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天津农学院
毕业论文开题报告

英文题目 Research on Corporate Culture of Walmart Company

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一、 研究目的和意义
Research purpose and significance: The main goal of this thesis is to deeply investigate
the corporate culture of Walmart company that affects its performance. Being admitted
that institutions can be break down on two part which are the Management Practices and
Governance and the Corporate Culture (including the Values and Norms), it turns out
that the latter has a strong effect on performance. From previous research and publications
concerning similar topics, we take the hypothesis that the corporate culture can be a
powerful invisible asset when accompanied by careful management.

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This theory of this thesis is driven by company performance indicators and corporate
culture. We found necessary to explain the concept of corporate culture using several
research papers sources. We also include in our paper, several theories on performance
indicators. Most of these theories are retrieved from investigations of corporate documents
such as business plan and annual reports or by interviews conducting by some research
group.

This research should give key take-aways about concepts that keep landmarks companies
performance growing up as it is the case for Walmart. By hypothesis, these concepts are
community, flexibility, accessibility, diversity and inclusion initiative are the factors that
give such a constant performance. So, we will further perform research based on that
hypothesis and demonstrate that culture supports growth and let companies achieve good
financial result.

二、 该 选 题 的 研 究 现 状 及 发 展 趋 势 The research status and development

trend of this topic
Corporate culture is a term used widely in business literature – it has
a very wide defini- tion and can be understood differently depending on
context. Several studies have dis- cussed the relation between corporate
culture and performance of the company, this is also a topic that is
highlighted especially in human resources material such as the web
portal Talent Management and HR (2014)
The previous research and personal interest in this topic have inspired
this thesis. The new angle that will be taken in this research is that a
case company will be introduced and the performance and culture of this
case company will be assessed based on a theoretical framework
constructed of previous academic articles and publications. This
research can then be utilized as base for a comparative study between
several different organisations across various fields of business, as an
example.
Kirsi Piha, the founder and board member of consulting agency Ellun
Kanat has written the book Konflikti Päivässä (2017), in which she
discusses a “culture of change”. The culture of change is an
interesting concept that very much ties into the fast-paced social
environment we are living in today. Situations change at an instant and
information is available all the time to anyone. According to Piha,
organisations cannot afford to be rigid and unwilling to participate in
this change we are experiencing. As situations change, the organization
has to be available to change with them. A culture of change
accommodates conflicts and encourages creative thinking of employees. A
conflict isn’t regarded as a negative thing. It is a means to develop
the matter of the conflict into a better experience for all parties

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involved. This “culture of change” is an interesting concept that

inspires this research to some extent. On the level of an idea, it
certainly makes sense that a change-accommodating environment is
positive for development and eventual success.
As stated, a case company is introduced in this study in order to bring
context and to evaluate culture in a real world scenario. The underlying
idea is that culture works differently in different scenarios. Also as
such an intangible concept, it is difficult to generalize. Therefore it
is important to introduce a case and have a hands-on view.
Gillingham (2010) defines a case as “A unit of human activity embedded
in the real world”. He also mentions that cases can only be understood
and reviewed in context. Imaginably, a case is a snapshot into the real
world, existing right there and now.

三、 主要参考文献 Main reference

To establish scientific study of the importance of corporate culture, its antecedents and
consequences, and the mechanisms that underlie its creation and effectiveness as well as
the factors that deter a firm from achieving its aspirational culture within companies, John
R. GRAHAM, Jillian GRENNAN, HARVEY and RAJGOPAL conduct in-depth
interviews of senior executives representing over 20% of the market capitalization of the
U.S equity market[1].This work leads to some important deductions as “executives view
culture as one of the top three factors that affect their firm value” and core guideline to get
the desired culture that companies need to success like “fostering creativity and
encouraging productivity”, “promoting more risk tolerance”, “mitigating myopic
behavior”, “creating a climate for suggesting critiques and for allowing ideas to germinate
organically” and so on. Executives also suggest several sources of publicly available data
to measure corporate culture.
In [2], John R. GRAHAM et al. realized a survey toward 1,348 North
American executives who believe that improving corporate culture would
increase firm value. A striking 84% believe their firm needs to improve
its culture. So, it become important to show the right track for
achieving that target. The work provides some guidance by documenting
the following: executives’ view on what corporate culture is and how it
operates, distinguishing between stated values and everyday norms; the
extent to which culture influences value creation (productivity,
mergers), ethical choices (compliance, short-termism), and innovation
(creativity, risk-taking); and what works against a value-enhancing
culture (incentive compensation, investors). Finally, authors provide
evidence that suggests that the executives’ survey responses are
reliable and consistent with external data.

