Appendix 3 (life script): Sam Walton’s Birth Order and his Leadership
Character
David M. Boje
New Mexico State University
September 4, 2005; Revised Aug 11, 2007
Sam Walton was born Mar 29 1918 in Kingfisher, OK, and died Apr 5 1992. He is first
born, and was born on a small family.
Both of Sam’s parents (Thomas Gibson & Nancy Lee Walton) shaped Sam’s leaderly
character. Sam and his parents lived on a farm until 1923, until Sam’s dad decided to go
work with his brother again, as a Farm Loan Appraiser (repossessing farms during the
Great Depression).
Sam is the first born of two children. James Lawrence (“Bud”) Walton, the younger
brother was born in 1921; Bud died March 21, 1995. When Sam was 5 and Bud 2, the
family moved to Springfield Missouri.
“Bud had a very different personality” than Sam (Ortega, 2000: 27); “the brothers had
been close as children, and Sam Walton had long tried to steer Bud’s progress.” Bud was
“bright and capable…. He wasn’t as outgoing as Sam; but at the same time he adopted a
far more carefree attitude…. He didn’t seem driven to achieve the way his older brother
did. Where Sam was abstemious, never smoking and rarely drinking, Bud thoroughly
enjoyed both vices” (Ortega, 2000: 27-28).
Birth order theory suggests that life plots (scripts) of first born children differ from those
of second, or third, or last born. Sam Walton’s talent for leading is a direct result of his
childhood experiences (Boje, 2005, Chapter 3).
Sam’s mother pushed Sam to be a winner, to excel in every activity. While attending 8th
grade in Shelbina, Sam became the youngest Eagle Scout in the state's history. Sam’s
Mother (Helen) started a dairy cow business during the Great Depression. Sam like his
younger brother Bud, had numerous chores: milked the family cow, bottled the surplus
and drove it to customers. Afterwards, they would deliver newspapers on a paper route.
Sam’s leadership career exhibits the predicted characteristics for first born: strong
achievement orientation, takes responsibility, highly dependability, authoritarianism,
dominant, conservative, shrewdness, high dependency, need for affection and praise, but
also insecurity, sensitiveness, jealousy, spoiled, and stinginess (traits from Forum on
Birth Order).i In addition, Sam’s autobiography attests that his “Mother and Dad were
two of the most quarrelsome people who ever lived together … They were always at
odds, and they really only stayed together because of Bud and me… As the oldest child, I
felt like I took a lot of the brunt of this comestic discord… I’m not sure exactly how this
affected my personality – unless it was partly a motivation to stay so busy all the time…”
(cited in Ortega, 2000: 20). Indeed Sam became a workaholic.
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Sam played basketball, was quarterback for Columbia, Missouri’s Hickman High School;
they won state championship in 1935; he graduated from high school and was voted the
"Most Versatile Boy" in his class.
Sam strived to become President of the Student Body his senior year at University of
Missouri; Sam majored in economics and was an ROTC officer. He was rush captain for
his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi. Upon graduating, Jun 3 1940, Sam was voted "Permanent
President" of the class. In his autobiography (Walton, 1992: 14-15) tells about his Rush
Captain days and his campus leadership:
I bought a real old Ford, and I traveled the whole state that
summer, interviewing potential Beta candidates…
I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was
the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the
sidewalk beroe they speak to you.
Hired by JC Penney at $75 a month, but turned down offer from Sears; started in Des
Moines Iowa 3 days after graduation from college; Worked at JC Penney till WWII. Bud
followed Dam in becoming a Penney’s trainee (Ortega, 2000: 28). Sam and then Bud
resigned from their positions at Penney’s in 1942 in anticipation of being inducted into
the military. Bud became a Navy lieutenant, leader of a torpedo bomber squadron and
was in the attack on Okinawa.
