Case Study Of Walmart De Mexico

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1) Case Study
I choose Wal-Mart de Mexico because of the need for bribery and the means of covering up the problem is a huge management problem, especially when dealing in every aspect of international business and management. We become wary by the media coverage like the ones in New York Times (NYT) in April, 2012 and subsequent follow ups of wrongdoings of such magnitude and questions whether social responsibility ,business ethics and governance of such Corporations are actually in placed and to what extent in this case.
2) Contemporary management issue in relation to this article
• Background and context of the Company: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. To date it is purportedly to be the word largest public corporation according to “Fortune Global 500” list provide by Wikipedia: Walmart (2014). The Company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, and together with his brother opened the first Wal-Mart store in Rogers (Arkansas), USA. In the 1990’s, Wal-Mart decided to go global, thus, Mexico was one which its globalization initiative concerntrated on.
• Key Issues for the Company: Wal-Mart de Mexico executives used unethical means to subvert democratic governance by knowingly bribing Mexican officials to obtain building permits, environmental clearance, and zoning clearance to open new stores over the years and also falsify accounting records to hide these payments. When this matter came to the attention of the senior management of Wal-Mart in USA, instead of hiring a third party to look into this investigation, the matter was reverted back to Wal-Mart general counsel in Mexico, the very people implicated at the centre of ...

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... then CEO of Wal-Mart, Lee Scot which seem flawed from the very beginning where he excluded people with the relevant expertise, instead of uncover and deal with the serious problem, he choose to suppress. I recommend that he should have lead from the top with process for prevention and responding to the wrongdoers of this bribery scandal. As evident in the above case bureaucracy approach to management was not conducive, and therefore I also recommend the contingency thinking approach which is more applicable that try to match managerial response with the problems and opportunities specific to different settings. “No one best way” to manage and organize due to varying circumstances (Bateman & Snell 2004). Wal-Mart should have immediately appointed an independent third party investigating team and its result directly to the boards of directors and Justice Department.

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