In the book Corporate Culture: The Ultimate Strategic Asset (2014), Eric
Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle discusses corporate culture as an invisible

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asset that can be harnessed and utilized to the benefit of a company. It

works like a sort of organizational magic. The notion that it directly
relates to financial performance is also briefly mentioned: “It is now
well recognized that corporate culture is a significant aspect of
organizational health and performance. Explicitly or implicitly, it is
presumed that corporate culture affects a company’s overall financial
performance.” (p.22) It is widely recognized that culture has a close
relation with core values of a company. Culture is described as the
“personality” of an organization. Culture can be manifested in several
different ways. There are companies that very strongly like to
communicate their values, mantra and basically the reality of who they
are. On the contrary, other companies might be more subtle, conveying
their message through symbols, artwork or daily behavior.
Walmart was established by Sam Walton and beginning as a small discount
retailer in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962. In the research paper[3], Rudesh
Pandey et.al investigate how Walmart become popular and successful in
retail business around the world and how they perform well in sales.
This study found that some factors were leading to the success of
Walmart. Since then, Walmart has become the most trusted retailer that
creates value for business and society.

In [4],authors combine secondary sources and interviews with Chinese

suppliers to explore the structural paradox faced by retail
multinational firms in China as they balance the competing demands of
standardization and localization. The authors describe the challenges
faced by two retail giants, Walmart and Carrefour, as they attempt to
replicate in China their lean retailing successes elsewhere in the
world.

[1] J. R. Graham, J. Grennan, and C. R. Harvey, “Corporate Culture :

The Interview Evidence ∗.”
[2] J. R. Graham and J. Grennan, “Corporate Culture : Evidence from
the Field *,” 2022.
[3] R. Pandey et al., “Factors Influencing Organization Success: A
Case Study of Walmart,” Int. J. Tour. Hosp. Asia Pasific, vol. 4,
no. 2, pp. 112–123, 2021.
[4] M. L. Chuang, J. J. Donegan, M. W. Ganon, and K. Wei, “Walmart and
Carrefour experiences in China: Resolving the structural paradox,”
Cross Cult. Manag., vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 443–463, 2011.

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四、主要研究内容及预期目标 Main research content and expected goals

主要研究内容Main research content
Our present work will be divided into six big parts. First, we will
(I)introduce the topic and then give useful (II)definitions and explain
the (III)research methodology. Then, we further detail our (IV)case
study which is Walmart company before giving some (V)recommendations for
further research and application of this present study. The work ends by
(VI)summary where will talk about reliability and validity.

预期目标（100字左右）expected goals
Heskett (2012), states that an organization with a successful culture
can attribute up to 20-30% of the difference in performance compared to
their not so culturally aware com- petitors. Ideally, an effective
culture provides a company with four distinct economic advantages called
“the four R’s”. As culture is such an intangible asset, it is hard to
effectively evaluate and judge in an economical sense. All of the four
R’s are measurements that provide a company with a clear competitive
advantage. Heskett has identi- fied that an effective culture positively
affects these measurements, making a strong case for the hypothesis of
this thesis – that culture affects organizational performance. The four
R’s are referrals, retention of employees, return on labor and
relationships.
五、研究方案
拟采用的研究方法：The proposed research method:
The definition of culture stated in the part two of our work will be a key factor when
interviewing executives. It is important to establish a common view about what is culture
for the sake of ensuring the validity of the interviews. We will evaluate performance
indicators as net profit, net profit margin, revenue, revenue growth rate and average
number of employees. We will also try to find the link between performance indicator and
some management factors as community, flexibility, accessibility, diversity and inclusion
initiative. We will use collected qualitative data through semi-structured interview
because corporate culture is an intangible asset that leads to divergent point of view. We
will also use quantitative data obtained by analyzing objective data such as statistic.
Walmart provide tones of online open access annual reports that will be crucial in our
journey.

准备工作情况及主要措施：Preparations and main measures

Before conducting in-depth interviews with corporate executives, we will
prepare a literature review to identify unanswered questions in the
multidisciplinary corporate culture literature as well as key themes. We
plan to prepare interview with CFOs, and CEO and several other top-level
managers as chief marketing officer. This will be important for
investigations on causes and effects of culture in the context of

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accounting and finance. The forms that we use for reporting answers are
anonym so that we can make sure that the information we collect are
accurate and discussions are frank. We need basic knowledge about
company before going for interview. This will help save time and go
straightforward by asking the right questions. We should admit that
interviews may suffer from limitations like response bias. Do they tell
the truth, are the responses well interpreted, do we have enough time to
all the dimensions of the firm, do the interviewed persons have the same
understanding of what corporate culture is and so on.
六、工作进度安排 Work schedule

指导教师意见：

指导教师（签字）：
年 月 日

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教研室意见：

教研室主任（签字）：
年 月 日

注：
1．如果学生做的是毕业论文，封皮上就是“毕业论文开题报告”；如果学生做的是毕
业设计，封皮上就是“毕业设计开题报告”这几个字。
2．开题报告中的“一”、“二”、“三”、“四”、“五”“六”项需要填写的内容
全部用宋体小四，行距：固定值 22 磅。
3．指导教师意见和教研室意见均在 30 字以上，用蓝、黑色签字笔或钢笔填写。