Wal-Mart: Walton’s Made in America

This chapter describes Walton’s use of all six rational methods as founder and developer of the largest retail corporation in the US: the Wal-Mart corporation. In the 1960s his rapid and innovative adaptive response to the rise of discount retailing became an innovative expansion system. Further, Walton’s use of diverse and institutionalized deliberation led to the pioneering use of technology which enabled such rapid expansion. This technology included computerization and a satellite-based communication system. Walton emphasized both quantitative and strategic calculation: cost-reduction was his overarching ‘grand’ strategy which included a specialized labour-relations strategy. The fourth section highlights Walton’s use of learning, in various forms and contexts, as an additional, seventh rational method. A final section examines how learning was used by a different leader, in a different country and a different industry: Marcel Dassault’s establishing of an aircraft-manufacturing corporation in France.