Wikipedia:WikiProject Business world

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Any Wikipedian who has an interest in furthering knowledge about the business world is welcome to participate in this project. The purpose of the project is to create a unified framework for information about the concepts, history, companies, organizations, and people related to microeconomic activity. It will help readers understand critical distinctions between related items and give them the means to navigate the knowledge.

Contents

[edit] Participants

[edit] Categories

We need to refine, clean up, and/or create categories that help readers navigate the content effectively, without being confused or overwhelmed. Proposed guidelines:

  • Rational taxonomy - category hierarchies should reflect an intuitive, robust model of knowledge
  • MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) - there should be no gaps, no overlaps in parallel categories
  • precision - there should be clear criteria for what gets included and what doesn't in a given category
  • objectivity - categories should reflect some objective measure. For example, "best looking executives" would not be a meaningful measure, but "top-ranked business schools" might

[edit] Business concepts

Business concepts include models, insights, research, and other thought capital that influences business activities.

[edit] History of business

History of business includes events, trends, etc., that are relevant to the current state of business.

[edit] Companies

Companies are for-profit enterprises that serve to inform our understanding of the business world.

[edit] Wal-Mart Stores

Wal-Mart Stores (2004 10-K, new expected in April 2005, AR from April, 2004), a retailer, generated $285 billion in sales (sales rank) from 5,245 stores and 1.6 million associates worldwide during fiscal year 2005 (ended on January 31 2005, February 17, 2005 - news release). That's $55 million and 300 associates per store (285/5.2, 1600/5.2).

It was "founded" in 1962 with the first Wal-Mart store opened in Rogers, Arkansas ([1]). In 1970 the company had $44.2 million in sales from 38 stores and 1,500 associates. 1975, 125 stores with sales of $340.3 million and 7,500 associates. 1979, $1.248 billion, 276 stores, 21,000 associates. 1985, 882 stores, $8.4 billion, 104,000 associates. 1987 1,198 stores, $15.9 billion, 200,000 associates. 1995, 2,943 stores (1,995 Wal-Mart stores, 239 Supercenters, 433 SAM'S CLUBS, 276 International stores), sales at $93.6 billion, 675,000 associates. 1996, sales totaling $118.1 billion for 1997 per AR '98.

In January of 2003 Mark Hurd spoke about the company (they are an NCR customer, [2]). You can find the story (here). On September 11th, 2001 the demand for american flags from their stores increased dramatically, at the beginning of the day the company had 106,000 american flags in store, and the end of the day all were sold. On September 12th they still managed to have new flags in store and sell 225,000 of them. While some big competitors were slow to update their supply chain and ran out of that item and other items.

According to Mr. Hurd the company has 400 people in Bentonville, Arkansas that manage the inventory and supply for all 4,000 US stores. It's perhaps not something spectacular, it's just a very fast system, that works very well, anybody should be able to have it. In all of recorded history of man the society of people have in general and overall in their daily life rewarded responsibility taking, hard work, and the genuine will to create something excellent. Since it's founding in 1962 the large crowd of people have rewarded the Wal-Mart Stores corporation.

[edit] Organizations

Organizations are not-for-profit entities that influence the business world. Examples include central banks, schools of business, research organizations, etc.

[edit] People

These include individuals who play or have played an important role in business.

[edit] Sandy Weill

Sandy Weill (financial services) have made a great contribution to american business through his hard work and great skills. Already as a junior broker on Wall Street, according to a book, he realized that a key to success is to be very well informed about the market and its participants. He would spend much time reading about companies in their SEC filings and other public information about them. He started his first business (named Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill) with three associates in 1960, that company has gone through many restructurings and made numerous acquisitions and divestitures. That company through its many incarnations is now a big part of Citigroup.

In 1981 his company was called Shearson Loeb Rhoades when he sold it to American Express. He didn't become CEO of the new company, and in August 1985 he left his life's work in the hands of other management. In 1986 he became the CEO of Commercial Credit and brought a team of partners with him, to start anew. In 1993 he reacquired his old Shearson brokerage (now Shearson Lehman) from American Express. The company owners has many times awarded Mr. Weill with large compensation bonuses, his salary has been $1 million a year since 1999, in 2000 he was awarded a cash bonus of $18 million ([3]).

Still alive and well, he makes an observation of the industry in the latest annual report with saying that he thinks "distribution is the more powerful asset, with potentially higher returns at times than manufacturing" (Citigroup 2004 AR). In the spirit of that observation Citigroup have within the first half of 2005 sold one of its four business groups "Global Investment Management" (product lines website). The price was $11.5 billion (insurance) and $3.7 billion (asset management).