Why Would a Business Like Walmart Be Better Structured as a Mechanistic

Question

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The Answer is This requires some assumptions to be made. Given your perception of a company like Walmart why would you view it as more closely reflecting a mechanistic rather than an organic organization?
Mechanistic - recall:
1. division of labour - how narrow or how wide are jobs - functional specialization, narrow division of labour
2. centralized decision-making
3. high formalization
4. narrow span of control/hierarchical
Consider: Strategy, size, technology, environment - i.e., consider the contingencies of structure and explain how each could impact Walmart's structure.
Size - Walmart is a huge organization. The bigger an organization is, the more hierarchy and rules needed to maintain control over so many employees. Stability and reliability of service also require many rules and levels of management as well as centralized decision making. This is more mechanistic.
Strategy - Walmart is not focused on innovation but in providing cheap goods to customers in an efficient manner. Its focus on efficiency and reliability suggest that it could be served by a mechanistic structure. Similarly, it requires the administrative structure (hierarchy) and rules/regulations to ensure its goal of efficiency is carried out.
Technology - is this company significantly affected by technology? If you assume that the technology that drives Walmart is relatively routine and unchanging then it is fine for Walmart to have the mechanistic structure which doesn't need to adapt to technological change very fast. You serve customers, you order inventory in using the same technology over time with little change.
Environment - would you assume the environment is relatively stable or dynamic- changing? If you assume that this industry is not subject to much change - it is the retail industry, then creating a mechanistic organization that runs on the ability to repeat what it does over time - i.e. reliability and predictability of operations - is fine.
- if you think the environment is becoming volatile with more competition (like Target), then you might argue that Walmart needs to become more organic in order to be more adaptive to these competitive changes and changes customer preferences.

Why Would a Business Like Walmart Be Better Structured as a Mechanistic

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