Assess the structure of WALMART. Particular attention is to be paid to the principles of bureaucracy and identifying if the business is mechanistically or organically structured.
1. How differentiated is your organization? Is it simple or complex? List the major roles, functions, or departments in your organization. Does your organization have many divisions? If your organization engages in many businesses, list the major divi- sions in the company.
2. What core competences make your organization unique or different from other or- ganizations? What are the sources of the core competences? How difficult do you think it would be for other organizations to imitate these distinctive competences?
3. How has your organization responded to the design challenges? (a) Is it central- ized or decentralized? How do you know? (b) Is it highly differentiated? Can you identify any integrating mechanisms used by your organization? What is the match between the complexity of differentiation and the complexity of the integrating mechanisms that are used? (c) Is behavior in the organization very standardized, or does mutual adjustment play an important role in coordinating people and activities? What can you tell about the level of formalization by looking at the number and kinds of rules the organization uses? How important is socialization in your organization?
4. Does your analysis in item 3 lead you to think that your organization conforms more to the organic or to the mechanistic model of organizational structure? Briefly explain why you think it is organic or mechanistic.
5. From your analysis so far, what do you think could be done to improve the way your organization operates?
Sample Solution
