the universal exchange of goods and services
Introduction
Over the past decades, the universal exchange of goods and services has surged from 30 percent to 60 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP). Due to globalization, the universal supply chain automatically connects the suppliers of manufacturers’ resources and components, thus fueling the economic engine of universal economic activities. One of the renowned multinational companies is Walmart, a giant retail organization across the universe. The organization takes pride in serving more than 270 million customers worldwide. All too often, this organization is used as a benchmark by other companies in the retail industry. Notably, Walmart did not just become a well-known business overnight. The organization has grown dramatically from a small local business to what is now, an international venture that serves its customers with quality products. Walmart, being the massive company that it is, focuses on providing exemplary customer service and improving its businesses strategies to enable it achieve a competitive advantage in the dynamic market. This growth is attributed to several factors, which have contributed to the expansion. Therefore, this paper seeks to discuss global organizations in regards to globalization, motivation, and leadership aspects. The paper will further discuss the current and future challenges of the organization, and provide recommendations to address these issues.
Globalization
Globalization, according to ( ), is the process of conducting a business across national bounderies. Notably, this process involves the interlinking of markets and economic structures ,thus forming a universal market and economy. For this reason, organizations intend to explore the opportunities presented by globalization. As mentioned earlier, Walmart is a multinational organization that serves more than 270 million worldwide. The supply chain of this organization has gone beyond national boundaries. Since international ventures presents vast opportunities to businesses. Organizations are seeking to cross the border and establish their businesses beyond their mother boundaries. Although Walmart started as a small grocery in 1962, the business has expanded its operations globally. By employing more than 2.3 million individuals, the organization has greatly contributed to the stabilization of the world economy. Overall, Walmart’s great success is attributed to its efforts to align with the globalization strategies. The socio-Cultural factors that influence globalization include social institutions, beliefs, attitudes, population, tastes and preferences, and dominating value structures.
Globalization of markets is usually influenced be several factors. For instance, economic aspects such as taxation rate, exchange rate, and level of income influence the rate of an organization’s globalization. Markedly, the acceptance of the United States dollar as the dominant currency for all international currencies has enabled multinational organizations to fully embrace globalization, since it is manageable to carry out international transactions. Organizations whose marketing strategies align with the people’s socio-cultural beliefs and practices are more likely to thrive. Since Walmart organization acknowledges this fact, it continues to provide products that are mostly preferred by its customers. To note, the marketing team at Walmart conducts an extensive research on what their customers needs are. The team then analyzes this information critically before establishing a plan to meet these needs. By meeting these needs, the organization attracts more customers and continues to expand, even beyond national boundaries. The government system and political stability also plays a key role in enhancing globalization. Even though the regulatory bodies and policies in several countries differ, having a politically stable government helps to maintain a good relationship between nations, hence laying a suitable basis for globalization. Since time immemorial, Walmart has aligned itself with the global political aspects, thus continues to expand successfully without major political hindrances.
As organizations expand their businesses beyond national boundaries, they continue to enjoy the benefits of this process. As mentioned earlier, globalization presents vast opportunities to businesses, hence continue to motivate organizations to invest further. Since growth is one of the major goals of any organization, globalization allows companies to expand intensively. Through globalization, Walmart has continued to grow in terms of profits, market share, and base assets. After fully exploiting the local market, Walmart organization decided to exploit the international market, thus serving more customers than those available locally. With this strategy, the organization continue to make more sales, thus more revenues and profits. Since employees play a major role in the realization of an organization’s objectives, Walmart’s decision to go internationally has boosted its human resource. Through globalization, organizations explore diverse skills and talents, which eventually foster the creativity in the organization. Globalization also boosts innovation and the adoption of new ideas and technological aspects. Since innovation is vital for the survival of any venture, Walmart has continuously explored possible innovative techniques that have enabled the organization to navigate through the dynamic and competitive global market. For instance, the organization has an e-commerce system, which enables it to serve different customers without forcing them to access the physically located enterprises. Since customers are able to access product at their convenience, they tend to cling to such organizations, which serve them at their comfort.
Challenges of globalization
Even though globalization presents beneficial opportunities to organizations, there are several threats that multinational companies face. For instance, developing human resource systems that address a diverse workforce is a challenge. Walmart, in its history, has faced labor relations issues which have resulted in strikes, thus affecting the operations of the organization. The shortage of essential skills in multinational organizations also forces them to incur extra costs in conducting trainings for their employees. This process negatively affects the organization’s budget. Globalization not only poses financial threats to multinational companies but also poses competition issues. Although a company may be successful within the local region, it may face stiff competition from other companies universally, thus driving weak organizations off the market.
