Week 5 Assignment: Organizational Structure and Culture

Organizational Change
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Organizational Change
Walmart is one of the largest chain stores with a net worth that comes up to $8 billion and above. This is a company that has domestic and international stores. However, the company has been experiencing some challenges with reference to the management approaches. This is relative to the fact that the company has been stuck on a number of management structures and interventions. Over the last few years, the stores have been rated as some of the most expensive. This is contrary to the current industry trend, where they have been considered as the cheapest in the past (Mourdoukoutas, 2016). The company has however been using outdated structure, culture and principally management strategies (Mourdoukoutas, 2016). This is relative to the fact that at the heart of any management strategies are the cultures and structure of the organization. This paper establishes changes in management that could be used to improve the performance of the company.
Organizational Structure and Culture
Organizational structure is a crucial part of business activities in that it determines aspects such as operations and even solving problems at the company, internally and externally. The organizational culture on the other hand is determinant of the way people responded to the challenges at the place of work. Aspects such as the resilience of the workforce are determined by the mindset which is further affected by the culture at the company. It is important to note that, the company has had much success when it comes to the strategies tied to the organizational culture and structure. However, the success has not been at per with the industry standards in the recent times and as such, it has been struggling (Lombardo, 2017).
The organizational structure at the company is definitively hierarchical. This is a structure that uses two main features; the function based definition and hierarchy. There are vertical lines of authority and command that is common throughout the organization. Looking at the company, other than the CEO the rest of the staff have a superior they report to. When the top management come up with decisions, they are then passed to the middle management, who then pass them down to the rest of the staff. In line of the function based definition of the organizational structure, there are various groups of workers who work on specific tasks (Brisson-Banks, 2010). This is established with reference to the department at the company. This is in reference to the various departments such as, marketing and technology among others. Each of the department is tasked with a certain set of functions which binds the various people in that department with certain goals and objectives. Using the hierarchical approach, the top management are able to easily affect the entire organization. However, there is a down side to the structure in that, it means that the organization’s lower management teams are not able to effect any changes. This is relative to the level of bureaucracy that is involved (Brisson-Banks, C. (2010). This indicates that the organization structure does not allow for flexibility. As such, most of the business practices that have been at the company for long, cannot be changed unless there is a systematic change coming from the top management (Lombardo, 2017).
The culture at the company has been largely associated with four main components; service to the customers, integrity in their actions, striving for excellence and respect for individuals. The company has always prioritized the needs of the customers along with the contributions that the employees make. In addition, the company also strives to make sure that it offers the best services in the industry (Lombardo, 2017). Integrity plays a crucial role in the organization with aspects such as, impartiality when making decisions, honesty and fairness.
‘Walmart’s organizational structure is ideal for the company’s type of business and global scope of operations. However, Walmart can improve in applying its beliefs in the context of its organizational culture. These beliefs are ideal. Still, the company is frequently criticized about its failure to address employees’ concerns regarding low wages. Such criticisms point to the difference between the belief of respect for individuals in the organization’s culture, and the actual treatment of the employees. Thus, a suitable recommendation for Walmart is to implement more effective measures for fulfilling the respect for the individual component of the organizational culture.’ (Lombardo, 2017)
Some of these aspects come up relative to the fact that the company is still using some of the strategies that it used when the stores started. there is need for change of the management strategies to capture the dynamicity of the market and needs of the customers policies in the industry, current trends and more importantly the competitiveness of the market (Lombardo, 2017). For decades, the company has enjoyed a number of successes among them, the cheapest stores, largest stores and the logistical advantages for most of the customers. With benefits such as this, it is not hard to understand why the company is hailed for being one of the largest and with sales that total a third of the US economy.
There a number of aspects that are prompting for management strategies changes, relative to the fact that, the large stores no longer fit in the cities, especially overseas where there are restrictions about the size of the stores. It is also no longer the cheapest in the industry with an industry revolution associated with online retailing with the likes of Amazon. The company is also affected by the fact that, in light of the poor treatment of the staff, most of the customers have in turn reported poor customer services at the company stores. This has since reduced the ability of the company to win over customers and maintain the old strong base of customers that it enjoyed. As the rest of the industry moves towards technology and some of the structural changes at their stores, Wal-Mart has remained relatively the same. As such most of the changes that should have been effected a long time ago, are now affecting the company negatively. The slow reaction to change can be attributed to the management strategies that the company has maintained for a long time. The buyers have changed and so has the business landscape. Organizational change, transformation and management is one of the permanent features of the business environment. This is relative to the number of markets and even labor pools that have opened up in the recent years. Technology and innovativeness has put most of the largest stores on high alert as some of the smaller stores are taking over the industry. Some of the older business models no longer work and the management has to make sure they are able to bring out some winning changes in their management strategies.
Change Model
There are a number change models that help managers to bring the evolutions that they need at the place of work. One of the most outstanding change models is the Kurt Lewin’s model. Originally established in the year 1947 the model is still relevant. The theory proposes three main stages, which are; unfreeze, change/transition and freeze/refreeze (Kritsonis, 2017).
The freeze stage is the first where the people at the organization are taken from being not being ready to willing to make the first step. This is a stage that can be defined as the first and most important as it helps the people at the organization get ready for the next step. It breaks away the status quo that the organization is used to and brings in an element of wanting change. As such, it can also be considered to be a break from the comfort zone. The more the people feel the need for there to be change the more the process of bringing change to the organization becomes apparent.
The second stage is the change or the transition step. This the stage that follows the people at the organization being unfrozen. One of the aspects to note about the model is that, it does not take the change element as an event but rather as a process, and it is referred to as the transition from one state to the next (Kritsonis, 2017). Transition can be defined as the inner movement, that is initiated as part of the journey towards reacting to the change. This is often the hard...