Apple and Walmart Business
Introduction
Enterprise and entrepreneurship play significant roles for human resource management within companies. Industries across the globe have witnessed gradual changes over the past decades due to entrepreneurship (Kirby, 2005, p. 14). Human resource management is among those company departments that enterprise and entrepreneurship dramatic changes and innovations have impacted. Today, entrepreneurial developments have turned significant, in a view of its being critical to economic development. Enterprise and entrepreneurship helps human resource management achieve the objective of job creation, regional growth and industrial development (Jackson, Schuler, and Jiang, 2014, p. 20). Entrepreneurship refers to the process of actions taken by an entrepreneur to unleash new exploits into gainful opportunities by taking risks and uncertainty within the enterprise. The essay will refer to intra and extra-organizationally based enterprises in achieving its objectives. The objective of Intra and extra-organizational integration is enhancing public awareness and enterprise integration. Two companies; Apple and Walmart will be used as examples in discussing the intra and extra-organizationally enterprise and the applicability of the concept in discussing the importance of enterprise and entrepreneurship and its significance for human resource management. A Student Sample: ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
Contemporary Business Issues and External Factors Affecting the Organizations
Apple and Walmart operate in different and competitive industries and business environments where contemporary business issues and external business factors affect their day to day operations. This segment presents the present status in intra-and extra-organizational integration for enterprises to enhance consensus and awareness within the industry and academia about enterprise intra and extra- organizational integration (Purce, 2014, p. 67). In such, Contemporary Business Issues (CBI) as a subject helps the management in examining the contemporary and emerging global issues in order to understand the business environment in which they operate. Also, these two companies use CBI as a tool to advancing the development of professional ethics, attitudes, and values.
Contemporary Business Issues (CBI)
Managing consumer expectations
The effective management of consumer expectations is a huge problem for Apple and Walmart. Apple operates in the telecom sector while Walmart operates in the retail industry. These two companies strive to ensure that customer demands in the market are met appropriately. The manner in which consumer demands are changing has been a huge concern for the management of these companies. The application of CBI concepts enables the management in ensuring that the new products made are in respect to the current market demands. Entrepreneurship has been effective for the company since new ideas are innovated but in reference to the market opportunities. The intra and extra-organizational integration too is adopted to ensure that proper communication ways are used in meeting customers’ demands as well as achieving the set objectives of the companies.
Workforce diversity
Equality and diversity of the workforce in an organization is key to its success. The business world in which Apple and Walmart operate today is described as a melting pot. The term melting pot describes how different cultures, races, and ethnicities have linked together in the society; something which must be incorporated in the human resource management by these companies. Apple and Walmart have no option other than adapting to the transformations in the society in order to enhance survival and functioning in the industries. One contemporary issue that poses a challenge to these companies is diversity. Diversity in the workforce is a challenge to these enterprises because they lack diversity of human resources and are viewed to use outdated and discriminatory policies in hiring and creating partnerships with the ethnic minority.
Outsourcing as a CBI
There is a need for proper intra and extra-enterprise integration by Apple and Walmart. Outsourcing refers to the transfer of job operations from an organization to another in an attempt to improve productivity, save money, and lower costs. Walmart as a leading retailer company is faced with a contemporary issue when it comes to outsourcing. Apple too is faced with outsourcing challenges when partnering with other internet firms in the world. The management needs to outsource some of their duties to independent outside companies in order to integrate the internal operations of the company to those outside it by different companies (Storey, 2014, p. 44). However, the outsourcing is a threat to the contemporary business environment for it eliminates job opportunities in the company hence damaging an economy.
External Factors
Under this part, the use of PEST (political, economic, social, and technology) external business environment factors will be used. The human resource management policies of Apple and Walmart are affected by the PEST factors and this calls for a proper intra and extra-organizationally based enterprise integration approach in addressing them effectively. These external factors are explained below:
Political
Political factors adversely affect the efficiency of human resource management in the enterprises. Some US government policies and in the overseas markets are unfavorable to Apple and Walmart human resource functions (Gupta, 2013, p. 13). The labor laws defend employees at the expense of the enterprises, and this poses a major threat to HRM functions.
