Leadership, Culture, & Ethics

Introduction

Wal-Mart being one of the successful companies whose success was majorly brought about by culture, is being used by learners to evaluate the role of cultures in companies and what it needs for a culture to make a company successful. In this essay therefore, am basing my arguments of the well understanding about the company, the culture which it practiced to be able to climb up the ladder in the market. The essay also discusses the ethics of in a company just like Wal-Mart and how unethical behaviors can result to the corruption of the organization culture which can be a greater reason for the failure of the company (Collins and Porras, 1996). The essay thus generally analysis the Wal-Mart company which went up to high positions in the market as a result of incorporation of culture in the company which positively adapted by its staff.

Wal-Mart was named among one of the biggest companies in the world. It was ranked in this position since it was able to make sales up to a quarter trillion. It was also ranked this was since it was able to employ the largest number of employees in the world employing up to 1.3 million employees thus offering employment to a very large number of people in the world thus considered the biggest retailing successful company which ever existed during this time (Sadri and Lees, 2001).

Wal-Mart was developed and also received nurturing from Sam Walton who was said to have raised the company to this high level after the death of his brother. To achieve this position, the company applied various mechanism which triggered its success in the market. One of the mechanism which was the major cause for success was the incorporation of culture in the company which was adopted by every worker in the company thus contributing to the success of the company. Wal-Mart’s success was therefore considered as its ability to manage the elements of its culture as well the entrepreneurial spirit possessed by its workers. The culture of the company was characterized by offering of very good services to the customer as well as the providing the services at very low prices (WAL-MART, 1993). The reason for the success of the company using the culture strategy was that the rules of the company based on culture were too much flexible with challenges brought about by globalization and change in technology.

The use of culture in companies has grown to higher extend since some of the companies consider it the reason for success in many companies. Though it seems that some companies haven’t yet known the various cultures to incorporate in the company and this is the reason why some companies have been considered failures in the market (Mary, 1998). The companies fail to distinguish between the positive cultures which lead to the success of the company like cooperative culture and the negative cultures which are said to bring negative impacts in the progress of the company.

Sam Walton the founder of the Wal-Mart incorporated a positive form culture which was referred to corporate culture which was positively accepted by the staff of his company resulting to identical success in the market where it was ranked as one of the best companies in the world. This means that not any culture which leads to the leads to success in the companies but only the positive cultures. Positive cultures are therefore said to bring good unity and cooperation among the members thus creating good working environment among the workers resulting to high production in the company and therefore the reason for success as a result of the culture (CARDEN and COURTEMANCHE, 2009). Implying that negative culture promote bad working environment of the workers thus causing disunity and conflicts in the company which finally results to its failure.

Corporate type culture originated from people with different ethnic backgrounds and different cultural heritages in which everybody had his or her own cultures. These people were therefore brought to working in the same working environment. The working of these people together thus made sure that nobody is in position to practice his or culture since it was different from the others. The working together of these individuals demanded for the adoption of new cultures and norms. The mixture of the cultures thus led to the rise of a culture which borrowed from the different cultures and coming up with a collective form culture which everybody accepted since he or she could count his or her culture in the collective culture. This was therefore the origin of the corporate culture which made corporation of many cultures and which was used by San Walton to his company resulting to its success.

Corporate culture used by Sam Walton was therefore a positive culture which creates cooperation in the company and with led to the success of the Wal-Mart company. Corporate culture said to be influenced by factors like patterns interactions between the members, the history of the company, the geographical positions of the company and the industry in which the company operates. It is therefore defined as culture whereby the workers work together through having collective thoughts, habits, behavior and feelings all focused at achieving the best for the company (Frazier, 2005). It is characterized by valuing of all the employees since every employee has a good idea to input in the company leading to achieving better or growth of the company.

Wal-Mart Company thus grew to high position by use of the corporate culture in which San Walton and his management had employed very high number of employees who first had high production power even with low supervision and know Sam Walton comes in with the culture strategy. This thus makes the growth of the company grow very quickly due to high man power as a result of being triggered by culture approach. The culture approach is thus said to have resulted to provision of good working in the company where each and every employer considers himself and achiever and no critics towards the employees thus every employee works to his or her level best since the employees have one slogan and one culture and he or she feels highly motivated to work (Kotter, 2008). This thus led to the growth of Wal-Mart and achievement of its goals which are also the goals of the employees.

Unethical leadership is that leadership which does not obey the ethics of the organization. This type if leadership is offered by the poor leaders in the organization. This thus is characterized by leaders conducting behaviors that are illegal or that which violet the moral standards of the members of the organization or the employees.  It can also be characterized by making of decisions which don’t benefit the organization or which result to conflicts in the organization (Brown and Mitchell, 2010). This thus cause misleading of the employees resulting to confusion in the organization and can even contribute to its failure due to poor functioning of the employers.

Poor leadership or unethical leadership can therefore result to corruption of the culture which the company bases its work or which the company lays success in. For example if a company has a certain culture which has a defined set of principles, some unethical leaders may end up unquestioning some employees who go against the principles of the organization culture. This is therefore considered as favor to some of the employees and some sought of corruption in the organization. This can therefore result to change of attitude towards the organization culture and everybody starts to break the principles and become corrupt whenever he or she does a mistake. This may therefore result to the death of the culture of the organization or the failure of the organization’s goals in the market. Corruption can also be practiced through some poor leaders making decisions which are in favor of a certain person instead of making the right decisions (Co-founder, 2009). This may thus result to less honor of the employees towards the leaders resulting to difficulties in managing the organization which can also result to failure of the company.

Unethical issues in a company may result to the failure of various cultural organization or company which can in turn end up leading to the failure of the entire company. Such issues violate the working environment of the organization leading to poor production and poor attitudes among the employees towards the leaders and organization culture as well (Williams, 2005). This has therefore been the cause for failures in many organizations.

To avoid such issues which can lead to failure in the organizations therefore, organizations need to be very keen in the selection of leaders to manage the companies. The leaders should be governed by high levels of ethnics which don’t support the bad morals or morals which result to the straight governance of the company resulting to success in the market. Ethical leaders are capable of making straight decisions and perform acts which don’t violate the working environment and instead make decisions without favoring anybody in the organization. They therefore make decisions which are right and which judges every employee in the organization accordingly to ensure there is good working environment and respect of the leaders by the employees which consider them as directors (Toor and Ofori, 2009). This thus helps in achieving the best in the company since everything is in order and the production activities are efficient.

Conclusion

Wal-Mart is one of the companies which succeeded and gained high levels in the market by incorporating corporate culture in its working system. Many other young companies should therefore try this approach to see whether they can succeed in the help of the same approach. Cooperate culture has been adopted by very many companies to compete with others in the market. The companies using this approach should thus ensure that they also incorporate other principles like good leadership and positive ethical practices which act as accelerators behind corporate culture leading to the success of the company. Leaders should therefore lead by displaying positive characters and avoiding immoral acts like corruptions which are a major causes of the failure in many of the companies (Mayer, Kuenzi and Greenbaum, 2010). For a company to succeed therefore, it should generally ensure good working environment for the workers, ethnical leaders to manage the employees and employees dedicated to work focusing on the success of the company through delivering high productivity.

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