BUSM3194 Organizational Theory (Individual Assignment)
Part B
Question: How do the perspectives in Part A assist us to better understand the power of Wal-Mart? In preparing your answer you need to consider Wal-Mart’s relationship with its organizational environment.
The list of a variety of successful multinational corporations recorded in the pages of history is unending and in part B of this assignment, one of the world’s most successful corporations, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will take centre-stage in the discussion of a corporation’s relationship with its organizational environment. The chosen perspectives of Modernism and Post-Modernism discussed earlier in part A will be elaborated further, with respect to Wal-Mart. Subsequently, a brief discussion on how Wal-Mart exercises power and authority and experiences resistance and obedience from its employees and partners will be carried out.
From since the humble beginnings of a five-and-dime store in 1962 henceforth, Sam Walton’s Wal-Mart has transformed into one of the most successful retailers in the pages of history and in the world today. Wal-Mart is by far the world’s largest corporation today and it is a company that has become a household name that most Americans are familiar with, a company with stores that offer everything a person could need at low or discounted prices. (The global 500 2002; Belsie 2002) The success of Wal-Mart’s can be critically attributed to the corporation’s ambitions and objectives in helping its customers and people to save money, in order to live better. (Wal-Mart Corporate, 2011) Wal-Mart became the biggest retailer in the world in the late 20th century and registered revenue turnover as high as $191 billion in the year 2001 and in turn, the corporation affected a large number of people both inside and outside of its organizational environment. (Hamilton et al. 2006)

Wal-Mart