Walmart and Innovative Management
Prepare an individual case analysis report (for submission). “New Improved Walmart Hits No.1 in Midst of Global Recession”
1. Why is innovative management important and how have Walmart’s leaders demonstrated innovation throughout the company’s history?
Innovative management is important simply because of the fast-changing times. Old management styles that used to be efficient and effective before no longer apply in today’s changing world. Because of these changing times, human behaviours in any organization also change. The used-to be timid and push-driven workers, have now turned into liberated, open-minded and outspoken employees that are free to plug in their opinions whether their managers seek them or not.
In the Walmart Case, there were two major scenarios that they faced and in each scenario, they have bullied these issues also with two innovative management strategies to hurdle and eventually rise above these challenges.
The First Scenario was the turbulent economic landscape where employment was palsied and bankruptcy of organizations and institutions was commonplace. Walmart’s countermeasure was a direct answer to the issue – an economist strategy to an economic problem. As the case implied, it launched it’s “recession, defying...retail formula: unbeatable low prices”. Any economic or business literate person can readily predict Walmart’s sound strategies to achieving this impossible mission feat, in an upside-down economic predicament, that is, economies of scale (“high volume purchasing”); “ultra-efficient logistics and advance supply chain technology”. Genius! Walmart created a harmonized dichotomy of the economic world. They have defied gravity and proven that indeed, despite the challenges of the times, there are always new ways of doing things.
The Second Scenario was the “powerful opposition from competitors”, coupled with political, legal and socio-psychological battle from a seemingly ungrateful part of the population that had
1. Why is innovative management important and how have Walmart’s leaders demonstrated innovation throughout the company’s history?
Innovative management is important simply because of the fast-changing times. Old management styles that used to be efficient and effective before no longer apply in today’s changing world. Because of these changing times, human behaviours in any organization also change. The used-to be timid and push-driven workers, have now turned into liberated, open-minded and outspoken employees that are free to plug in their opinions whether their managers seek them or not.
In the Walmart Case, there were two major scenarios that they faced and in each scenario, they have bullied these issues also with two innovative management strategies to hurdle and eventually rise above these challenges.
The First Scenario was the turbulent economic landscape where employment was palsied and bankruptcy of organizations and institutions was commonplace. Walmart’s countermeasure was a direct answer to the issue – an economist strategy to an economic problem. As the case implied, it launched it’s “recession, defying...retail formula: unbeatable low prices”. Any economic or business literate person can readily predict Walmart’s sound strategies to achieving this impossible mission feat, in an upside-down economic predicament, that is, economies of scale (“high volume purchasing”); “ultra-efficient logistics and advance supply chain technology”. Genius! Walmart created a harmonized dichotomy of the economic world. They have defied gravity and proven that indeed, despite the challenges of the times, there are always new ways of doing things.
The Second Scenario was the “powerful opposition from competitors”, coupled with political, legal and socio-psychological battle from a seemingly ungrateful part of the population that had