Introduction
The present project concerns conflict resolution at Walmart, an international retailer. Walmart offers various products, from groceries to clothes, and employs many people across several countries. Despite being successful in satisfying clients and extending its operations, Walmart has encountered internal issues that cause the business’s staff members’ morale to decline. The paper analyzes the challenges that Walmart needs to overcome, discusses the application of relevant management theories, and provides some recommendations for the corporation’s owner.
Business Problem
Walmart faces an internal conflict between upper management and lower-ranking employees due to several circumstances. First, Walmart’s culture is based on prioritizing the needs and expectations of its customers, but such an approach induces high pressure on workers and leads to increased turnover. Second, Walmart’s organizational structure and leadership system do not consider the personnel’s anticipations regarding such matters as wages and work environment. Third, employees are not included in the decision-making process, making them feel forgotten. Therefore, staff members are dissatisfied, unmotivated, and disengaged, which negatively impacts performance.
Proposed Solution
Walmart has to consider the perspectives of both sides of the issue and decide on changes that may be necessary. The company should utilize best practices from management theories to identify a goal that would help Walmart address the conflict by focusing on planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. For instance, the corporation should adopt the principle of Taylor’s theory of scientific management that encourages executives and the workforce to cooperate. In addition, the organization’s administration must recognize if it exhibits any characteristics from the Bad Boss Behaviors categorization and makes relevant modifications. Walmart needs to implement transformations to unite executives and personnel and pay more attention to the lower-ranking workers. The proposed recommendations are anticipated to assist Walmart in reconsidering its internal processes and practices and enable all human assets to make an effort to resolve the conflict.
Enterprises often encounter troubles, even if the companies seem to succeed from the outside perspective. For instance, Walmart, one of the largest retailers globally, has a business problem represented by an internal conflict between employees and higher-ranking management (Pandey et al., 2021; Weinstein et al., 2021). After opening its first store in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas, the corporation now has more than 11,500 locations in 27 countries, thus employing approximately 2.2 million people worldwide (Pandey et al., 2021; Weinstein et al., 2021). Walmart offers household items, groceries, clothes, and many other articles, with about 240 million customer visits every week (Weinstein et al., 2021). Walmart is a major company in the retail industry but faces issues regarding employee dissatisfaction.
Internal Conflict
Internal conflict in Walmart has occurred due to a discrepancy between the workers’ performance and rewards. Walmart’s culture is based on acting to satisfy clients’ needs by always being attentive, helpful, and friendly (Jiang, 2022; Weinstein et al., 2021). While such an approach is practical in retail, continuously behaving in a certain way increases pressure on employees (Jiang, 2022). Moreover, Walmart has a hierarchical organizational structure and bureaucratic leadership system where top management generates decisions that can satisfy executives but can also make lower-level workers feel frustrated and forgotten (Jiang, 2022). In addition, Walmart employees complain about unequal wages, insufficient benefits, and a poor work environment (Pandey et al., 2021). As a result, personnel has decreased motivation, which is closely associated with employee engagement and performance and can lead to a high employee turnover (Shkoler & Kimura, 2020). Consequently, pressure at work and inadequate decisions of the upper management are causing workers’ morale to decline, pushing the staff members to seek other occupations.
Management Theories
Walmart can utilize several management theories to increase its efficiency and effectiveness. Due to the business’s size, the versatility of employees, and unique problems, Walmart should use best practices from different methods rather than making decisions based on a single approach. In particular, Walmart should focus on basic aspects of management, which are planning, organizing, leading, controlling, and determining relevant solutions for each matter.
Planning
Walmart should plan what and how the company needs to change to resolve the internal conflict and perform better. Planning is an essential function of management that is oriented toward achieving a specific goal by assigning roles to people and providing them with necessary resources (OpenStax, 2021). Considering that Walmart’s problem is affiliated with a quarrel between the executives and lower-ranking personnel, the retailer can use Taylor’s theory of scientific management. In particular, the company could operate Taylor’s third principle suggesting that management and the workforce must cooperate instead of viewing each other as enemies (OpenStax, 2021). Consequently, Walmart can utilize the theory to communicate to all staff members that they have a common purpose of improving work conditions toward better performance.
