Managment Audit of Wal-Mart Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Managment Audit of Wal-Mart - Essay Example A management audit would help to determine whether Wal-Mart is a destructive force or is good for the local economy. While it is generally believed that a population of 100,000 was necessary for a discount store to be viable Wal-Mart argued that if prices were right, the stores could attract people from a wider area (Grant, 2002). Wal-Mart chose isolated rural towns and national brands at low prices. Each store of Wal-Mart has the discretion to place orders with the vendors directly and receive supplies also directly. This strategy of decentralization leads to efficiency in terms of time and administrative costs apart from making the employees feel ‘associates’ and not wage earners. Wal-Mart has the image of a friendly, all-American company employing happy workers and smiling greeters who are eager to help and grateful to work at Wal-Mart (Bianchi & Swinney, 2004). Wal-Mart started off as an entrepreneurial venture but Wal-Mart’s Sam Walton, while constantly upgrading and expanding did not ignore the need to identify and groom a successor. A corporate culture encourages the employees and managers to consider the customer the focus of business. The customer is the king was the policy at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has helped to hold down inflation in US. Wal-Mart is responsible for about 12% of the economy’s productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s (Fishman, 2003). Wal-Mart believes in constantly learning and improving, conscious of the fact that competitors would stay. They are always alert at finding and implementing new retail concepts. They concentrate on each store depending on its location. The merchandise is available according to the need of that community. The associate in charge of that store is given incentives to plan out promotional campaigns for a given period for the product suitable to local adaptation. Human resource management is a stronghold of Wal-Mart as right from the inception they did not believe in