Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart on the idea of providing superior service and selling products at the lowest prices. Many critics feel that Wal-Mart has lost its original values and now faces many ethical issues regarding how the organization is being run. Wal-Mart has received criticism for the lack of follow through regarding their sustainable practices. Another area of concern would be the treatment of its employees regarding wages, health benefits and aggressive efforts to prevent unions. The management team has also been embroiled in bribery and embezzlement scandals. One of the biggest critiques of the organizations would have to be their relationships with suppliers and safety concerns over foreign operations. An analysis of the literature
Wal-Mart was founded on two principles that “10-foot rule” and “sundown rule”. The “10-foot rule” was that associates were to offer assistance to any customer with in ten feet of them and the “sundown rule” work should be completed today and not put off tomorrow. Sam Walton did not feel an ethics program was needed if the organization followed his own ethics, but critics argue that Wal-Mart has strayed from the original founders’ vision, (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). Wal-Mart has plagued by several ethical issues including its Anti-Union Stance, Health Care and Exploitation of Workers. Wal-Mart has reduced its workforce and violated the “10-foot rule.” Consumers are now forced to wait in longer lines and associates are no longer able to provide the service they once did. The biggest criticism is of Wal-Mart would be that most employees are part-time and make less than a living wage. The organization also faced criticism that by keeping employees’ part –time they do not have to offer the employees’ health care. Wal-Mart has also received bad press for its anti-union stance regarding employees organizing for collective voice, (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). Wal-Mart is faced with the ethical dilemma over cost savings and providing its workers with living wage. Consumers who shop at Wal-Mart are looking for low prices and when Wal-Mart strayed away from this
One of the biggest ethical dilemmas faced by Wal-Mart would be its treatment of its suppliers. The organization’s competitive nature has forced many of its suppliers to setup shop overseas. Wal-Mart has received bad publicity over the working conditions in the overseas suppliers’ factories, (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). Wal-Mart has duty to make sure suppliers are providing safe working conditions for their employees and establish an auditing procedure to ensure the safety of those employees. Another area of concern would be foreign operations and issues with bribes. Wal-Mart has been rocked by another scandal involving top leadership bribing officials in Mexico and other foreign locations. The organization has done little to address the above issues, (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). Wal-Mart needs to have zero tolerance policy for ethical violations related to working conditions, bribery and
In Deenu Parmar's "Labouring the Wal Mart Way," the author discusses the business practices of Wal Mart, their impact on systemic poverty, and on existing work unions. Their business model forces competition to align with them, or close up shop. Wal Mart hires workers that would usually have a difficult time finding employment. That said, they pay them well below a living wage. Staff are also subject to abuses like overtime without pay. Wal Mart is resolute in their feelings towards unions. Their hiring process designed to cut out union sympathizers. This way, they can prevent any retaliation from staff seeking a better work environment. If anti-union efforts are unsuccessful, they close the store. It also forces existing unions to take pay
Within an excerpt from, “The United States of Wal-Mart,” John Dicker explains that Wal-Mart is a troubling corporation. Dicker begins his article by discussing why the store is so popular within the news in an age of global terrorism, coming to the conclusion that Wal-Mart has a huge scope in the United States and that it has more scandals, lawsuits, and stories than any other supercenter. Continually, he goes on to explain that Wal-Mart outsources jobs and their companies demands makes it hard for employees to have livable wages and good working conditions. Furthermore, Dicker addresses the claim that Wal-Mart provides good jobs, by destroying this perception with statistics showing how employees live in poverty and that their union scene
Besides all the points that I have stated, Wal-Mart has had to pay fines due to breaking Child Labor laws and Illegal Immigrant laws; fines up to $11.5 million for just those two types of laws. Wal-Mart is not good for this economy, for the people, and the company, in a whole, is criminal. If the people let Wal-Mart stay on the track it is on, the United States will not have anything but Wal-Marts. Wal-Mart will become a monopoly and put everyone, who started with something more than greed, out-of-business.
Wal-Mart represents the sickness of capitalism at its almost fully evolved state. As Jim Hightower said, "Why single out Wal-Mart? Because it's a hog. Despite the homespun image it cultivates in its ads, it operates with an arrogance and avarice that would make Enron blush and John D. Rockefeller envious. It's the world's biggest retail corporation and America's largest private employer; Sam Robson Walton, a member of the ruling family, is one of the richest people on earth. Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way: by roughing people up. Their low, low prices are the product of two ruthless commandments: Extract the last penny possible from human toil and squeeze the last dime from its thousands of suppliers, who are left with no profit margin unless they adopt the Wal-Mart model of using nonunion labor and shipping production to low-wage hellholes abroad." (The Nation, March 4th 2002 www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020304&s=hightower).
Wal-Mart as we know it today evolved from Sam Walton’s goals for great value and great customer service. Mr. Walton’s competitors thought his idea that a successful business could be built around offering lower prices and great service would never work. Mr. Walton also credited the rapid growth of Wal-Mart not just to the low costs that attracted his customers, but also to his associates. He relied on them to give customers the great shopping experience that would keep them coming back. Sam shared his vision for the company with associates in a way that was nearly unheard of in the industry. He made them partners in the success of the company, and firmly believed that this partnership was what made Walmart great.
The article alleges that the 5 principles Wal-Mart was founded on are: conservatism, idealized views of family and commu...