Organizing
Upon identifying a goal, Walmart should concentrate on organizing and consider using Fayol’s theory of administrative management. Fayol’s approach is based on increasing efficiency, emphasizing flexibility, fairness, and equity (OpenStax, 2021). As a theorist, Fayol focused on the direction and coordination of an entire enterprise and prioritized knowledge and experience over tradition (OpenStax, 2021). Accordingly, Walmart can adapt Fayol’s expertise to determine new ways of organizing the company’s internal processes. For instance, as mentioned above, employee dissatisfaction at Walmart derives from the corporation’s hierarchical organizational structure, which makes decisions that satisfy executives but not regular staff members (Jiang, 2022). Therefore, Walmart can utilize Fayol’s theory of administrative management to organize the business in a way that would be attentive to all employees and increase the personnel’s commitment to Walmart.
Leading
While determining how to reorganize internal procedures, Walmart should consider the leading aspect of management. Effective leadership helps companies accomplish goals, and Walmart’s bureaucratic leadership does not seem to produce sufficient results due to discontent among workers (Jiang, 2022; Pandey et al., 2021). The situation can be explained when considering that bureaucratic management may hinder personal responsibility and initiative, preventing tasks from being completed, and limiting performance (OpenStax, 2021). Therefore, Walmart should assess how to lead the organization more efficiently by concentrating on human relations theory, which suggests that social factors are a source of power in the workplace (OpenStax, 2021). Consequently, performance can be enhanced when executives understand employees’ attitudes toward work and resolve social issues (OpenStax, 2021). Accordingly, Walmart can utilize the theory of human relations when leading the corporation toward achieving its pursuits.
Controlling
For the controlling aspect of management, Walmart should focus on evidence-based management (EBM). Theories emerge from predictions and explanations, and while EBM is rather than an idea, it is based on theoretical research and is similar to Taylor’s scientific management (OpenStax, 2021). All management theories are interconnected, and EBM encourages using managerial practices that have been tested (OpenStax, 2021). During the controlling process, managers observe employee behavior and organizational activity to evaluate the effectiveness and take corrective action when necessary (OpenStax, 2021). Consequently, Walmart can utilize the above-discussed theories to unite executives and workers during planning, organize internal procedures to be more attentive to the personnel, and lead by viewing employees as a source of power. In addition, Walmart should use RBM to control each of the reviewed aspects and suggest ways for improvement based on the most relevant findings from different approaches.
Culture and Engagement
The culture of an organization contributes to employee engagement (EE) by encouraging employees to participate in various work processes. Cultures can create systems of shared meaning between staff embers, and EE exists in an atmosphere where workers have similar values (Fidyah & Setiawati, 2019). A positive organizational culture can increase EE by supporting employees, encouraging them to input in decision-making, and facilitating growth (Parent & Lovelace, 2018). Accordingly, corporate culture contributes to EE by generating an environment where the personnel feel comfortable and strive for development.
Bad Boss Behaviors and Recommendations
Appendix A of the current projects displays the ranking for Bad Boss Behaviors, and the top three are the Creditor, the Conclusion Jumper, and the Information Disseminator. The first type takes credit for other employees’ work, the second kind makes decisions based on limited facts, and the third sort does not share all knowledge required to complete a project (Loussararian, 2013). Recommendations for Walmart’s owner to resolve the conflict between executives and employees are to recognize and appreciate each party’s effort, conclude considering both sides’ perspectives, and reveal important details to everyone involved.
References
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Jiang, Y. (2022). Motivation at work and organizational culture case study of Walmart. International Journal of Education and Technology, 3(1), 159-163.
Loussararian, E. (2013). When bosses go wild: Preventing employee morale knockouts. Eddie Loussararian.
OpenStax. (2021). Principles of management. Rice University. Web.
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