Organizational_Planning

In the Organizational Planning assignment Wal-Mart was the company that was used. Wal-Mart was chosen because the organization has continued to successfully reach the companies goals in spite of economic challenges. Wal-Mart’s mission “help people save money so they can live better” and vision “Always low prices, always!” tells customers that they will always keep lower prices, maintaining loyalty to continue to be competitive in the market (Wal-Mart 2012). The leaders that have been assigned to lead Wal-Mart have developed and abided by strategic plans in order to decide what standards that should be utilized in achieving company goals. According to Robbins and Coulter (2012) managers could choose to three possible courses of actions; do nothing, correct the performance, or revise standards. If Wal-Mart chooses to do nothing this will insinuate that the leadership skills will reflect as being poor, and the company will not benefit from this. By correcting the issues that the company is having with performance, it is imperative to give employees the opportunity to be retrained and coach and enforcing disciplinary actions if changes have not been made. In order to stay on task and maintain lower prices, customer satisfaction as well as ensuring that prices stay low, must continue. By continuous planning and measuring the performance of Wal-Mart, the company will stay ranked as being the most profitable, largest, retail sales provider. Upon evaluation improvements can be made in merchandise. By implementing standards in reference to demanding suppliers to supply better quality, improvements can be made in the merchandise area. Customers look at quality, and if the quality of the merchandise that the company is receiving is poor, then either the current companies have to change the quality of the product, or there is a possibility that the supplier needs to change. To evaluate the company’s goals, managers will need to have a control process. This entails “the process of monitoring, comparing, and correcting performances” (Robinson & Coulter, 2012, p. 4). Wal-Mart managers would value from obtaining personal observations and statistical reports. By utilizing the personal observation reports managers will have visuals on the status of each department, and the interaction that the departments have with the customer’s and ensuring that the customers are satisfied. Another measure to consider is the company’s goals, and to compare performance against the standard. This is also known as the range of variation. This is important because this will give insight on the goals on a regular basis. After evaluating the performances and comparing this performance against the standard, the last measure to consider in evaluating the goals would be to look at managerial actions. Benchmarking is “the search for the best practices among competitors or non-competitors that lead to superior performance” (Robinson & Coulter, 2012, p. 12). Due to the recent increase in market, there are other competitors that Wal-Mart has to be mindful of. Wal-Mart has chance to improve the company performance by providing membership discount cards, implementing brand name products, and increasing online sales. The benchmarking tool gives Wal-Mart a chance to observe what the competitors are offering and making the necessary changes to enhance the performance. In addition Wal-Mart can further improve the organizational goals by planning and measuring performance internally and externally. References Robinson, S. P. (2012). Management (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Wal-Mart. (2012). Community Giving. Retrieved from http://foundation.walmart.com