Assignment:
Organizational Behavior
• You must Using APA formatting requirements (12 point Times New Roman font, double-spacing, 1" margins, title and reference pages)
Create a 1,500-2,500 word paper in which you diagnose a process/structure/environment in Wal Mart- and that needs improvement and design an organizational development (OD) intervention to achieve positive change.
• Your paper should include the following:
• Executive Summary which succinctly describes your recommended change(s),
• highlights of what will be required during the change process,
• a projected timeline for implementation. For a detailed sample structure for your paper,
Topic selection- Walmart
The organization selected for organizational change development is Walmart. I selected Walmart because I once worked there as a customer sales associate in charge of dealing with customer requests. The job description was simple enough; however, there were serious gaps in the organizational planning that hindered my ability to do my job. Firstly, there was no clear chain of command, as the senior employees would claim that they have no authority to do anything or make pivotal decisions. The lack of a chain of command made the job doubly difficult because it was unclear where to refer problematic cases that were out of the scope of new employees. Secondly, the organization placed too little emphasis on employee training with the training period leaving most critical areas untouched, new employees often stumbled through their roles, compromising their ability to ensure customer satisfaction.
For an organization such as Walmart, change is important because competition in the retail industry is very high with entrants such as Amazon successfully wooing customers away from brick and mortar stores. To succeed amidst a new generation of consumers content to shop online, Walmart has to stand out by offering stellar customer service, which incentivizes consumers to return to the company's retail stores every time they need to replenish household goods. Part of ensuring that a company can deliver stellar customer service is ensuring that employees have proper training to handle customer requests expediently (Ranjan, 2017). Employees working as customer sales associates have the chief responsibility of interacting with clients; thus, they form the face of the company and are crucial in creating favorable impressions of a company.
One organizational behavior concept that is crucial in remedying the situation in Walmart is motivation. Motivated employees tend to be more productive and are thus an important asset to an organization (Ranjan, 2017). Because Walmart neglects training for new employees, its new employees are barely able to deal with new challenges and thus become demotivated. Furthermore, the lack of a clear chain of command exacerbates the problem because new employees are unable to forward their requests to the organization. To achieve motivated behavior among Walmart's employees, one of the things the organization can do is improve its training regimen to reflect better the daily work scenarios that employees deal with. Adequately skilled employees are less likely to become frustrated with their work because they are capable of handling all challenges and are thus motivated by their ability to fulfill customer demands; this in turn leads to improved customer satisfaction. Walmart should also institute an organizational hierarchy plan in each of its stores that makes the chain of command clear and ensures that new employees have adequate supervision and guidance.