Monday, February 24, 2020

Strategic Thinking for Wal-Mart business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Strategic Thinking for Wal-Mart business - Essay Example According to Altier (1991, p.21), â€Å"to survive in tomorrow’s increasingly competitive world, companies are going to adopt a modus operandi that is coming to be known as strategic thinking.† Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is one of those successful industries that are using strategic thinking to achieve competitive advantage within the retailing industry. According to a retail consultant Patricia Pao, â€Å"in successful retailing, it’s usually 10% of a great idea and 90% execution, but at Wal-Mart 90% goes into strategic thinking and just 10% execution at the store level† (cited in Gogoi, n.d.). The main thrust of this paper is to examine and analyze the role and impact of strategic thinking for the competitive options of Wal-Mart. 2.0 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Wal-Mart is one of the successful retailers in terms of sales volume, revenue, and market share. This 40-year old company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, and it dominated the local market of the United Stat es and other countries. Wal-Mart began to trade in the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol NYSE: WMT and became one of the most reliable stocks because its investment risk is not alarming. The business is operating globally, and its top competitors include Target Corporation, Costco Wholesale, and Carrefour. Wal-Mart net sales in 2008 ($373.8), 2009 ($401.1) and 2010 ($405.0) are growing at lower rates, and its return on investment (ROI) is not changing nor growing at 19.3% (Walmart 2010 Annual Report, n.d.a). These figures only indicate that Wal-Mart’s performance in the past years is struggling caused by ineffective plans and techniques. Aside from internal defects, the sluggish growth can also be attributed to external elements such as intense competition (local & international) and economic instability caused by recession. As Wal-Mart’s life cycle gets into the maturity stage, the number of powerful competitors has increased because the rate of sales an d profits are high; however, the overall growth of the industry is at a very slow-paced manner. Cost at this level is lesser because of expansion and scale economies, but promotional activities need to be uplifted to make customers more knowledgeable about the product and service offerings. In fact, Wal-Mart executives have doubled their advertising expenses this year just to reach a broad group of consumers (Martin, 2011). Furthermore, Wal-Mart has experienced the most intense competition, which in turn has lowered its sales and market share. However, it remained as the world’s largest corporation based on the Global 500 and Fortune 500 annual ranking despite poor sales and market share (DuBois, 2011). In addition, it is also recognized as the most admired company because it produced a wide variety of product and services, highest-quality service to customers, and offered the lowest prices of retail goods. â€Å"CEO Bill Simon has freely admitted to Wal-Mart’s misste ps in the past, which included prematurely removing profitable products, overly aggressive rollbacks, and poor relationships with merchants† (Sun, 2010). Thus, to regain its market share and high record sales, executives have concentrated on seeking and developing new approaches through strategic thinking. They go back to the basic, but this time they are more observant to their environment and turn into an out-of-the box thinker. They have gathered as much

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Effective team performance Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Effective team performance - Assignment Example Team building concepts like Belbin’s Team Roles, Myers-Griggs Group Dynamics, conflict resolution and decision making were experienced as the team progressed through team development stages of forming, norming and stroming as described by Tuckman’s Team Development Model (Tuckman 1965). The team was faced with a number of problems that occurred during its entire developmental process based on Tuckman’s model (Beyerlein and Johnson 2000). Although improved collaboration, effective communication and alignment of individual objectives with team objectives helped to overcome these problems, Kayes (2004) is of the opinion that these could have been prevented at the initial stages of the project. The project presented number of opportunities to the team to remain engaged in number of activities that played significant role in transforming the group into a cohesive and effective team. This report focuses on key stages in the development of a cohesive team and the proble ms and conflicts faced during the process and steps taken to resolve these issues. The report also discusses key theories and concepts of team development and significance of their application in practical life and analyzes the transformation of experiences in reflective learning. Problem and Context In this project, I formed part of a group that was entirely unknown to me and I had no earlier opportunity of working with them in similar circumstances. Due to this situation, I felt anxiety as I was totally confused about the group members, their behavior, said or unsaid protocols for group interaction and team objectives, as mentioned by Myers-Briggs (1998). Tuckman described it typical to the forming stage of the team development (Tuckman 1965). In forming stage, future of team and the team objectives are not much clear. Members try to know each other, exchange personal information and make friends that help them to better respond to pressure situation in future. But as I gained mor e opportunities to interact and know other members, the anxiety transformed into confidence to effectively communicate and participate in the group activities. During the project, many problems like motivation, individual capability, ineffective communication and team dynamics as highlighted by Kayes (2004) surfaced. Team members were not focused on team objectives and were frequently found busy in their social and personal issues at the initial stages of team development. The team members belonged to diverse cultural background that presented a potential source for diversity conflict (Goleman 2002). I believe that like me other group members being almost on the same parity had the similar experiences, as they were also shy and hesitant to communicate among each other at initial stages. Although these problems impeded task completion, team development, cohesion and improving collaboration and coordination among the members but these provided opportunities to respond effectively to a particular situation and progress towards team development (Chaney and Lyden 2000). McManus (2000) stresses that teams are stronger in commitment, cohesion and understanding of objectives than the groups. Therefore, skills like self-awareness, self management, competence, social awareness and relationship management highlighted by Goleman (2002) as Emotional Intelligence played a key role in bonding team together towards common goal. Despite all the