Structure and Culture of ASDA

Posted by Emma Zoe on December 15th, 2016

A group is collection of people who work together to attain a common objective. Group behavior is how a team or group behaves with each member of the team within the team. Group inside an organization can be classified as two types: Formal and Informal Groups. Formals Groups are generally formed by the leaders keeping in mind various skills that are required to do a particular job. On the other hand informal groups are formed by the employees themselves. Formal groups are more organized and compared to informal groups. It has been observed that working in a team leads to better results when compared to the sum of output of each individual inside the group working alone. ASDA faces the issues in group of organisation and behaviour during the early phase of their merger with Wal-Mart. The main reason was because; a cordial relationship in a group can only be maintained when each individual working in the group has a common objective. Since, the merger means new set of rules and new set of objectives, this lead to initial problems and conflicts in the groups. However, the management of ASDA was proactive in identifying the employees with common skills and objectives, thus formed new formal groups which solved the problem of conflict and increased the relationship between the employees.

           The recent advancements in the field of communication and information technologies has been a contributing factor in impacting the proper functioning of the team within the organization. With the introduction of mobile phones and internet, it has become easy for employees to stay connected and help other employees during emergencies. However, these advancements also have their negative affects too. Since, these days’ computers have become prime source to store data and confidential information of an organization; these are subjected to various malicious threats such as virus and Trojan. Activities like phishing can lead to stealing of data or credentials which can be misused later. Mobile phones have become an easy source to communicate with each other, but too much use can lead to burden also. A person who is on vacation or away from work would not appreciate too much phone calls (Kumar, 2003).  Thus it can be seen that these advancements have contributed a lot in smooth and proper functioning of the team as they can interact more conveniently, but at the same time these technologies should be used wisely in order to make full use of it.

As we know, ASDA is a retail company who has many supermarket and stores across UK, it is important for managers to interact and keep track of day to day activities. Thus, ASDA follows an effective communication system, since it is not possible for managers to physically visit each store. Thus, with the coming up of new and improved technologies interaction in ASDA has increased a lot, which has improved the proper functioning of the team. The nomination process which is used by managers in ASDA to nominate employees who have shown great results, so that they can be rewarded is now done through an online process. The new recruitment process in ASDA also involves an online process, which has been made possible because of the new tools and software because of the development in the field of technology.