Organizational behavior issues at Wal-mart
Introduction
Organizational behavior involves an understanding of how individuals and groups behave and aims at explaining and predicting such behavior in an organization. It deals with the feelings and attitude of employees in the workplace including relationships, organizational commitment, jobs satisfaction and even emotional aspect of the members in an organization (Phillips & Gully, 2014). In this field of study, the aim is to investigate the effect of structure, group and individuals on behavior so as to apply this knowledge in enhancing effectiveness of the organization. It, therefore, involves an applied behavioral science whose foundation is behavioral disciplines such as sociology, psychology and social science.
Wal-mart is an American multinational whose business operations include wholesale and retail in different segments including Wal-mart U.S , Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart International. These segments have enabled the firm to expand its operations in different markets global and regain a significant market share in retail and wholesale business. Wal-Mart U.S comprises of digital and retail store operations across the U.S market where it provides products related to financial services such as prepaid cards and money orders (Wal-Mart, n.d). Walmart International segment comprises of various formats of operations such as wholesale and retail outside the United States market such as supermarkets and convenience stores. Wal-mart’s Sam’s Club offers warehouse clubs services for its members. The firm started out as a single store with an aim of selling more at lower prices and has grown over the last 5 centuries to become the largest retailer globally. The firm has a large number of employees and other associates that has helped it in the growth and expansion strategies that has characterized its operations (Wal-Mart, n.d). The leadership of the firm is centralized and has been trying to create an organizational culture based on integration and business ethics by developing policies for all its stakeholders. Walmart strengths results from its large size give its global presence in terms of operations and an efficient supply chain. The huge revenue generated from its operations has seen it grow in terms of size and range of services provided. However, due to the large size and operations, the firm has faced various challenges including small profit margins, a business model that has no uniqueness and management issues related to workforce. The organizational structure of the firm is basically hierarchical which has shaped the culture and hence, it’s organizational behavior. The organizational behavior of the firm has recently been shaped by the various issues relating employee job satisfaction, defiant behavior among the workers and various leadership issues.
Organizational behavior issues at Wal-Mart
The organizational structure and culture of Wal-Mart has resulted to various organizational behavioral issues that has affected the operations and performance of the firm both at the management level , middle and lower levels. The social-economic structure of the environment in which the operations of the firm are based has changed rapidly which has placed high emphasis on the working environment, leadership function in an organization to adapt to the rising needs. Amidst such happenings in the current global business of environment, Wal-Mart has been faced with problems involving employee’s work satisfaction, employee attitude towards work and working environment and leadership issues. The changing business environment in the current world has comes with challenges related to the aforesaid issues in firms especially those with their presence in the international markets. These challenges arises from need to have employees who are motivated and committed to the goals of their organizations regardless of the disruption brought about but shifting social economic structures. Wal-Mart’s approach to these changes have always yielded the desired results as issues of employees mistreatment , low remuneration and lack of opportunities for personal growth has impacted on how employees behave and how leaders respond to these behaviors.
Job dissatisfaction
This is major issues that Wal-mart has been encountering and its origin can be attributed to low wages and limited opportunities for personal career growth for employees. The firm’s “save more. Live better” slogan has not worked well in regard to addressing employees basic financial needs in an economic environment that has become increasingly challenging. The firm has a larger workforce of over 2.3 million across its many businesses and stores in the world , but reports of significantly low wage rate as compared to the industry rates has been a source of dissatisfaction among the employees. The firm’s management has been very aggressive in activities that are aimed at cutting cost and this has lead to maintenance of employees’ wages and benefits and low levels. Adoption of the cost cutting measures by the firm has resulted to a disgruntled workforce that feels that there are not been remunerated fairly (Ungar ,2013). This has resulted to low commitment at the various outlets and stores and this can be explained by the previous strikes in local markets such as Washington D.C and even in foreign countries like China. The effect of this remuneration policy has been low morale, dissatisfaction and high turnover for the employee.
The dissatisfaction among the employees goes beyond the wages to include lack of proper training an indication that the firm has not been investing in its workforce. The lack of training denies the employees a chance to progress in their career which leads to low morale and hence, reduced satisfaction at the workplaces. Even though there have been effort by management to boost the morale of its employees and hence, increase their level of satisfaction, such efforts have failed to fully boost the morale and employees. In the past, a research has confirmed that the workers at the store perform the duties not because they love their work but because they fear their managers (Mourdoukoutas, 2016). This does not augur well with the creating a positive working environment for improving morale and hence, organizational performance.
