Walmart Leadership Style Essay

Walmart is an American multinational retail company that operates a chain of supermarkets, departmental discount stores, and grocery stores. It has its headquarters in Bentonville. The corporation was established in 1962 by Sam Walton. Walmart had approximately 11496 stores and 57 clubs and operated across 27 different countries around the globe. Walmart is the leading company in revenue collection across the world and the largest private employer, with about 2.2 million workers. It is a publicly-traded private company and the Walton family mainly controls it. The family owns 50 percent of Walmart through its stock corporation Walton Enterprises and their assets.

Walmart Company headed by Doug McMillon, who has served as the president and the chief executive officer since 2014. Doug is the champion of Walmart Company and has worked at the corporation for over 30 years. He is a democratic and transformational leader and uses a bureaucratic leadership style to its minimum. Doug ensures that when it comes to getting ideas, he brainstorms with his followers. This ensures that the employees at Walmart feel involved in the decision-making process of the company. He is not into dictatorship style but rather lets democracy take the day in the company. This has acquired him the liking of many of the employees at Walmart. His leadership style also focuses on making life more comfortable and building trust with his clients. The company has invested heavily in associate wages, and education and has extended the paternal leave program. The primary products and services offered by Walmart corporation include meat, bakery, frozen food, dairy produce, paper produce, dry grocery, household chemicals, health and beauty products, and electronics

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Walmart Company has a categorized functional organization structure. Instructions and directives are made from the top level of the company leadership and executed through the middle managers down to the rank and store workers. This organizational structure enables business managers to influence the entire organization positively. For instance, new policies and guidelines established at the company business headquarters are directly conceded to the local directors down to the store administrators (Martínez et al.,2017). This kind of organization in a company ensures that information is properly relayed from the top management to the employees at the bottom in a proper channel and that it is well received. This kind of organization ensures that there is no loss of information if the proper channels are followed and every person is responsible for ensuring the information is properly relayed throughout the company. Without such proper organization, the company would suffer losses as information may not reach the preferred people on time.

Walmart Company embraces both the participative leader's style and transformational leadership style. The company values the input of the team, members, and peers, but the CEO is the one who is mandated with the obligation of making the final decision. Participative leadership boosts worker morale due to their contribution to the decision-making process, which makes them feel valued in the organization. Walmart has an open-door policy, all members are encouraged to share concerns, express themselves freely, and speak their opinions, and this assists it in improving its daily operation. In Walmart, all managers are expected to take critical analysis and treat all discussions fairly. The policy is outlined in the Walton playbook(Martínez et al.,2017). This kind of leadership in Walmart has ensured that the employees throughout the company feel appreciated as their opinions are taken into consideration. They usually feel as part of the company as they are allowed to make contributions when the company is making decisions. Such a setting is beneficial to a company as the employees serve the customers well and this translates to profits for the company thus staying ahead of the competition.

In addition, Walmart embraces the transformational leadership style. This form of leadership relies on communication from the top administration to achieve its objectives. Leaders enhance production and effectiveness and inspire workers through high perceptibility and communication. The leaders mainly delegate smaller tasks to teams to achieve the company's objectives. For instance, Walmart's cheer is a powerful symbol of Walmart's team spirit and company philosophy(Martínez et al.,2017). This form of leadership is associated with Walton, which mainly aims at motivating employees to be more productive in their jobs. Leaders must monitor the employees to perform their roles in an appropriate way to achieve the company goal.

The primary duties and responsibilities of the leader in Walmart are to make significant corporate decisions, manage the entire operation and company resources act as the primary source of information amid the board of directors and the corporate operation, and act as the public face of the corporation. Doug also motivates and grooms the other managers and CEO by imparting Walmart values and mentoring them in cases of challenges; he leads the change management and includes the adoption of the technology. The CEO is also in charge of building collaborative relationships with managers and members and supports the implementation of business innovation (Martínez et al.,2017).

Walmart CEO has worked for Walmart for approximately 30 years since he was a youth, from 2005 to 2009 he served as the director and manager of Sam's Club. Doug has worked for Walmart for approximately 30 years since he was a youth from 2005 to 2009. McMillon has earned recognition for reviving Walmart's momentum and notching its twentieth straight center of the same-store growth at the store in the United States (Heller, 2017). The retail department also earned extensive coverage in the last three years when it increased the salaries and raised the training hours of its employees. Walmart has also been at the forefront of sustainability initiatives. The chief executive officer is committed to keeping corporate roundtable CEOs at the lead of productive public strategy as they pursue the agenda of development and opportunities for all Americans. Hence McMillon aspired to be the leader within the company, his hard work and commitment have made him rise from being a general worker to the chief executive position.

Walmart's CEO is the highest-ranked official in the company, followed by the vice presidents, the executive vice presidents, and the senior vice presidents. These executives are in charge of organizing, planning, commanding, and controlling leadership in the company. The human resource department of Walmart Company is stratified in terms of the programs and solutions developed and applied (Bepko, 2020). Every store has its specific human resource personnel in charge of the administration of the store. This ensures that each department works properly and that there is no confusion when it comes to handling responsibilities. To analyze change in the staff, the company automates the process through the application of special software. In addressing the shortage or surplus of the workforce, the company uses its information system to find out which areas of the institution have increased demand in the human resource areas and the areas that have surplus staff. With this, they are able to know which are has a lot of staff and which one is understaffed. This gives them the opportunity to correct this. To reduce the cases of harassment in the workplace, the human resources department has developed a learning session that precisely addresses workplace provocation. All levels of employees are required to attend

According to McMillon, the most important thing to him as a leader is transformation. He feels that leaders should lead from the front. Leaders should be curious and ready to learn, and these will enable them to come up with new ideas besides changes that bring outgrowth, and any meaningful change cannot occur without risk. People should get comfortable with an intellectual level of risk. To him, his foremost priority is for the long-term success of the company. Any company that focuses on short-term achievement is set to fail. The biggest challenge faced by McMillon is that most people are not ready to embrace change. As a transformative company, Walmart encourages innovation in all its processes. The company is focused on utilizing both existing and emerging technology to serve its, customers, better. According to the CEO, the emerging technologies will make the company work differently in product management, trade, and improving business leadership. The company has improved most of its processes and aims to empower its associates in the utilization of advanced technological equipment.

In conclusion, Walmart is a publicly traded private corporation and the leading company in revenue collection across the globe. This is a company that is properly organized from top management to the lower-level employees. This organization has enabled the company to have an edge over its competitors and also make profits. The top management of the organization has the mandate to plan, organize, and control the company process to accomplish its goal. The primary responsibilities of leaders in Walmart are to make the major business decisions and to manage the entire operation and the company resources. The company utilizes both the participative and transformational leadership styles, where they involve their subordinates and peers in decision-making. This makes all the staff at Walmart feel appreciated and a part of the company.