Economic
Economic factors significantly affect the functionality of an enterprise’s human resource management. For example, changes in tax rates, exchange rates fluctuations, interest rates, and inflation rates affect the HRM since employees demand pay increases due to adverse economic factors while the growth in the economy is low.
Social factors
The market in which the two enterprises operate has people of different cultures, beliefs, ideas, and attitudes. Such factors include consumer tastes, age distribution, and religion among others (Gupta, 2013, p. 15). The fact that Apple and Walmart operate in the different market, this gives the HRM a great diversity of employees hence equity to all cultures.
Technological
The HRM of Walmart and Apple recruits employees who can innovate new production methods, distribution processes, and communication tactics. Apple and Walmart enjoy the fruits of sophisticated technologies hence creativity and innovativeness are enhanced. Thus, technology has boosted HR roles in these enterprises (Gupta, 2013, p. 17). A Student Sample: ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
Explain how the organization and HR strategies are shaped and developed
Human resource management is associated with many advantages in an organization. In reference to Apple and Walmart, the HRM of these companies use various approaches in the shaping and developing of HR strategies. These approaches include;
Glancing around the company break room: Apple and Walmart are among the world’s largest companies with clear signs such as increased sales, global locations, demand, and a number of clients. With this understanding, the HRM is able to develop the right HR policies such as the hiring of more employees, training and development, and employee motivation. As a result, the right HR strategy is established hence enhancing the companies efficiency and effectiveness in the market.
Proper alignment between organization’s corporate strategy and goals and its human resource strategy: The management of Apple and Walmart aim at developing a diverse workforce with the right skills and competencies. The corporate strategies of the company are ensuring that all customer needs are met and high-quality products and services are offered. To achieve this, the HRM aligns these two strategies in shaping and developing one best way for managing human resources within and without the company.
Organizing ongoing in-service training: The management of Apple and Walmart seek to shape and develop a culture in which talents, abilities, and skills are grown by employees. To develop the right HR strategies in the training and development, the company organizes for training programs that promote and sustain employees’ lifelong learning. As a result, HR strategies get shaped and developed.
Examine the nature and significance of enterprise and entrepreneurial development in the context of Human Resource Management – including intra and extra-organizationally based enterprise
Factors within and without an organization significantly impact entrepreneurial development in the context of human resource management. Enterprise entrepreneurship involves the identification of new opportunities in the market and generating ideas to exploit them. For enterprise and entrepreneurship ideas to develop, risk-taking is mandatory. An entrepreneur has to take initiative and accept risk or failure. The human resource management of a company needs to reorganize social-economic (extra- organizationally based) mechanisms through in which the right resources are provided to employees to turn the identified opportunities into practical accounts.
Enterprise and entrepreneurial activities involve the creation process. For these processes to excel, the management needs to provide adequate financial, physical, human, and technological resources to enable the HRM to implement the processes. Also, the internal culture of an organization together with its structure affects the success of the enterprise and entrepreneurial activities; these are intra organizational forces (Vallas and Cummins, 2015, p. 300). These activities require an entrepreneur to get devoted in terms of time, effort, and finances. The rewards of being an entrepreneurial enterprise are independence, monetary rewards, and personal satisfaction.
The decision to launch a new venture happens the entrepreneur perceives that starting a new enterprise or expanding business operations to a different country is both possible and desirable. For example, Walmart’s decision to start new business operations in Africa was both a possible and desirable ideas. The reason is that the legal-political factors favored its operations while the company was also financially stable (Tang, Jacmar, and Busenitz, 2012, p. 90). Further, there was a market for its goods and services. Here, a proper integration of intra and extra-organizational factors was done hence the success of business operations in the continent.