1945 After Army, his father-in-law with a loan of $20,000, plus $5,000 he had saved
from his time in the Army, Walton purchased a store in Newport, Arkansas (franchise of
the Butler Brothers chain). Sam sold the store and made a profit over $50,000.00. Bud
became Sam’s assistant manager (cleaned the ice cream machine, did window displays
with his brother), then Bud moved on in 1948 to manage his own Ben Franklin franchise
in Versailles Missouri (Ortega, 2000: 28).
In 1962 (see time line below), the brothers began opening up Wal-Mart stores. In 1971
Bud, Sam and a few other executives created a real estate and construction division to
keep up with the new Wal-Mart stores; there were 18 stores by then and a plan to add 14
more (Ortega, 2000: 73); Bud was put in charge of the new division.
The point is that Sam took the lead role, and Bud was left to take a follower role; keep in
mind both brothers founded the chain, and Bud had lesser executive roles his entire life.
It was therefore natural that when Sam Walton died Apr 5 1992, that at the annual
shareholder’s meeting, CEO David Glass would call upon “Bud” Walton (Sam’s younger
brother) to address the crowd of 15,000. But Bud, like Sam believed in listening to the
employees (both had listed their home numbers for associates to call). The workers were
update that the new CEO had been cutting their hours, turning full timers into part timers
to save more money. So at this 1992 meeting, Bud took the podium:
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“On the stage in front of more than 14,000 shareholders, a loose, relaxed
Bud Walton joked and laughed and waved at people … [at] Wal-Mart’s
1993 annual meeting.
He’d been designated as the company’s substitute for his late brother Sam
for the event…. Behind him, David Glass, Don Soderquist, and all the
Wal-Mart directors took their seats as the carefully choreographed show
got underway. But then Bud Walton unexpectedly veered from the
[scripted] agenda to say he wanted to talk about something he hadn’t
mentioned to the board…
“I probably shouldn’t even bring this up,” he said. But sales at stores open
more than a year had stagnated in recent months, he noted, so Wal-Mart
was cutting payroll, cutting back on people’s hours to cut expenses.
“I think that’s wrong,” he said, to shouts of approval from the several
thousand employees in the arena. “I know we got to cut expenses, but we
can find another way,” he said, to another ovation…. “It’s difficult for
people to manage on paychecks for only 30 or 2 hours,” he said to the
directors, before turning back to the crowd. “I’m sticking my neck out for
you. They didn’t have any idea I was going to bring this up…. I want you
to go back and tell your people I’m behind them 100 percent. “This is a
company problem and I don’t think we’ve faced it,” he said.
“I’d suggest the executives should take a pay cut,” Walton added loudly,
to a thunderous cheer from the crowd, as the directors and executives sat
stone-faced behind him” (Ortega, 2000: 346-7).
You can guess the reaction of Glass and the other executives; not one executive or
director mentioned Bud’s remarks; at the next meeting in 1994, Bud was not invited to
speak. Instead the upper echelon Wal-Mart executives concocted a plan to create a more
virtual Sam Walton, what I will call the simulated ‘ghost of Mr. Sam” (see section
following time line).
Sam Walton Time Line
1951 (Aug 1) Opened “Walton's 5 & 10" in Bentonville, Arkansas (Walton, 1992: viii).
1954 he opened a store with his brother (Bud) in Ruskin Heights, a suburb near Kansas
City in a shopping center. This store was quite profitable, too.
1962 - The first true Wal-Mart opened July 2 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas; Sam Walton
(was 44), with his brother Bud Walton, founded Wal-Mart, the chain of discount variety
stores. By 1962 Sam and his brother Bud owned 16 variety stores in Arkansas, Missouri,
and Kansas.
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1970 - Wal-Mart flourished and went public
1988- Sam Walton stepped aside as chief executive of the company, but remained active
in its management. Sam Walton was twice as rich as Bill Gates.
