How does Walmart Stores organization involve its stakeholders in decisions?
Unlike other organizations, which tend to focus on a single type of stakeholders and make important decisions based solely on the profitability of the company, Wal-Mart invites all stakeholders to participate in decision making. According to the company’s policy, it is imperative that both customers and the company’s members should have equal rights to alter the course of the company’s development and define the further changes in the products that the company supplies to the target market. According to the statement issued by the organization, by inviting its key stakeholders to join the decision-making process, the organization helps not only the customers but also the rest of the people involved choose what is right for them in a specific economic environment (Walmart 2014 responsibility report, 2014).
What has been your experience? What do stakeholders report?
As a rule, stakeholders report the issues that are related directly to their benefit and the issues that they face when using the company’s services, contacting with its staff, working for it, or creating a partnership with Wal-Mart. While the specified effect is quite expected due to the significance of self-interest in the market environment (April 1st is no joke to Walmart suppliers, 2014), it is still desirable that the people involved should consider the situation from an objective viewpoint.
The analysis of rather subjective opinions, however, allows for embracing the variety of the existing viewpoints on a specific issue. Therefore, the approach, which Wal-Mart adopts in order to acquire and process the opinions of different stakeholders, can be considered impeccable, as it helps make every single viewpoint into consideration. Thus, the solutions that the company chooses for addressing a specific dilemma are found satisfactory by all those involved, including not only customers but also the staff and the company’s partners.
How do the reports of the different stakeholder groups differ?
A closer look at the reports submitted by the stakeholders involved in the process of decision-making will show that customers focus on the price of the product, for the most part, pointing at the necessity to create more coupons for various products. The company’s partners, in their turn, consider the issues that address the long-term goals of the organization; specifically, the problems related to the financial security and Wal-Mart’s key competitors are often touched upon in the responses to the surveys created by Wal-Mart. The staff of the organization also takes the financial aspect of the organization’s operations quite seriously, addressing the need to increase salaries.
How does Walmart Stores Organization manage opposing stakeholder interests?
Although most of the stakeholders contribute to the development of the company consistently and significantly, a range of claims set up by the stakeholders involved, revolving around their own needs, conflict with the interests and needs of the organization. Therefore, Wal-Mart needs to oppose certain interests of the stakeholders involved, at the same time managing to strive in the competitive environment. Therefore, the organization implements the negotiation strategy based on compromise as its key tool in decision making (Zhang & Wei, 2013).
How do corporate values and vision affect their decisions?
The corporate values and vision of Wal-Mart define its decision-making strategy to a considerable degree. Particularly, the fact that the organization takes the opinions of all stakeholders involved can be considered the effect of the organization’s values being put into practice. Seeing that Wal-Mart views the process of communication with its key stakeholders (Davis, 2007), as well as meeting the demands thereof, its top priority, the decisions made by the company are determined mostly by the values accepted in the organization.
Reference List
April 1st is no joke to Walmart suppliers. (2014). Imec.
Davis, D. (2007). Corporate reputation management, The Wal-Mart way: exploring effective strategies in the global market place. Texas A&M University. Web.
Walmart 2014 responsibility report. (2014). Wal-Mart. Web.
Zhang, N. & Wei, G. (2013). Extension of VIKOR method for decision making problem based on hesitant fuzzy set. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 37(7), 4938–4947.