Motivation
Motivation plays a crucial role in driving employees towards achieving a company’s goal effectively. It is the fuel that governs human dedication to accomplish given tasks. According to Jensen (2018), the quality of work expressed by an employee is dependent on the amount of motivation expressed by the organization. Arguably, organizations have different methods of motivating their employees to ensure they are comfortable and satisfied. Walmart organization has various employee motivation techniques to ensure its employees are satisfied and express good quality work that has seen the business grow over the years. Employee happiness and satisfaction are crucial factors in any successful business (Ferrell, Hirt, and Ferrell, 2020). Walmart is known for its unique dedication to its employees. The management in this business believes that every other person, including the customers and shareholders, will automatically be satisfied when employee concerns are addressed. Since employee productivity is more of a voluntary course than mandatory, employee satisfaction should be mandatory (Jensen, 2018). For instance, employees’ productivity will be lowered if they have a negative attitude towards their boss, product, or business. Therefore, Walmart Organization has given its employees a satisfying pay, health care benefits, and extensive training.
Notably, there are different methods to ensure there is employee motivation within an organization. One of the key techniques is employee empowerment. Through giving employees responsibilities and the power to make some decisions, they acquire self-motivation to accomplish their tasks and generally improve their performance. By creating an open communication channel, an organization allows the employees to approach their seniors regarding any issue. This strategy is beneficial to the organization since it makes it easier for management to appropriately address employee concerns. As can be mentioned, Walmart organization makes decisions that favor its employees, even in difficult times. From giving the employees extensive training to giving employees access to the company’s data such as financial reports, it demonstrates its commitment to employee motivation and satisfaction. Markedly, employee motivation directly relates to customer satisfaction and loyalty. For instance, a customer who has a negative experience by relating with the employee of an organization will not see the employee as the only bad figure; they’ll consider the entire organization as non-friendly and in worse cases, tarnish the organization’s name. With the contemporary technology, it is easier to spread the word about how one’s experience with a certain organization has been, thus influence people across the universe to avoid dealing with the same organizations. Whether the company is thriving or shaking, it is essential for companies to ensure they continuously motivate their employees. With globalization, it is easier for employees to feel demotivated, especially if they are deployed to foreign locations. However, if the organization identifies a way, such as providing financial and emotional assistance to support their employees, there will be a smooth transitioning and the employees will be motivated to explore the new opportunities.
Challenges and recommendations for employee motivation
Although employee motivation plays a key role in the successful operation of any businesses, it poses several challenges to the organization. For instance, some motivation techniques such as employee empowerment, which gives employees the power to make decisions, could result in unending wrangles among employees, especially if there is a second or third opinion regarding the decision. To address such issues, motivational factors for the future should be considered. These factors include social responsibilities, collaborative rewards, transparency, and feedbacks.
Leadership
Organizational leadership is a key component in ensuring the operations of a business run effectively. Arguably, there are limited explanations on how globalization has impacted leadership. Moreover, there are no universally accepted set of skills and practices that govern leadership in the global market, to ensure that there is uniformity in the process. As Farrell, Hirt, and Farrell, 2020 posit, poor leadership within an organization can result in adverse effects, that could lead to the downfall of a business. Therefore, leaders ought to have managerial skills, which play a vital role in guiding their employees on a day-to-day basis. Since employees look up to leaders, there is need for leaders to showcase these essential skills to influence the people and impact the organization to its highest possible level. These skills include problem-solving skills, decision making skills, team work and team building, use of integrity and transparency aspects, spreading the organizational vision, and identifying innovation opportunities whenever they arise. Additionally, leaders require conceptual skills,technical skills, analytical skills, and human relations skills to help them deal with the global managerial issues, regardless of how complicated they may seem. The leaders at Walmart organization continue to showcase these skills, which help them to control the organization’s operations and identify problems or challenges in the different organization’s functions. The leaders at Walmart also maintain a good relationship with the relevant stakeholders. Through the human relations skills, they are able to understand how human beings behave, communicate, and relate with each other. As a resultthey are able to maintain a good interrelation between customers, employees, and other reklevant parties.
Since the contemporary world is increasingly becoming interconnected, the concept of leadership has been altered. For instance, there is need to recruit the best candidates who will enable organizations to thrive in a globalized environment. Notably, people have different beliefs and cultures, therefore leaders ought to be smart when dealing with multinational companies.
