This document provides an overview of Walmart's Saturday Morning Meetings and how they helped establish and maintain the company's culture. It discusses how founder Sam Walton would use these meetings to openly share store performance data with employees, solicit their feedback, and make immediate decisions. Though the meetings grew large, becoming less effective over time, they played a key role in fostering an environment of transparency, teamwork and rapid responsiveness. The document also examines some challenges Walmart now faces in upholding its culture as it has grown into a massive public corporation.

1. Group Presentation
WAL- MART’S WORLD

2. Overview

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer which maintains its corporate
culture across all of its 4,000 stores and with sales of $288 billion in
fiscal year 2004. The legendary Saturday Morning Meeting is part of
the answer how this giant promote and persevere its image as a
small-town store where the customer is king

Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart started the Saturday Morning
Meeting of Wal-Mart’s who thought it unfair that he could take off on
the weekends while his employees worked. Meeting being held at
the home office in Bentoville, Arkansas.

During the meeting, He would analyze the previous week’s records
to determine which merchandise is selling and how sales were faring

He would hold a quick meeting with his associates (work associates
and employees) to openly share the store’s information with them.

Other important purpose of the meeting is to convey to his
employees that he valued their input and wanted them to learn the
business.

Some 600 managers attend each Saturday morning, pack the 400seat auditorium, waiting for the arrival of their fearless leader, Sam
Walton

3. 
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Though Saturday Morning Meeting topics typically
include the company’s financial
performance, merchandising, and areas of
improvement, the meeting is above all else, a means to
keep the company and its employees as close knit as
possible.
This team spirit is essential to Wal-Mart’s strategy of
quick market response
According to former CEO David Glass, Saturday
Morning meeting was always a decision-making
meeting to take corrective action, and that the rule of
thumb was that by noon they wanted all the corrections
made in the store
Friday merchandising meeting – another meeting to
maintain company culture of Wal-Mart where regional
vice presidents as well as employees get together to
discuss what products are saleable
Since Wal-Mart is viewed as a large, impersonal
organization, one employee
thought of the idea of
a greeter who puts on a friendly smile

4. Maintaining Wal-Mart’s has not always been easy
 In the late 1980’s and early 1990s , Attendance at
the Saturday Morning meetings grew so large
making it impossible for everyone to speak.
 So the CEO during that time, David Glass, recalls
complaints of boredom. So the suppliers, eager to
impress themselves begun bringing in entertainers
like singer Garth Brooks.
 The meeting however has begun to lose focus.
The CEO later invited guests like Bill Clinton and
CEOs who had more educational value


5. Biggest problem of Wal-Mart: Public Scrutiny that
comes with being the world’s largest company
 In the past, the company had tolerance for employee’s
mistakes, for example it would strongly reprimand an
employee who made an offhand sexist remark, but if the
employee changes his/her attitude, then the company
will let him/her stay
 Today, however, Wal-Mart adheres to a stricter
policy as the current CEO Lee Scott explains that
“the company is less kind but not mean. Today, when
you find somebody doing something wrong, you not
only have to let them go, you have to document it so it
is covered and people understand. That is a bit of
culture change.
 Wal-Mart is now a company that operates in a different
context than when Sam Walton was alive and when
David Glass ran the company.


6. CEO Scott’s role, besides focusing on driving sales, has to
be eliminating constant raging of negatives that cause
people to wonder if Wal-Mart will be allowed to grow.
 Such controversies against Wal-Mart which contribute to
their negative publicity includes:
* the company outsourcing the cleaning of its stores to
illegal immigrants and let them work seven days a week
instead of taking a rest
* anti-union position
* treatment of employees (including accusations of
discrimination and underpayment of employees)
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These and others make it increasingly difficult for Wal-Mart
to maintain the image of a friendly, affordable retailer that
Sam Walton had in mind when he founded the company

7. 
Over the last couple of years, CEO Scott have
been spending much of the time talking about all
the negative publicity they’ve been getting, not
from the standpoint that they hate the press, but by
asking their people what they are doing that allows
people to spread these kinds of negative
discussions about Wal-Mart.

8. Questions for Discussions
1. According to the textbook, there are seven primary
characteristics that capture the essence of an organization’s
culture. How would you describe Wal-Mart’s culture using
these seven characteristics?
The following characteristics were evident in Wal-Mart’s
culture before they adhered to stricter policy:
a. The Saturday Morning meeting introduced by the founder
is an example of innovation and risk-taking. It’s a
unique way to have employees get involved with their
work more and at the same time there’s a risk every time
they suggest ideas that needed to be acted upon as soon
as possible.
b. Attention to detail: The company is very attentive to
small details like when an executive observed that a
product of its competitor seems to have more value than
theirs and so he acquired all those and have them
displayed in Wal-Mart’s stores the soonest possible.

