key to unraveling the mystery of a morale slump is to determine the cause or
source of the decreased morale. Some of the usual suspects are:

 a negative event, such as a firing,

 a promotion of an employee when others are overlooked, or
  Arguments between staff and/or management.

Steps to Improving Morale

Ask what the cause of poor morale is and what the employee believes can be done
to turn it around. Obtaining information directly from the person who's
experiencing the poor morale can often be an important key to solving this
mystery.

Show concern. If the employee believes the boss doesn't care about the task at
hand or doesn't care about the employee, then the employee probably won't care
about the task, the employer or the company

Provide appropriate feedback. The employee needs to know two crucial

variables in this morale equation: what's expected of them and how well they're
doing. Without this crucial information, the employee will inevitably overwork or
under work, think of their work as above average or below average, and may stray
from achieving the supervisor's goal.

Offer recognition of the employee's efforts. employees can be given performance

awards or have their name mentioned at staff meetings, posted on a bulletin boards
or in employee interoffice e-mail to say that someone did a noteworthy job. All of
these simple modes of pointing out individual, team or group behavior serve as
very strong methods of improving productivity, self-worth and morale.
Mechanistic organizations have clear, well-defined, centralized, vertical
hierarchies of command, authority, and control. Efficiency and predictability are
emphasized through specialization, standardization, and formalization. This results
in rigidly defined jobs, technologies, and processes. The term mechanistic suggests
that organizational structures, processes, and roles are like a machine in which
each part of the organization does what it is designed to do, but little else.

Mechanistic structures are highly formalized, which simply means that nearly all
processes and procedures have been administratively authorized. The organization
considers processes and procedures out-side these established protocols as
variances that must be brought under control. Such formalization is driven by
efficiency; reduction in variance increases predictability, and increases in
predictability allow for improvements in efficiency.

Where as an organic organization is a fluid and flexible network of multi-talented

individuals who perform a variety of tasks. This form of organizational structure
was widely sought and proposed, but never proved to really exist

An organic organization is when the organization exist dependently, meaning that

the organization takes into consideration the needs of their employees. Since in an
organic organization the ideas and opinions of the employees are taken into
consideration, this leads to group leadership and teamwork.

From the differentiation of these two structure one can clearly see that wal mart
follows a mechanistic organizational structure.

Decentralization also called departmentalization is the policy of delegating

decision-making authority down to the lower levels in an organization, relatively
away from and lower in a central authority. A decentralized organization shows
fewer tiers in the organizational structure, wider span of control, and a bottom-to-
top flow of decision-making and flow of ideas.

Centralization is said to be a process where the concentration of decision making

is in a few hands. All the important decision and actions at the lower level, all
subjects and actions at the lower level are subject to the approval of top
management. According to Allen, “Centralization” is the systematic and consistent
reservation of authority at central points in the organization. The implication of
centralization can be :-

1. Reservation of decision making power at top level.

2. Reservation of operating authority with the middle level managers.
3. Reservation of operation at lower level at the directions of the top level.

Under centralization, the important and key decisions are taken by the top
management and the other levels are into implementations as per the directions of
top level

Hence wal mart follows a centralized structure