Walmart Company Structure

Sometimes I find myself reading through the court documents for lawsuits filed against Wal-Mart. Usually those documents are filled with a bunch of garbage posing as factual information. Occasionally, though, some interesting information is found.

Below is a description of Wal-Mart’s operating structure which was published in a court document in 2003. The only advantage to reading the text here is that I removed all of the legal cross references and footnotes to make the text readable. [The following should be taken with a grain of salt in that this information was produced from an anti-Wal-Mart lawsuit and does not come from the company's official filings.]

1. There are a total of 41 regions: 35 Wal-Mart regions and six Sam's Club regions.
2. Each region is supervised by a Regional Vice President (RVP), who is based in Bentonville and travels for three weeks out of each month to the region.
3. Because the regional management is based in Bentonville, Wal-Mart has an unusually high concentration of executives and managers based in the Home Office.
4. Regional management meets at least weekly with Bentonville-based corporate and executive leadership to discuss developments in the individual stores.
5. Each region, in turn, contains approximately eleven districts; each district contains approximately six to eight stores.
6. Each district is run by a District Manager, who lives in the field.
7. At Sam's Club, district managers are called Directors of Operations, but the job responsibilities are identical.
8. On personnel matters, District Managers work in conjunction with Regional Personnel Managers (RPM).
9. The RPMs are based in Bentonville and are responsible for recruiting and assist in selecting store management and monitoring personnel policies.
10. RPMs visit the stores on a weekly basis and submit reports to five People Directors in the Home Office.
11. Each Wal-Mart store has the same job categories, job descriptions and management hierarchy.
12. At the bottom of the ladder, the primary entry level hourly positions are cashier, sales associate and stocker.
13. The first step up is hourly Department Manager.
14. Other hourly supervisor positions include Customer Service Manager (CSM), known as Check-Out Supervisor (COS) at Sam's Club.
15. The highest level hourly manager at Wal-Mart is Support Manager.
16. The next step up is to management trainee, a four-to-five month program which prepares employees for positions as Assistant Managers.
17. The first salaried management position is Assistant Manager.
18. Each store has several Assistant Managers, varying with the size of the store.
19. The next level is Co-Manager, a position used only in larger stores.
20. The top store position is Store Manager, called General Manager in Sam's Clubs.
21. The stores contain 40-50 different departments.