2005- The Walton family held 5 spots in the top 10 richest people in the United States
until 2005. Sam set up the inheritance in stock ownership; Sam and wife Helen got 20%,
each of the four children received 20% of family stock. Eldest S. Robson “Rob” Walton
succeeded his father as the Chairman of the Board of Wal-Mart John T. Walton was a
director until his death in a 2005 plane crash. Youngest son, Jim Walton, manages the
financial end of family business; Youngest of the four, Alice Walton, raises horses.
As of 2005 The company employs 1.6 million associates worldwide through more than
3,600 facilities in the United States and more than 1,570 units in Mexico, Puerto Rico,
Canada, Argentina, Brazil, China, Korea, Germany and the United Kingdom. More than
138 million customers per week visit Wal-Mart stores worldwide (Wal-Mart facts web
site).
Sam Walton is a charismatic leader. He developed home-spun, style of storytelling and
engaged in a good deal of theatrics to hone the Wal-Mart corporate culture.
The Wal-Mart Cheer source http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storewars/stores1.html
Before telling you about the ‘ghost of Mr. Sam’ I want to explain a bit about how Sam
infused the Wal-Mart culture with his energy and charisma; then you can see that when
the charismatic leader dies, then the company has to routinize that charisma (Weber,
1947).
Sam inspired by workers he saw in a tennis ball factory in Korea; he introduced the
famous "Wal-Mart Cheer" to employees, whom the company refers to as "associates."
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Sam Walton, the late CEO of Wal-Mart would ask his employees to raise
their hands and say: “Remember that at Wal-Mart, a promise we make is a
promise we keep. Now repeat after me. I solemnly promise and declare
that, from this day on, every time a customer comes within ten feet of me,
I will smile, look him in the eye, and greet him. So help me, Sam!” The
bottom line is that the only oracle we should listen to is the client! (Birth
Order Book, P. 17).ii
To start with, we all have an inner theater. This inner theater is made up of
motivational need systems that contribute to the development of a set of traits.
Referring to traits, we also need to take into consideration temperament, which is
visible in children from an early age. Birth order is another factor of importance.
This inner theater is enacted in the form of competences…(Birth Order Book, p.
6).
Sam Walton implemented, as well, an outer theatre, his “Cheers for Wal-Mart”; this
means that any Wal-Mart that is open 24 hours will do cheers, at each shift change; that’s
three times a day, 365 days a year.
Upon arriving at a store he’d often pull the associates together in the front
of the store and talk with them about the company. Before he would leave
he’d always lead a Wal-Mart cheer” (Bergdahl, 2004: 71).
Sam taught other Wal-Mart executives to “often use theatrical methods to illustrate a
point” (Bergdahl, 2003: 69). There is another side to Wal-Mart, a way in which leader
storytelling and theatrics are used in a more predatory way.
With their showman gone, the successors to Sam Walton tried to carry on the show.
The Ghost of Sam Walton
For the past few years, CEO David Glass and Vice Chairperson Don Soderquist use the
“spirit of Sam Walton” to motivate workers: “Often they invoke the spirit of Sam, telling
workers that he’s looking down on them from heaven” (Ortega, 2000: xxiv). And “so
revered is his memory that a decade after his death company leaders refer to him as ‘Mr.
Sam’” (Bergdahl, 2004: 3); “As you read about the company on its web sites you’d
almost think Sam is still alive and providing personal direction!” (Bergdahl, 2004: 79).
Bergdahl (2005: 79) argues that posthumously Sam is an icon like Colonel Sanders of
Kentucky Fried Chicken. Actually, the Colonel is more of a second-order simulacrum;
the Colonel became a cartoon caricature of his leaderly self (Boje & Rhodes, 2005a, b).
Sam Walton, on the other hand, is a very different kind of virtual leader; posthumously
the senior executives of Wal-Mart have erected Sam as a “specter,” virtually the ghost of
Wal-Mart.
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Actually, I think creating the Mr. Sam ghost, theatrically, started soon after his death. For
example, at the Annual Shareholder’s meeting, an elaborate theatric was organized in
which the ghost of Mr. Sam would address the crowd of 15,000.