Defiant employee behavior
The human resource management policies at Wal-Mart have led to case of defiance among the employees in their business platforms located both in the domestic and international markets. The many case of low payments, discrimination and punishments have made the employee’s of the firm to develop negative attitude towards their workplace and the management which has made it had to implement human related decisions and policies. Such defiance has pitied the Wal-Mart management against labor unions and labor courts that have seen some their decisions to punish their employees overturned and this has been detrimental to the performance of the firm. The defiance behavior can be observed by various cases of employee absence, angry outburst and protests especially towards their supervisors. In oversee markets such as China, case of employees resolution to remain defiant have been reported. In one instance, Wal-Mart employees were reported to have prevented the firm from removing various commodities at a building in an effort to stand up for their rights (China Labor Bulletin, 2014). Such confrontations even worked against the firm after the authorities appeared to have been won over by the actions of the workers even though they later took a neutral stance. In such cases the behavior of the employees has been attributed to management’s failure to address employees concerns relating to work environment, poor pay, long working hours and resulting exhaustion that makes most of these individuals to develop aggressive behavior towards the management. It would be difficult o expect that employees working under such unfavorable environments to comply with management’s decisions and directions without questioning.
Leadership issues
The business model employed by Wal-Mart has faced many challenges especially in relation to addressing human relation issues such as remuneration, training and organizational culture. A major source of this problem has been inadequate or lack of employee training. The structure of the firm requires many managers at various levels and in this case, the middle level managers wield absolute power so that they do not see the need for employee training (Mourdoukoutas, 2016). The managers seem not to care about the skills that need to be instilled in workers so that they can carry out their tasks appropriately. This kind of attitude seems to align with the adage that absolute power corrupts. The result has been a culture where workers learn through guesswork and yet they will be held accountable at the end of the day.
The management seems to lack a realistic strategy that will link training, efficiency in work, morale and employee attitude while serving the customers. The company has not been at par with the changing environment which requires equipping employees with the right skills to handle the change but leaving them to adjust on their own is just an act of neglect. Lack of proper strategies can also be related to employee attitude toward customers where the quality of services offered has been wanting for some time. The failure in leadership can also be seen in various scandals that the firm has been involved in their business operations, and which seems to have influenced the behavior of middle level managers at Wal-Mart businesses (Heineman, 2014).
Impact on the organization
Employees who are not satisfied with their work will not show enough commitment to the organization since they lack motivation which can directly affect the bottom line of a company. Lack of job satisfaction at Wal-Mart is attributed to low rates of wages, lack of training and opportunities for growth and policies that are considered ineffective in addressing the issues affecting employees. This results to defiant behavior among employees who feel unable to meet their basic needs or do not see clear direction for their career path or life. The back lies with the management that does not show effective leadership in developing effective strategies for addressing the various challenges faced by employees while performing their duties. The impacts of low job satisfaction may be significant to the performance of the organization and should be raise a concern to the management. When employees are not satisfied with their work, they motivation and drive to perform their duties are affected this results to low performance.
The low rate of payment and discrimination issues have led to increased rate of turnover at Wal-Mart and the firm has lost part of the skilled workforce who is not ready to extend their stay at the firm. Lack of training has led to a culture where employees use guesswork in providing services to customers which has the potential to affect customer satisfaction with the firm. In fact, provision of customer services has been hard hit by the lack of commitment by the employee while lack of training has made the quality of such services to remain quite low (Mourdoukoutas, 2016). High quality services at low prices are factors that built the reputation of the Wal-Mart, and this was indicated by superb logistics and business tactics that turned it into the biggest retailer across the world. Low quality customer services are solely eroding this success since customers are not willing to buy in various stores due to the bad attitude by workers. The major problem has been lack of proper leadership by management especially at the middle –level, and this can be seen in lack of training of workers and failure to create an environment where workers attitudes will be positive (Mourdoukoutas, 2016). Thus has led to lack of connection between the firm and customers since services offered by workers do not satisfy the market needs. A major impact of poor leadership has been the inability of the firm to remain at par with the environment. Lack of training mean that workers have not been able to meet the dynamic needs of the market and the adoption of the latest technology has been low. The firm cannot compete with other firms that provide a favorable working environment for workers and whose leadership strategies give them an edge in terms of technology.
