Wal-Mart’s Blended Learning Plan

In his provocative book, The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business, Nelson Lichtenstein invokes Peter Drucker’s pioneering exploration of General Motors in describing how every era has its “industry of industries.”

When Drucker published Concept of the Corporation in 1946, Lichtenstein notes, automobile makers were dominant, and GM was the king of kings. Today, he explains, it’s “the retailers, Wal-Mart above all,” that have “set the standard for a new stage in the history of corporate capitalism.”

It is precisely because Wal-Mart occupies this prominent, if not preeminent, place that its announcement this month about providing assistance for its workers to receive college degrees struck me—and surely would have struck Drucker—as potentially of great significance. Just how great remains to be seen.