The collaboration between Walmart and the small to medium sized producers stems from philanthropy.
Thus, Walmart foundation purposes, as a non-governmental organization, to shape a collaboration with small producers and small enterprises with the support of third party organizations. The goals of any co-operation are having an incessant access to recourses, or as Kathleen McLaughin referred to it as sustainability. This was achieved by having a limitless supply of production from trained farmers all over the world starting from Central America to all over the world or through organizations such as Woman’s Economic initiative with woman hand produced and designed products. Collaboration aims at being efficient, and uses scale economics for maximum benefits as in Walmart’s farmer training plans and side-stepping mediator companies to have a larger scale of quality goods with less cost. Furthermore, collaborative advantages between several bodies can be observed in the Walmart foundation once it teamed up with Technoserve and Acre fund in training the farmers. Also, they collaborated with USAID to decrease risks on the company itself. According to N. Dahan, J.
Doh, J. Oetzel, and M. lYaziji that multinational enterprises create and deliver social and economic value by incorporating cross-sector collaborations, eventually, giving benefit to all parties involved. One has to assume since the Walmart foundation is a philanthropic organization the collaborative aim is having a moral imperative. The foundation believes it helps the socioeconomic standard of the communities involved, whether being farmers or woman who are under the poverty line.
The company, nonetheless, gains a public value in this initiative. Learning is a major part indicative of a good collaboration. The farmers and the women who are the major suppliers of the foundation are not on the only ones gaining knowledge. Walmart, as well, learn the time and needs of the individuals to produce the best products and the relevant designs for the market needs.
N. Dahan et al. supported this claim by highlighting the competencies gained by such partnerships, gaining market expertise, as well as, gaining credibility in all involved parties from producers to consumers. With all the efforts exerted by the Walmart and its collaborators in the farmers and women enterprises and having them become self-sustainable there would be a long period, as in having collaborative inertia. Walmart, as previously discussed, did gain insight in the products and was able to provide quality assurance to all is customers. When an NGO collaborates with other recourses it gains capabilities to complete both businesses and could create new models and innovative organizations.With regard to question two, we hereby define the supply chain network as the flow of materials as well as data, through connecting companies or organizations together in order to attend to the end-client.
They represent the alliance of two corporations, where their participants uphold highly-intensive and regular relations with one another based on official and unofficial contracts. In Walmart’s case, intermediary companies provided retailers with a portfolio. The intermediaries also delivered short-term funding in some occasions to guarantee that enterprises were able to supply Walmart. In some cases, these aggregators as they are known, also engrossed losses related to items that failed to live up to quality standards.The focal actor usually plays an essential role to ensure a positive outcome. In this case, we observe the following:• Roles of focal actor in Direct Farming:1. Gearing to Supply chain goal: Obligation to the direct farm model of sourcing.
2. Being part of the supplier development teams charged with emerging small and medium farmers.3. Ensuring forming partnership with governments and non-governmental organizations; supply chain management (dealing with issues across all businesses involved in the supply chain).4. Having the small and medium farmers produce a significant portion of supply, making it a business necessity for Walmart to work with them.5.
Working with Walmart to produce designs which can be sold on Walmart.com.• Roles of focal actor in EWT:1. Partnering strategies.2.
As in the Direct Farm model, Walmart engaged third-party establishments to upkeep women-empowering enterprises around the world. These intermediaries supplied formal retailers with a portfolio of products sourced from small women-owned enterprises.3. The products offered were based on the existing output of these enterprises and the array of products they were capable of manufacturing. The women-owned and women empoweringenterprises included in the EWT program were selected from the intermediaries’ existing portfolios and networks.
