“Great leaders focus their followers on serving one specific core group. By serving this core group, the organization can better serve other groups as well. For example, an executive from Wal-Mart recently told an audience that Wal-Mart serves those who live from paycheck to paycheck; others are invited to shop at Wal-Mart and may be satisfied in doing so, but Wal-Mart is focused on serving those who are struggling to get by.” [Marcus Buckinghm ‘The One Thing You Need to Know..about Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success]
When Professor Richard Vedder visited the Locke Foundation on April 23, 2007, to talk about this new book “The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy,” one of the points he made was that the success of Wal-Mart, especially in its most vigorous period of growth, is due to leadership: identifying a market need and filling it. According to Vedder, Wal-Mart’s past success with its consumers also signals that it avoided the temptation to pursue consumers that it could not serve extraordinarily well.
As for workers, Wal-Mart offers entry-level opportunities for those whose employment opportunities or perhaps employment potential are not best served by obtaining a college degree, we are reminded by George Leef.
Finally, Wal-Mart’s success is neither unfair to other business, undeserved, or fraught with unethical missteps, as Fr. Sirico of the Acton Institute has just reminded us.