Assess the impact of enterprise and entrepreneurship, and its significance for society, business, and Human Resource Management
Enterprise and entrepreneurship greatly impact on the society, business, and human resource management in significant ways. Enterprise and entrepreneurship impacts on employees’ and managers’ positioning of mindsets, sense of purpose and skills of purpose required to thrive in a competitive business world (Shane, 2012, p. 15). Also, entrepreneurship creates a positive social and environmental impact that leads to economic stability both in the enterprise and the country at large. Solving the extreme challenges of this business world requires companies to transform themselves into impact enterprises. Apple and Walmart have impacted enterprise, whose objective is maximizing positive impact for society, business and human resource management in the following ways:
Enterprise and entrepreneurship create new business opportunities: Trailblazing by enterprise entrepreneurs in the form of new ideas, products, and services produces a cascading impact by stimulating related businesses or industries that support the new venture, resulting to economic development (Shane, 2000, p. 460). For example, Apple has spotted various market opportunities globally in the last decade. Soon, the company has acquired pace in its mobile phone and laptop domain globally. Most importantly, millions of customers have benefited from its entrepreneurial ideas. Walmart also benefits from entrepreneurship as the company continues to exploit new market opportunities in over 100 countries globally. As a result, these enterprises keep growing and enhancing their strong position in the market.
Enterprise and entrepreneurship create a social change in the society: Social entrepreneurship creates a positive impact on the society and environment at large (Hornsby, Kuratko, and Zahra, 2002, p. 270). In the context of Walmart, the company has innovated practical and sustainable approaches that benefit the society with a great emphasis on the marginalized and other societal groups. Further, Apple innovates processes and funding models that are strongly rooted in societal values. Such entrepreneurial activities include young foundation, a planet for change, and open innovation blog that help the companies in giving back to the society through CSR.
Entrepreneurship enables human resource management (HRM) establishes the right practices and policies of employees’ management: To human resource management, entrepreneurship entails the identification of opportunities in the HR department that can help the enterprise create new policies and practices of managing employees effectively in a way that contributes to their improved performance (Bohlander, Snell, and Sherman, 2007, p. 34). In Apple and Walmart, corporate entrepreneurship is integrated with HRM practices and policies hence establishing a competitive superiority for the companies against their rival firms.
Conclusion
The proper integration and collaboration of intra and extra-organizationally base enterprise factors through entrepreneurship greatly impact on the success of human resource management. Today, businesses operate in a contemporary society whose issues affect the human resource operations. Workforce diversity, outsourcing, and management of consumer expectations are the main contemporary business issues that affect enterprise and entrepreneurial activities by the human resource management. Also, the external business environment factors (PEST) affect the significance of human resource management in a company both positively and negatively. The essay has seen that successful entrepreneurs take initiative, risks, and show the desire to either succeed or fail in the industry. The manners in which human resource management policies and operations are undertaken greatly depend on the nature of the enterprise and entrepreneurial ideas generated by the human resources of the company. A Student Sample: ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
References
Bohlander, G., Snell, S. and Sherman, A.W., 2007. Human resource management. Thomson Learning.
Gupta, A., 2013. Environmental and pest analysis: An approach to external business environment. Merit Research Journal of Art, Social Science, and Humanities, 1(2), pp.13-17.
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Kirby, D.A., 2005. Entrepreneurship policy: Theory and practice.
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Shane, S., 2012. Reflections on the 2010 AMR decade award: Delivering on the promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. Academy of Management Review, 37(1), pp.10-20.
Storey, J., 2014. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.
Tang, J., Kacmar, K.M.M. and Busenitz, L., 2012. Entrepreneurial alertness in the pursuit of new opportunities. Journal of Business Venturing, 27(1), pp.77-94.
Vallas, S.P. and Cummins, E.R., 2015. Personal branding and identity norms in the popular business press: Enterprise culture in an age of precarity. Organization Studies, 36(3), pp.293-319.