1 Executive Summary

This case study is about Walmart versus Dukes case. Walmart is highly ranked and
rewarded multinational company with highly diverse and, also Walmart is world’s
largest employer. Since Walmart has ranked on Fortune magazine’s it is stated that no
one can create more jobs for the economy and career opportunities than Walmart.

Walmart has a very active Political Action Committee that gives almost a quarter
million dollars annually. Walmart also has threats from well-funded political
organizations who runs the negative publicity campaigns in an attempt to pressure
Walmart to unionize.

Walmart versus Dukes case began in 2000 due to the oppositions’ low grade image
challenges for Walmart. A group of female employees alleged that the company’s
policies resulted in nationwide discrimination against women in their employment, as
seen by lower pay for women than men in the same type of job, and longer delays
before women were promoted as compared to men employees. The women sued
Walmart and sought to file a class action represented by a small group of women who
sued the company. This resulted in an extremely large nationwide class action.

The class had more than 1.6 million women, all of whom were women employed by
Walmart after 1998. Walmart appealed that the Supreme Court should require
individual lawsuits from Walmart employees but none of whom have individual
discrimination complaints against the company. So finally Walmart won the court
case but stands to lose its business.

We may not always pay attention to Walmart, but its continuous trend of gender
discrimination cannot be ignored. This retail giant should be setting higher standards
for other employers, not abusing its power and exploiting its workers. Walmart may
have always-low prices, but its practices are not always fair.

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2 Problem Statement
Intro

2.1 Facts

01. Betty Dukes faced gender discrimination on Walmart.

02. Didn’t get the right promotions, She went to complain about her problem to
her Supervisor.
03. Then she was clashed with her supervisor.
04. Decided to go to court with 5 female workers in Walmart.
05. This court covered all female employees of Walmart.

2.2 Economical, Legal & Ethical factors

01. It causes reaction against Walmart

02. Bad image for Walmart (If the court is accept by the supreme court, there will
be a huge amount of penalty)
03. Job Discrimination is an unethical behavior. Discrimination means to
distinguish someone on the basis of prejudice or morally attitude.

2.3 Problems
The following are the revealed problems identified from the analysis.

2.3.1 Walmart has been criticized for their opposition to allowing their
employees to be unionized.
Walmart needs to clarify their reasons for their opposition to unionization. The public
affairs strategy must also address the negative feelings harbored by some groups who
feel that Walmart is encroaching into far too many other sectors retail than it should.
These concerns must be addressed if Walmart is to enjoy continued success in
creating positive name recognition.

When a company going to unionize there should be a communication problem that’s

why the people making their unions to make their powerful voice, so when they have
power, management has to listen them.

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2.3.2 Women got tired of being mistreated.
However gender discrimination is unethical behavior of the management and this will
take bad image for Walmart. Until Walmart was found not guilty by Supreme Court,
they tried to express themselves that they didn’t act unethical. This could be done by
TV and newspaper ads which has high cost. Also during court case there were some
strikers will say not to buy products from Walmart. All those things to cause to
Walmart in terms of its financial situation.

2.3.2.1 Betty Duke’s female supervisor clashed with her when she complained
about denied opportunities to advance in the company.
Supervisors are in the line management level so they need to consist with more
technical skills and human relational skills than conceptual skills. If company
management responsible for their employees, management always need to listen to
their employees but here there no proper way to handle their employee grievances.
Grievance Handling is one of key result areas of Human Resource Management. So
due to this poor management issue employees get demotivated and they led to feel
they have no insurance and no protection and after they will suffer. So I think
Walmart need to focus and identify their HR issues of this key result area otherwise
organization will collapse.

2.3.2.2 Women payments are less than men in same position and same
qualifications in Walmart.
Money is one of main motivation factor in employment. Betty dukes thought that men
and women with same qualifications and same position need to be paid as same wages
but Walmart has this gender discrimination. Walmart paid more to men than women
who carries the same positions and qualifications. So due to the fact Betty Dukes get
demotivated and she raise up her voice in 2000 against this discrimination also five
women joined the Dukes lawsuit in 2001. So that’s how Dukes vs Walmart case
began in 2000. This case led to the multi-billion dollar lawsuit and posed potential
risk of millions of dollar in compensatory damages.

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2.3.2.3 Women lagged behind the men and no career progression opportunities
like men.
If men workers have career opportunities females who have same level of
qualifications should give career progressions that’s why attorneys are claimed that
women, as a class do not receive pay and promotions equal to men

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3 Literature Review

3.1 Max Webber’s Bureaucratic Management Theory (1864 -1920)

We can get 2 characteristics of Bureaucratic Management according to this case study

3.1.1 Selection, Qualifications and Careers:

Another important point that Max Weber proposed was that the selection of the
officials should be on merit and qualification. Moreover, unlike traditional types of
bureaucratic systems, the officials are not to be elected on personal relations,
preferences and connections. Instead, every official should be selected on merits and
technical qualifications.

Similarly, Max proposed that an official should have a full career in the system. It
must be a full-time employment and the compensation should be in salary that
matches the qualification and prevailing standards. It was very common to
compensate officials with lands and rights, but that practice was discouraged by Max.

3.1.2 Specification of Laws and Management by Rules:

Max Weber proposed that there should be specific rules created by the higher ranked
offices and these rules should be applied consistently by all the lower offices and
levels.

