Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the world's largest retailer, with $256.3 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2004. The company employs more than 1.5 million associates worldwide in 3,600 facilities in the United States and more than 1,570 units outside of the United States. More than 138 million customers per week visit Wal-Mart stores worldwide. From 2002 to 2004, Wal-Mart was Number 1 on the FORTUNE 500 list and has also been a top rank in FORTUNE's "Most Admired Company in America".
The first Wal-Mart opened in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. In 1969, the company opened its first distribution center and home office in Bentonville, Arkansas. In 1983, the SAM'S CLUB warehouse concept was introduced, and in 1988, the first Supercenter opened.
Explore the site in detail to prepare a two-page report indicating your responses to the following questions. Describe the three basic beliefs that Sam Walton incorporated in the Wal-Mart culture. What are Wal-Mart's "Guiding Ethical Principles"? How have these statements been used as planning tools for dealing with uncertainty?
Internet Exercise
Planning, as this chapter notes, is the foundation of management. If you fail to plan, it is difficult to control events in our changing internal and external organizational environments. Planning is critical for both an organization and for you as an individual trying to succeed in an ever-evolving workplace. Many futurists say that most jobs we will do in the next 20 years do not exist today. We can plan in a general way; gather knowledge, skills and ability and most crucially, the ability to think critically. In this way we can all plan for continuous learning as well as what might be dubbed 'unlearning' to relearn a new paradigm of thinking about how to plan for organizations and as individuals.
Whatever the situation or the plan, personal effectiveness is always needed. It is something that you can constantly develop. The following online self-assessment form from the Brefi Group of the UK is a good way to assess where you are now so you can plan to improve or at least examine, ways you might try to improve your personal effectiveness.
Go to http://www.brefigroup.co.uk/training_needs_analysis/index.php Then click on Personal Effectiveness. You will be asked to login before you can take the test. After you have logged on, take the test and submit your answers for analysis. When you receive the analysis, go back to the questions and think what plans you might now make from this feedback.
Questions:
What useful information did you receive from the questionnaire and your results? Explain.
Do you think that others might benefit from this type of self-knowledge? Why or why not?
How can you improve your personal effectiveness? Explain.