There was the usual company cheers, flag-waving and songs. Much of the
meeting was a memorial for Sam Walton, who’d died two months earlier. It began
with a video tribute to him on three huge screens; at another point, a Wal-Mart
employee even pretended to talk with Walton in heaven, declaring Mr. Sam
wanted everybody to sign “God Bless America.” They did (Ortega, 2000: 240).
“Mr. Sam” as he is referred to, is a specter of charisma and ongoing transformational
leadership at Wal-Mart. Sam was charismatic in his storytelling style and his theatrical
delivery
Executive Don Soderquist at the Wal-Mart 1997 annual shareholder’s meeting told the
crowd of 17,000, he believed “Sam is looking down here, and he’s very proud” (Ortega,
2000: 369).
Wal-Mart in the 2004 and 2005 annual reports includes declarations by current CEO Lee
Scott that the executives will engage in “aggressive storytelling” practices. One way to
leverage the virtual leader story assets of the deceased Sam Walton through a storytelling
campaign on the Wal-Mart web sites and annual reports for investors, employees (called
associates), and consumers (called guests).
One of the ways the ghost of Wal-Mart is theatrically enacted is to prevent unions.
"We’re not antiunion," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Illick; "We just don’t
believe that unions have a place in our business" (IBEW, 2003).iii Sam Walton, until his
death in 1992, stressed a “union-free” Wal-Mart.
In sum, Sam is the eldest son of Thomas and Nancy Lee Walton, and he has all the
qualities attributed to first born children in a small family; plus this was a Great
Depression family, who stressed frugality. The second born, Bud Walton, became a
conscience for Mr. Sam. After Sam’s death, the ghost of Mr. Sam Wilton is resurrected
theatrically by contemporary executives in the storytelling and the graphics of WalMart’s web sites, annual reports, and in the day-to-day posthumous celebration of Mr.
Sam. A specter weaves its way into the story-fiber of the Wal-Mart culture.
The question is, what kind of specter is the Mr. Sam ghost? In Dante’s Inferno, the
“hungry ghosts are the reincarnations of people who are constantly ravenous, but can
never be satisfied. They despoil and devour everything around them” (Ortega, 2000:
377). Perhaps Sam is not the ghost from heaven that the Wal-Mart executives stage him
to be.
I don’t presume to know where Sam Walton wound up after he passed on.
But I can’t help but think, at times, that his hungry ghost is still with us in
the form of Wal-Mart itself (Ortega, 2000: 377).
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In short, Sam Walton’s charismatic storytelling and theatrics created a company culture
that mirrored his own personality: workaholic, need to achieve, and to win at all costs; in
short, a predatory business culture. That brings us to the dark side of Wal-Mart crafted by
the eldest son, then perpetuated by the ghost of Mr. Sam.
The Dark Side of First Born Leader of Wal-Mart
By all accounts Sam Walton was a master storyteller and some who made his point
theatrically. The photo above is Sam Walton in 1986 making a case in Little Rock, Ark.,
that buying American products could be the answer to the country's trade deficit Source
http://www.time.com/time/time100/builder/profile/walton.html
Sam Walton is alleged by critics to have carried his “will to power” and “to
win” to excess. For example, in the “Buy American” campaign, it was revealed
that 83% or more of Wal-Mart products are sourced out of the USA (Ortega,
2000: xii).
Sam was the consummate workaholic, who even on his death bed, was writing
furiously in his notebook on how to improve Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s executives
often put in 70 to 80 hour weeks, in the tradition of their deceased leader.
Behind the Mr. Sam the “friendly ghost” façade of the grandfatherly founder,
the contemporary executives perpetuate a form of predatory capitalism, a
hypercapitalism that depends upon sweatshops and cutthroat competitive
strategies. Behind the friendly ghost, is another specter, one more like the
“hungry ghosts” in Dante’s Inferno. With the death of the founder, the
successor executives seem to have narrowed the ethical horizon of Wal-Mart
even further.