This point was presented to counter the fact that many laws very either not present at
all or so vaguely written that they could easily be manipulated. This led to delayed
decision-making, corruption and red tape. Max Weber, in order to counter that,
proposed that the laws should be clear, concise and stable throughout the system.

3.2 Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management theory (1856 – 1915)

According to the case study we can get 2 principles from scientific management
theory.

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We can also get this from scientific management “Taylor he believe that all workers
were motivated by money. So he promoted the idea of “Fair days’ pay for Fair days’
work”.

3.2.1 Scientific education and development of the workers.

The Selected workers should be trained to avoid wrong methods of working.
Management should responsible for the scientific education and training of workers.
This training and development makes the physical and mental fitness to perform their
works, this lead the greater efficiency within the organization.

3.2.2 Friendly cooperation between management and the workers.

There should be no conflict between management and workers. It is only through
cooperation that the goals of the enterprise can be achieved efficiently. This requires
change of mental attitudes of the workman and management towards each other.
Taylor called it “Mental Revolution”

3.3 Two Factor Theory by Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Herzberg took the view that man lives at two levels, Physical level and
psychological level. Several factors lead to employee satisfaction while others lead to
dissatisfaction. The satisfiers are called motivators and dissatisfies are called Hygiene
factors.

Motivators Hygiene factors

 Achievement  Working Conditions

 Recognition  Company Policies and
Administration
 Responsibility  Salary and other benefits and job
security
 Personal Growth  Interpersonal Relationships
 Work Itself  Quality of Supervision
Table 1:Two Factor Theory

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4 Alternatives
Intro

4.1 Walmart has been criticized for their opposition to allowing their
employees to be unionized.
If employees are unionized there should be a communication related problem and
management need to look for their employee’s needs. So I think Walmart does not
have proper HR vision to manage their employees. Walmart employees doesn’t care
their supervisor as their leader because according to the duke’s case female supervisor
of the Dukes does not have proper leadership qualities.

So Walmart need to introduce powerful training programs to their line management

level to build up their Human Relational, Interpersonal and Decision making skills
and to learn how to handle the conflict situations. Also Walmart need to develop
proper bottom to top communication method to handle more conflict situations than
day to day ones.

I also suggest Walmart, if they can gather the line management meeting once a month
top management can identify the bottom level important problems of the organization.
Organization need to develop from the bottom because of that management need to
care about their Human Resources, that’s why HR people say “HR is the business”
and “Employee is the King”.

4.2 Gender Discrimination matters

First action add more rules to prevent unethical biased actions of managers and
employees. Other action can be evaluation of managers’ actions in terms of
motivation, efficiency and behavior by workers, with this way it can be provided that
managers can be more careful about their decisions.

Walmart should increase the controlling, monitoring and evaluating of Line

management. There should be specific rules created by the Top management and
these rules should be applied consistently by all the lower management and levels.
According to the theory of bureaucracy top management need have the all control by
putting pressure on line management. Top management need to change the mindsets
of Line managers towards female employees.

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Gender discrimination is unethical behavior. But sometimes it can be get lower pay
for women than men if they are in equal position because men can work more hours
than females and some tasks of equal level employment are different between men
and women, their positions and qualifications can be same but jobs descriptions are
not equal. So according to my scope, not always sometimes according to the situation
there can be small difference in salary due to gender difference, but not in career
progression path. Because of this matter Walmart also need to discourse their female
employees about why sometimes they get lower pay than male employees.

5 Implementation
Most suitable solutions implementation for following problems

5.1 Walmart has been criticized for their opposition to allowing their
employees to be unionized.

01. Need to implement system to get employee suggestions and evaluation system
by employees. This will led to build up powerful communication bottom to
top.
02. Identify the line managers who need to build up their interpersonal skills.
03. Walmart need to introduce powerful training programs to their line
management who need to build up their skills.
04. Walmart need to gather line management meeting at least once a within two
months.

From all this steps we can make powerful line management with all skills. So if
individual worker can solve their problems and if they can get fair solutions or other
compatible options with their supervisor who close to them, we can reduce workers
major requirements to get unionized.

5.2 Gender Discrimination

01. Need to re-analyze the current rules and add more rules to prevent unethical
actions of management and employees.

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02. Specific rules created by the Top management and these rules should be applied
consistently by all the lower management and levels.
03. Top management need have the all control by putting pressure on line
management
04. Top management need to change the mindsets of Line managers towards female
employees.
05. Other action can be evaluation of managers’ actions in terms of motivation,
efficiency and behavior by workers.
06. Walmart also need to discourse their female employees about why sometimes
they get lower pay than male employees.

If Walmart can go along with these steps we can change the company gender
discrimination culture due to change of both management and employee mindsets and
with newly added rules and power delegation.

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6 Conclusion

The project has provided an enormous knowledge which is not limited to the
technologies used but also the aspects of different types of users since, at the testing
phase several improvements to the user interface was raised from the actual users.
Therefore it is possible to conclude that not only the knowledge and skills that is
obtained but also the practicality of implementing real world solution has also
experienced throughout the development of the project.

The project can be described as a result of knowledge gathered from all the courses
throughout the programme.

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7 References

Netmba.com, (2015) Herzberg - Motivation-Hygiene Theory, [online]

Available at: http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/herzberg/ (Accessed 5
August 2015).

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