Part 1: Please visit the Wal-Mart site, and identify their mission and vision, as well as their major stakeholders. (Please note that the stakeholders aren't just the shareholders. The stakeholders include everyone who is affected by the success or failure of the company.)
Please analyze how Wal-Mart represents and advances the goals of its stakeholders.
Part 2: We focus analyses of the external macro-environment, both industry, and global.
External analysis enables companies to identify threats and opportunities. Threats are conditions that preclude companies from functioning and making profits. Opportunities are conditions which enable companies to make profits.
Let us continue with Wal-Mart. Discuss the external environment for Wal-Mart, at all levels, to include the global and industry-level macro-environment
Part 3: We focus on Internal Analysis and SWOT analysis.
In week one, briefly assess the internal environment at Wal-Mart. Do not try to analyze the whole internal organization.
In week two, integrate the end result of an internal and external analysis is the identification of the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is known as the SWOT analysis. It is very important for a company to assess its strengths so that it can use them to fight threats and take advantage of opportunities. Similarly, the company must recognize and work to shore up its weaknesses so that opportunities are not missed and threats are less likely to put the company at risk.
I am not expecting you to complete the full SWOT. Try to fully assess just one internal strength or weakness, and explain how it impacts an external opportunity or threat.
Part 4: Analyze Wal-Mart's strategic choices at the business, functional, corporate and global levels. Choose one strategic choice, and identify which level it addresses. Later on in the discussion, consider whether the strategic choices are in sync with their generic strategy
Part 5: In order to implement a strategic choice, organizations use structures, control systems, HR policies, culture. Let us revisit Wal-Mart and analyze how they implement the strategies they currently pursue. Again, choose one implementation tactic, identify whether it concerns structure, controls, HR, or culture and whether or not you think it positively supports their strategy at the proper level.