It is no secret that Sam is also alleged to have engaged in union-busting
practices; these continue to this day:
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”Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Wednesday it will close a Canadian store
whose workers are on the verge of becoming the first ever to win a union
contract from the world's biggest retailer… The closest a U.S. union has
ever come to winning a battle with Wal-Mart was in 2000, at a store in
Jacksonville, Texas. In that store, 11 workers -- all members of the store's
meatpacking department -- voted to join and be represented by the
UFCW.That effort failed when WalMart eliminated the job of meatcutter
companywide, and moved away from in-store meatcutting to stocking
only prewrapped meat.” (Geller, 2005).1
According to Ortega (2000: viii) “some of these strategies are merely deceitful, such as
creating fake ‘grass-roots’ groups, contriving studies, and conducting dubious polls in
hopes of winning local fights over proposed stores.” This includes “… willfully profiting
from child and sweatshop labor to illegally falsifying, destroying, and withholding
documents in court cases, committing civil fraud, knowingly selling counterfeit goods,
deliberately discriminating against disabled job applicants, blacks, Mexicans, and other
minorities, and firing women workers who have the temerity to complain after being
sexually harassed by managers” (Ortega (2000: viii-ix).
“Stories abound of small retailers who simply close their shops and go out of business
when Wal-Mart comes to town” (Bergdahl, 2004: 34). Wal-Mart managers and some
designated associates shop the competition to make sure Wal-Mart prices on select items
are lower than local retailers.
With these practices, Wal-Mart must spend $400 million a year on domestic advertising
to appear made-in-the -USA and to wrap itself in the American flag.
1 Wal-Mart announces closure of its first unionized store by Adam Geller, Associated Press Feb. 10, 2005
http://www.unknownnews.org/0502150210walmart.html
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Billionaire Waltons: Is there a difference from first to third generation?
Samuel Robson (Rob) Walton (born Oct 28 1944), eldest son of Sam and Helen
Walton; as if 2004, net worth is close to $20 billion; $18.6 in 2005; April 7, 1992, two
days after his father's death, became Chairperson of the board.
Jim Carr Walton (born Jun 7 1948), youngest son of Sam and Helen Walton. Jim heads
family's banking activities He is the CEO of Arvest Bank. # 6 on World's Richest People
2002. Net worth $18.7 billion
Alice L. Walton (born Oct 7 1949), only daughter of Sam and Helen Walton. She and
her mother each have an estimated net worth of about $18.5 billion and are the richest
women in the world. Alice raises horses on Texas ranch, not active in company. Helen
not active in company
Ann Kroenke and Nancy Laurie [Sam’s younger brother James “Bud” Lawrence’s two
daughters], hold shares in Wal-Mart and are also billionaires in their own right. Ann has
net worth of $2.6 billion and Nancy $3 billion.
Paige Laurie (granddaughter of Bud Walton; Wal-Mart heirs Nancy and Bill Laurie)
“Seems Paige ‘earned’ her degree from University of Southern California by paying her
roommate [Elena Martinez] $20,000 over four years to write her term papers and
complete academic assignments that otherwise might have reduced her party time.”
Paige is G-#, the 3rd generation of Wal-Mart heirs, waiting to take their turn at the helm
(Cheating Scandal Story).iv
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i Forum on Birth Order Accessed Sep 4 2005 http://inst.santafe.cc.fl.us/~mwehr/genpsyc/FMBirOrd.html
ii Birth order book by Danica Purg Accessed Sep 4 2005
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=8&q=http://www.iedc.si/publications/brochures/bookIEDCang.pd
f&e=10342
iii IBEW web site; The Dark Side of Wal-Mart http://www.ibew.org/stories/03journal/0304/page6.htm
iv Cheating Scandal Story -- Wal-Mart heir's name stripped from arena Cheating scandal embroils two
campuses By STEPHANIE SIMON Los Angeles Times Nov 25. 2004
http://www.globalwatchwalmart.com/ or
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041125/REPOSITORY/411250363&Searc
hID=73192920286887
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