9. c. Outcome orientation: Wal-Mart’s being resultoriented, during the Saturday/Friday meetings,
associates are encouraged to contribute ideas that
are urged to be corrected upon before the end of the
day
d. People orientation emphasizes on the degree to
which management take into consideration the
effect of outcome of people within their organization
which was evident in Wal-Mart employees’
involvement in the business including learning the
business
e. Aggressiveness: Some Walton’s great trust in his
staff to make decisions illustrates aggressiveness as
well as assertiveness
f. Stability: The culture at first was stable but
maintaining one hasn’t been that easy for Wal-Mart

10. 2. Based on this case, would you characterize Wal-Mart’s
culture as strong or weak? Why? How might Wal-Mart’s
culture contribute to its long-term performance?
 Based on this case, I would characterize Wal-Mart’s culture
as strong because of what were described in the case like
how the managers could easily come up with decisions that
are acted upon immediately, the employee-involvement in
participative decision-making is high, and how Wal-Mart
developed and sustains competitive advantage due to its
speed in executing strategy and change that competitors
could not do, which contribute to the balance of its culture.
 But on the contrary it still has weaknesses like its culture of
retail fanaticism and continuous improvement of efficiency,
making its culture be described as neurotic or overanxious.

The sustainment of competitive advantage over
competitors is what Wal-Mart’s culture contributes
to the company’s long-term performance.

11. 3. As an upper manager of Wal-Mart, what steps could you
take to either maintain or enhance the culture of Wal-Mart?
As an upper manager, I could take the following steps to
maintain the culture of Wal-Mart:
a. Renew vision. I’ll get my team to discuss the current
culture. Define the parts of the culture that are already great
and need to be supported.
b. Get strategic. My team will recognize that this is important
– I’ll pick people who already developed a deeper
understanding as I created a vision of a desired future
culture which is a culture enriched with love for employees
and customers as well
c. Get people excited. Chances are my culture team will be
excited. If not, I’ll get them excited and Help the team
recognize that not everyone else in the organization is going
to think that these efforts are worthwhile immediately.
Remember that enthusiasm is contagious.

12. 4. What are some aspects of Wal-Mart’s culture that have
persevered, but yet may be disadvantageous in today’s
economy?
One main aspect of Wal-Mart’s culture that has
persevered, but yet may be disadvantageous in today’s
economy is its culture’s frugality, a characteristic of Sam
Walton that has endured even through Wal-Mart’s
tremendous growth and financial success. He was
strictly-focused on keeping costs low so as to gain
competitive advantage over competitors such as Sears
and Kmart.
 He was also known for making 8 executives sleep in
one room on company trips. These characteristics have
persevered in Wal-Mart’s culture that even the current
CEO, Lee Scott, drives a Volkswagen Beetle and has
also shared hotel rooms to reduce costs.


13. 5. How might Wal-Mart’s negative press affect employee
morale, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment? As
a manager, what steps would you take to improve employee
attitudes?
 Employee attitudes include employee morale, job
satisfaction, and organizational commitment. When
employees feel they are not accepted by the
leaders, especially, the basic rights such as freedom, getting
enough pay, equality, then these result to lower employee
morale to do their job. These employee attitudes are greatly
affected by the negative press because their morale is being
pressed down deeply, they become more dissatisfied, that
their commitment to the company would decrease
tremendously.
 One major step I could take to improve employee attitudes
is to propose to the CEO the crucial need of the company to
bring back the Walton roots wherein employees are given
positive treatment which result to their favorable action and
work performance. Then there will be no more negatives the
press will spread about Wal-Mart

14. 6. Characterize Wal-Mart’s organizational structure. It is
mechanistic or organic? Does it have a high degree of
centralization or decentralization? How might WalMart’s structure affect its employees in terms of their
productivity and job attitudes?
 Wal-Mart had an organic structure and high degree of
decentralization before there was a bit of a change in
the culture. It now has a high degree of centralization
where decisions are centralized to CEO and other
high executives. Its structure had become mechanistic
too.
 It greatly affect employee’s productivity because how
they can contribute to the success of the organization
is driven by the structure. Since they must adhere to
policies imposed by the kind of structure it has, their
involvement in the organization is limited, thus it
affects their attitudes and productivity in the
workplace.