Whole Foods

School of Business

MGMT 702 - Section 101

Crafting and Executing Strategy

Writing Assignment #5

Whole Foods Market

Prepared for

Professor Jai Goolsarran

Prepared by

Renny E. Zeis F.

Student # 300670349

April 9, 2013.

1. - Financial Information of Whole Foods Market

Year | Revenues ($B) | Net Income ($B) | Number of stores | Comparable Stores Sales |

2012 | 11.698 | 0.465 | 335 | 8.7% |

2011 | 10.107 | 0.342 | 311 | 8.5% |

2010 | 9.005 | 0.245 | 299 | 7.1% |

2009 | 8.031 | 0.146 | 284 | -3.1% |

2008 | 7.953 | 0.114 | 275 | 4.9% |

(Whole Foods Market, 2012)

2. - Whole Foods Market management system

a) Organizational Structure and design: Whole Foods Market employs a team structure approach which is relatively decentralized when compared with other retailers in the industry. The company is completely structured around teams that work toward a common goal and vary depending of the store size and traffic volume.

Usually a store is composed of as many as 13 self-managed teams responsible for a different product category or aspect of store operations such as customer service, prepared food, produce, and customer checkout stations. Each team has a designated team leader and the team leaders in each store made up a team called store team. Teams are also empowered to make decisions at the store level regarding merchandising, departmental operations, marketing and efforts to please customers. The idea of this decentralized team approach is to operate the store as efficiently and profitable as possible by empowering teams and therefore harnessing collective energy and intelligence to operate each department effectively.

b) Organizational culture: A key driver of Whole Foods Market when growing in the industry has been its organizational culture. Embraced in its unique management system the company has always promoted an egalitarian, transparent and participative culture. Egalitarian since the company...