What were the impacts on the people, their behaviours and attitudes?

But then Amazon's data-driven efficiency met the

customer-driven culture at Whole Foods—and the
shelves began to empty. From the very start, Amazon made its
name on being fast, cheap, and efficient—using data to drive its product mix
and enforcing strict employee discipline to squeeze out cost savings to pass
on to its customers.

Whole Foods, on the other hand, always prided itself on its personal touch,
empowering individual stores—even individual employees—to make decisions
about products that emphasize high quality, healthy, and local foods. That
decentralization, however, caused enormous inefficiencies that drove up
prices to the point where critics referred to the store as “Whole Paycheck.

The acquisition was initially met positively by Wall Street, amid hopes that
Amazon’s data-driven mindset might be just the thing to enable Whole Foods
to scale up and add more stores while maintaining its employee-empowered
culture.

That’s not quite what happened.

“A lot of it from our perspective was centered on a culture clash,” says

Campbell. “Whole Foods has a very high-empowerment kind of culture, so
these ‘draconian’ standards, telling people where to put things on the shelves
and the loss of autonomy, employees were feeling angry from that.”

The new inventory system was actually something Whole Foods had started
to implement before the Amazon deal, pressured by activist shareholders who
had seen the grocer’s stock and sales margins slipping for two years.

“This is not a story where there is a good guy and a bad guy,” says Campbell.
“It’s a story about what the limits are to scaling this high-empowerment model,
and what are the limits to a model where it’s all about standardization and
data.

Did the intended outcomes occur?

Identify organizational decision making processes and the manner in which the change
was implemented or the problem was resolved?

Eralier Organisational decision making process at Wholefood

1. Well food used a decentralized method of decision making

in which each store was responsible for making their own
decisions to fulfill the needs of the customers, employees of
the store and team members. There was a system of self-
directed teams distributed across regions. Each store and
region was allowed to take decisions based on their own
needs as well as customer’s needs about products that
amphasize high quality,helthy and local foods. The system
of the self-directed team was also valuable to recognize the
diversity between different regions and communities and
cater the needs accordingly. This system provided Whole -
Food with a decision-making model that can be applied
elsewhere easily and has helped whole food to grow.
2. The executive teams made their key decisions through
consensus, they used to discuss and debate ideas and
deisions and after a proper consensus all the decisions
were taken.
3. At the store level , the decsions regarding product mix was
taken by the constant interaction of staff mebers with the
customers.

Problem: The highly decentralised system created

enormous ineffeciencies and caused the prices to go higher
as compared to competitiors and whole food started losong
market share.

Changes and its Implementation:

With the acquisition of Whole food by Amazon, the decentralised

decision making process was changed to centralised
system.Eralier decision were taken at reginonal and store level,
now the decisions are taken at headquarter levels.

At the store level,decision making was now more data driven

,instead of using customer feedback, interaction regarding theur
experience at the store, the decision regarding the product mix
was now taken by the estimation basd on the ana;ysois of data
available of the customer’s purchases and behaviours.
Whole Foods, on the other hand, always prided itself on its personal touch,
empowering individual stores—even individual employees—to make decisions
about products that emphasize high quality, healthy, and local foods. That
decentralization, however, caused enormous inefficiencies that drove up
prices to the point where critics referred to the store as “Whole Paycheck.”

The Decision Making process is echoed in the Executive team as well, where they make their key
decisions through consensus. "We discuss and debate ideas and decisions until we can get
agreement and buy-in from the entre E-Team" says CEO John Mackey

Whole Foods Market uses the system of self-directed teams within its regional structure. These teams
are given the power to make their own decisions. Each store and region is allowed to make decisions
based on their own needs and those of their customers. The company recognizes the diversity
between these different regions and communities and has employed the structure of self-directed
teams to best cater for such diversity. This has provided Whole Foods Market with a decision making
model that can be transported not just from state to state, but internationally as well and this has
enabled the company to branch out into Canada and The United Kingdom

The business believes that its stores should make their own decisions in order to fully meet the needs
of their customers, staff and team members.

The biggest change in the organisational decision making

process at Wholefood was the centralization of operations

At the corporate level, there have been changes since the acquisition as
well. The biggest change was the centralization of operations at the Austin,
TX headquarters. While Whole Foods has moved to centralized
procurement, this has not meant cutting ties with small regional suppliers
in favor of national suppliers and larger contracts. Whole Foods Market
added over 7,500 new local items from 1,900 new and existing suppliers in
2018. Actually, efforts to centralize purchasing were underway prior to the
acquisition. Regional buyers and purchasing teams are still part of the mix;
they focus on local and regional suppliers. The global procurement teams
handle larger, national brands.

Amazon has also imposed merchandising fees for suppliers in its stores for
items that are on sale. On a rotating basis, Amazon offers a 10 percent
Prime discount on select products. Whole Foods is now charging that 10
percent discount back to the vendor.
There have also been changes at the store level. As I mentioned last year,
Whole Foods has been facing food shortages at some stores. While many
customers were quick to blame the acquisition on increased foot traffic, it
turned out it was due to a new order-to-shelf inventory management
system. In this system, store associates often skip the stock room and bring
items directly from delivery trucks to the shelves. The positive aspect is that
it has caused less spoilage in stock rooms, reduced costs, and allowed
associates to be more customer facing. However, the result has also been
empty shelves, angry customers, and discouraged employees.

The centralization of operations also included the marketing operations. As

a result, Whole Foods terminated the store graphic designer position and
eliminated a large number of regional marketing staff. Within the store,
this has made an impact. Some local stores used to have a beautifully drawn
chalkboard calendar with upcoming events in the store. With the
acquisition, not only did this position disappear, but so did the in-store
events such as storytellers for children. But this move is not a surprising
one as Amazon tries to centralize all operations to drive profitability.

Since its acquisition in 2017

1. Selfempoweringtips.com. (2019). Decision Making At Whole Foods. [online] Available at:

http://www.selfempoweringtips.com/decision-making/Decision-Making-At-Whole-Foods.html
[Accessed 17 Nov. 2019].
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Lewis. When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures, 3rd ed.. Boston, MA and London:
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