Challenges and recommendations regarding global leadership
Global leaders continue to face political, social, cultural, technical, environmental and legal challenges in the global environment. These leaders also have a challenge with sustainability and ethical issues across national boundaries. There have been transformations in political power, with inequalities in marginalized countries. As a result, leaders find it difficult to maneuver and successfully achieve the organizational goals. Additionally, due to the difference in financial systems across different nations, leaders may be torn between clinging to the organizational culture or do the necessary amendments for the survival of the business. To address the challenges facing global leadership, there is a need for organizational leaders to actively participate in plans and activities that protect universal resources and the environment, while avoiding the exploitation of other nations at their expense. Leaders also ought to build bridges that aim at uniting people from different cultures through common values, as opposed to building walls that demeans other people and denying them their rights.
Walmart’s Current Situation
Walmart, being the largest retailer in the world, has managed to maintain opportunism and flexibility within a broad spectrum in the dynamic market. Over the past decades, the organization has aggressively pursued globalization, which has seen the company grow its sales and profits, thus satisfying capital market anticipations. Since the organization has customers across the world, it has dedicated itself to offer the unique services to ensure it meets the customer needs and satisfaction. One of the advantages that this organization has is that it offers its products at a lower price, yet still makes profits. This process is possible due to the fact that the organization has an every-day-low-price policy, which allows its customers to acquire their products at an affordable rate. As a result, the organization attracts more customers, and as the customers increase, the sales go up, and more revenue is achieved. Another advantage that Walmart has is that it has embraced a marketing mix that allows it to operate globally without facing challenges. The marketing mix consists of the 4P’s (Product, price, promotion, and place). Regarding the product, the organization seeks to provide unique products that meet and exceed the expectations of its customers. Their price is usually lowered; hence customers can acquire them at an affordable rate without straining financially. The organization has a promotional plan that covers all customers worldwide. Through technology, Walmart is able to advertise its product and create a public relations plan that reaches all its customers. Walmart has managed to establish the business in different physical locations. Therefore, people can access their products easily. Besides this advantage, the organization has also embraced e-commerce, where all the products available at the physical shops are available online. This digital process allows customers to access the products, regardless of their location. Additionally, customers can just order their products and get them delivered at their own convenience. Arguably, local businesses limit their opportunities of growing and achieving more revenue. By going global, Walmart has beat this limitation and exploited the vast opportunities presented by globalization.
Since the contemporary market is characterized by a struggling economic environment, more retailers, regardless of their organizational size, are seeking global markets to sustain their growth and survival. As this trend continues it is anticipated that there will be more competition in the industry, and only the best, strong, and unique businesses will be able to survive and thrive. For this reason, it is important that Walmart organization creates a strategic plan that will enable it to maintain its position as the world’s best and largest retailers. For instance, the company should focus its plans and resources on areas where there is potential growth and expansion. Another recommendation on how Walmart should proceed is that the organization should continue identifying weaker companies that are more likely to have an effective approach. Walmart should then assess these and acquire them, and later turn them to powerhouse organizations within a short time. Since Walmart has already built a brand name, it will be easier for these organizations to be recognized, and also gain a competitive advantage in the market, just like the mother company.
To maintain its position, Walmart should continue to be creative and innovative in its ideas and efforts to make international stores well equipped with good quality products, and continue with its trend of lowered costs. Since this organization does not fully depend on a specific vendor, it should continue with this trend. Relying on only one vendor can pose threats to the supply chain of a business, resulting in its downfall. With new technological approaches, distributors are now operating through laser-guided conveyed belts and cross-docking techniques to receive and deliver products effectively. Walmart should embrace this technology to save the time, efforts, and cost incurred during the distribution processes.
Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, Walmart is one of the largest retailers across the universe. This organization started as a small grocery store and embraced globalization, which has led to its growth and more success. As businesses seek opportunities beyond National boundaries, the global market continues to grow and globalization is encountered. Since Walmart organization embraced globalization decades ago, the organization has been able to employ millions of people, thus promoting the global economy. It also serves customers across the globe, who continually enjoy good quality products at affordable prices. The success of this organization is attributed to the management, who execute appropriate managerial skills govern the organization’s operations of this organization. The leadership in this organization also plays an important role in creating a harmony between the diverse cultures, attitudes, and beliefs experienced by globalization. As a result, all its employees and customers are catered for. The organization also motivates its employees through different techniques. For instance, employees are rewarded for their good work, there are promotions, acknowledgment, and other benefits. Employees comfort and satisfaction are also given priority, thus motivating them to continue working.In conclusion,