Walmart organisational structure and chart

Walmart introduction:

Walmart as a company was established in the year 1962 by Sam Walton in Rogers, A.R. with the motto “We save people money so that they can live better”. The company is an American international and has its headquarters based at Bentonville, Arkansas. It also has a chain of departmental stores, grocery stores along with hypermarkets. The stores of the company also have their own Sam’s Club warehouses. The status of the company's establishment can be judged with the fact that In October 2019, more than eleven thousand Walmart stores were operating with different names in approximately 27 countries of the world. The stores can be seen running with the names Walmart in Canada and America, Asda in the U.S, whereas it is known by the name of the Best price in India.

Further, the major products of the company include all kinds of groceries, pharmacy products, optical centres, cell phone stores, as well as fast food products. In addition to this, it is also planning to open gasoline stations at some of its business locations in the world.

Walmart organisational structure and chart:

Presently, Dough McMillian is the President and CEO of the company. His leadership is known to benefit the company progressively. It is under his guidance that the company has climbed up the wall of success (THE ORG, 2019). Thus, the company has a formal and bureaucratic structure where the CEO makes all the significant decisions for the company.

Further, the business structure of the company is divided into three significant sections such as Logistics, Real Estate and Store Operations. All these sectors are headed by different leaders. A standard process of functional departmentalisation of business areas at different locations is done. This allows a clear top to bottom flow of commands among various departments. Further, the CEO of the company is at a significant position who is responsible to take many initiatives. These are further directed to enhance customer services through trained employees. The organisation follows a management style model, which embraces the business strategy based on the principles of Sam Walton. In this particular strategy, principal executives of the company are responsible for maintaining a good relationship with the customers. As already discussed, there are three significant divisions of Walmart, and all these divisions have separate executives (Panmore Institute, 2019). The given figure shows the organisational chart of Walmart. It showcases the president and CEO of Walmart Store, I.e. Dough McMillon as the most imperative personnel of the company, who has the authority to implement policies and take decisions (Cliffordmichealhampton.weebly, 2019).

Further, among the three significant divisions, the first one is Walmart U.S. It’s President and CEO is John Furner. He possesses the responsibility to manage all the operations of Walmart stores in the country. He also ensures that relationships with customers are maintained at all levels.

Moving on, the second among the three is Walmart International, whose President and CEO is Judith McKenna. He is responsible for maintaining all the stores outside the country (THE ORG, 2019). Then comes Kathryn McLay who is President and CEO of the third division, i.e. Sam’s club. He is responsible for maintaining the warehouses at different locations. He also works for the better and timely supply of products to all  Walmart stores for attaining high customer satisfaction.

In addition to the executives of these three major divisions, there is Marc Lore who is the president as well as CEO of Walmart eCommerce and technology in the U.S. Thus, these members of four divisions come under the direct authority of Dough McMillon and are answerable to him for all their tasks.

Walmart hierarchy analysis:

As the above chart shows, there is a hierarchical structure followed in the organisation where the CEO of Walmart Stores has all the power in his hands. Further, this structure is also function-based. The hierarchical feature shows that there is a vertical chain of command or authority practised all across the organisational structure. This is truly evident with the fact that all departments have a CEO, who is at the leading position. He is the one who directs the subordinates under him who controls the performance of further employees. To state in simple words, it is the senior management of the company, which takes necessary decisions and implements the same till the lower levels with the help of middle managers (Panmore Institute, 2019). Furthermore, the functional characteristic of Walmart represents that the employees at lower levels are divided into groups with respect to the functions performed by them. To further illustrate, there are functional departments of human resource management at various divisions, finance departments, IT department and marketing department, at different divisions.

Moreover, the main feature of this hierarchical structure is that managers withhold the prime responsibility in effectively operating all the functions. For instance, whenever the top management frames a new policy, it gets passed to different regional managers and then to the store managers. This structure ensures effective control over various functions. However, this type of structure is not flexible, and there is a lengthy communication procedure which further adds to the difficulty level.

The above figure shows the organisational hierarchy structure of Walmart at the store level. It depicts that store managers are the principal members under whom there exist general managers and co-managers at the second level. Further, at the third level, there are support managers, customer’s services supervisors, cashiers at stores, sales assistance etc. These are hourly working employees at various stores. Moreover, this structure stands in favour of the organisation due to its massive size and business diversifications in multiple countries. The company has over 2.2 million people working at its different stores. This is why the hierarchical structure is the most suitable working structure for it (Dudovskiy, 2019).

Thus, in a nutshell, it can be said, that the CEO of Walmart stores is at the top authority under whom there are presidents of other main three divisions. There is also a list of other chief executives such as CFO, COO CCO, a general counsel who come under him (THE ORG, 2019). This structure is then followed by the board of directors, which are ten in numbers and these are responsible to take any decision related to the company.

The importance of organisational structure is such that organisations around the world make sure to follow one or other organisational structure. Organisation structure helps the companies to break barriers and take organisational growth to a new level. This is only possible if the structure is right as improper structuring can lead to failures. Further, you, as a student, get several relative college assignments. To ace in these assignments, you sometimes need to depend on someone. That someone can be us, in case of online assignment help as we at Assignmenthelp4me, provide the best assignment help to the students across the globe. We are committed to your needs as our customers.

References:

• Dudovskiy, J. (2019). Walmart Leadership and Walmart Organizational Structure - Research-Methodology. Retrieved 31 December 2019, from https://research-methodology.net/walmart-leadership-and-walmart-organizational-structure/
• Panmore Institute. (2019). Walmart: Organizational Structure & Organizational Culture - Panmore Institute. Retrieved 31 December 2019, from http://panmore.com/walmart-organizational-structure-organizational-culture
• ORG. (2019). Walmart - Org chart | The Org. Retrieved 31 December 2019, from https://theorg.com/org/walmart
• Cliffordmichealhampton.weebly. (2019). Retrieved 31 December 2019, from https://cliffordmichealhampton.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/8/2/10829496/327_group_6_presentation.pdf