Wal-Mart Case Study

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1. What were the main elements of the control system that Sam Walton created?

It is evident that Sam Walton believed in the importance of control systems in an organization; as he established certain strategic control systems in the company. Walton wanted everyone within the organization to be committed to Wal-Mart's goal "total customer satisfaction", and the strategic control systems were set accordingly.

There are various elements of control systems used in Wal-Mart which are:

Personal Control

An example is when there is an underperforming store; top managers visit these stores in order to lend their expertise to the employees there. Moreover, they fly on monthly basis to various Wal-Mart stores locations to check their performance.

Output Control

The company managers and even associates can share financial information through a sophisticated companywide satellite system including store profits and inventory turnover rates.

Behaviour Control

There is a system of behaviour control in the company such as rules and budget in order to shape and predict employees' behaviour. Each store performs the same activities in the same way, and all employees receive the same type of training in order to behave in the same way with customers. This is how Wal-Mar was able to standardize its operations and therefore save a lot of extra costs.

Using Information Technology

IT control systems are integrated with almost with all the other control systems. For example, Wal-Mart has a sophisticated satellite system used for their output control systems.

Strategic Rewarding Systems

The company is using a linking performance to reward strategy in order to raise performance; where managers' performance and ability to meet goal...

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...he largest lawsuit in history, where 1,600,000 women proved that they suffered gender discrimination as employees of the company since 1998.

In my opinion, the above control systems allowed Wal-Mart more and more growth; and although they were very successful and doing very well they used unethical ways of achieving even higher profitability because of being very greedy. They have so many successful control systems that make their business even four times more profitable than their biggest competitor, therefore they shouldn't go around violating lows and workers' rights in order to make more money and break customers' trust.

References:

Viskovich, Julio. "How Wal-Mart really works". Helium.

Ribeiro, Silvia . "The costs of Walmartization". ZNet.

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