Recommendations
Wal-Mart managers need to come up with strategies that will improve job satisfaction for the employees, reduced cases of defiance and at the same time solve management issues especially at the middle level. According to Herzberg two-factor theory, an organization can introduce various factors (motivators) and reduce de-motivation (hygiene factors) so as to improve employee morale and hence, their job satisfaction (Griffin, Phillips & Gully, 2017). The motivators involve the actual job such as the degree at which the work is interesting, the opportunity provided for more promotion and responsibility. In addition, hygiene factors involve those aspects that surround a job to be done but not the job itself (Griffin, Phillips & Gully, 2017).
A business should improve workers motivation through improvement of the content and nature of a task. Wal-Mart should ensure that training is used as a factor that will equip the employees with the skills needed to undertake more responsibilities get promotions and hence advance in their career. Through this, job enlargement will be possible in that mire tasks will be allocated to workers who excel in training and their efforts in performance of such tasks will provide a way for person growth and development. In addition, the management should address the issue of low wages so that workers are able to meet personal financial needs. Rewards can also be motivating factors since they allow an employee to relate to actual results of his or her hard work (Griffin, Phillips & Gully, 2017). When workers feel empowered in their job, their level of satisfaction will be high.
Managing with defiant workers involve management of their personalities so that they can work as a team especially with customers. The morale and performance of any employee will be highest when they work together as a team and at the same time uphold respect for management, their decisions and other employees (Amos, 2008). Wal-Mart managers can use reward system to improve on the behavior of employees who are defiant and especially who deal with their frustrations through protests and absenteeism. Reward system in the reinforcement theory involves set of brain structures that try to bringing the behavior of a person under control through the inducement of pleasurable effect. The management can use promotions, monetary bonuses and even paid leave so as to induce the needed reduction of defiant behavior and especially regarding the decisions made at Wal-Mart. Therefore, reinforcement has to be very motivating to the targeted person since not all people are motivated by the same things (Amos, 2008). In order to deal with leadership issues at the firm, management should emphasize the importance of ethical leadership and where possible establish an ethical code that will ensure that leaders worker for common good of all stakeholders. Ethical leadership involves demonstrating a personal conduct that is appropriate and acceptable in aspect of one’s life (Phillips& Gully, 2014). Hence, all managers especially at the middle level will work towards improving the working environment, train employees and use reasonable rates in employee remuneration. Ethical leadership also requires the conduct of all managers is in line with ethical standards to prevent scandals that may hinder performance of the firm.
Conclusion
Organizational behavior involves attitude and feeling of employees and the structure of an organization that influences relationships, job satisfaction, commitment and productivity. Wal-Mart is the largest retailer and wholesaler in the globe and its success has come with various challenges due to the large operations and workforce. These include low job dissatisfaction, defiant behavior by employee and poor leadership at the model level. These challenges have affected the performance of the firm and especially in customer service delivery. Increasing job satisfaction through improved morale and leadership will reduce any defiant behavior and eventually lead to better performance.
Reference
Phillips, J., & Gully, S. M. (2014). Organizational behavior: Tools for success. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Griffin, R. W., Phillips, J., & Gully, S. M. (2017). Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations. 179-180
Amos, T. (2008). Human resource management. Wetton, Cape Town: Juta. 184-185
Wal-Mart,(n.d). Our story: https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story
China Labor Bulletin, (2014).Walmart workers in China remain resolute and defiant. Retrieved from: http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/walmart-workers-china-remain-resolute-and-defiant
Mourdoukoutas,P.,(2016).Walmart's Outdated Management Style Is Failing Customers. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2016/01/30/walmarts-outdated-management-style-is-failing-customers/#7c51c8fe13ae Heineman, B., (2014).Who’s Responsible for the Walmart Mexico Scandal? Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2014/05/whos-responsible-for-the-walmart-mexico-scandal Ungar ,R.,(2013).Walmart Pays Workers Poorly And Sinks While Costco Pays Workers Well And Sails-Proof That You Get What You Pay For. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/04/17/walmart-pays-workers-poorly-and-sinks-while-costco-pays-workers-well-and-sails-proof-that-you-get-what-you-pay-for/#7a87de8f6cdf