The Wal-Mart Corporation is a multi-billion dollar low-cost retail organization, consisting of 6400 stores and 1.8 million sales associates worldwide. Wal-Mart’s influence on the retail world and the enormity of their corporate size is unparalleled. Wal-Mart can easily report sales of $312.4 billion dollars per fiscal quarter and net profits of $3.8 billion dollars. Wal-Mart promises her customers "Always low prices. Always!" and upholds this motto by providing low prices to her customers and high return on investment to her stockholders. One way that Wal-Mart has managed to maintain a competitive edge over other low cost retail giants and provide low prices is by cutting wages and by not offering too many company benefits to their employees. Full-time employee working at Wal-Mart only make $8 an hour, while only 45% of the workers can afford to be covered by health insurance. Wal-Mart also increase part time employees from 20 percent to 40 percent so that they do not have to cover all of their employees for health insurance . Although Wal-Mart may not provide excellent benefits to her employees, it successfully performs as a legitimate business operating in a capitalistic society. Wal-Mart upholds the primary fiduciary duty to satisfy her stockholder and follows free the market libertarianism model, which states that a business should not interfering with the free market. In a free market Wal-Mart has a direct responsibility to her primary stockholders rather than the employees of a company.
Today Wal-mart has a higher GDP than the entire country of Switzerland, but don’t worry they’re pretty neutral about it. But there has also been news about how they treat there employees. In 2004 an article was released entitled Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart, and soon after Washington got involved. The bad publicity took a toll on Wal-mart and in fact is still today, Maryland passed a law in January, 2006, that said larger employers, such as Wal-mart, must spend at least 8% of their payroll on health benefits for their employees, and now many other states have followed suit. The bad publicity also made it so 8% of customers shop elsewhere because of what they’ve heard, this has caused lower expected sales around the holidays during 2004, and 2005. Some things they’ve done is in 2006 they paid employees on average 9.36 dollars, while other major retailers like Target and Sears pay on average 11.08 dollars. While this can be easily denied by Wal-mart, another way they have gained bad publicity is from something called off-the-clock work. If they had not finished their job they had to clock out and then still finish their job, meaning they wouldn’t get paid for
Walmart has had a long-standing presence in America society since the middle of the 20th century, seen as a place to get everything done, Walmart has become a fixation in our society. From grocery shopping, to changing your oil and even filing your annual tax returns, Walmart is always there, everyday. Started by Sam Walton in 1962, it began as a small operation catering to a small Arkansas community. It was started on principles very similar to small local businesses in small towns. Today Walmart has gotten a different, darker reputation. On the surface, Walmart may seem like the solution to everyday issues. Low-income families are attracted to the low prices, and people who work odd hours benefit greatly from the 24 hours a day that many Walmarts are open. Lately, Walmart has also managed to be publicly recognized as a store that sells many of today’s green products, including organic food, environmental conscious cleaning products, as well as, paper products made from recycled paper. However, underneath all this, Walmart has a different side. Exploitation of its workers is widespread amongst Walmarts who do not belong to a union, especially in the United States. Wal...
Wal-Mart is now operating globally, and its main vision is for additional global expansion of operation and "promotion of ownership of ethical culture" to all of its stakeholders worldwide (www.walmartstores.com). The idea of Wal-Mart’s vision on ethical culture is key in globalization. Wal-Mart has had good reputation and competitive advantage worldwide because it has been able to embrace culture and diversity in its operations across nations. In promoting ethical culture, Wal-Mart helps its customers and stakeholders to take the right decisions and to do the right thing.
Wal-Mart maintains aggressively, a distinct and consistent corporate culture through out its operations. The issue is that local managers and supervisors are given unguided discretion on the hiring, firing, promoting, and disciplining of employees (Hart, 2006). These individual managers bring with them their own beliefs, biases, stereotypes, and assumpt...
There are three articles that will be referenced during this analysis. The first article is taken from the mainstream media publication USA Today. “Wal-Mart takes hits on worker treatment: Lawsuits, unions slam megaretailer”(Armour, 2003) argues that Wal-Mart is coming under attack from critics who argue workers are underpaid, women are discriminate against, and illegal tactics are being deployed to kill unionization efforts. Armour (2003) states, “company officials say they don’t know why the attacks are coming now, and they also say the allegations are unfounded.” The next statement made during the article states that Wal-Mart employees agree with the statement. The author continues reporting on the issues at stake, but focuses mostly on how unions may be less relevant in today’s world. The article makes mention of both sides of the argument, but the rhetoric and terminology used leans towards the portrayal of Wal-Mart as a victim of biased attacks to further union interests in the market.
The most significant component of Wal-Mart’s success was the way it treated its employees or as they are known as in Wal-Mart “associates”, the beliefs or rules of the Wal-Mart culture makes associates want to provide excellent service to its customers. During visits Walton encouraged associates to pledge to greet customers and ask if they assist them or walking into a Wal-Mart store customers are met by a greeter, an associate who welcomed them and handed out shopping carts (Farhoomand, 2006).
Wal-Mart corporation was founded by Mr. Sam Walton in 1962 has become the largest company of the world due to the astronomical growth in the past 10 years. Wal-Mart caught my attention because of the increasing presence of the company in Latin American markets. I am from Guatemala in Central America, country in which Wal -Mart started operations a few years ago. Its very interesting the business-level strategy they used to enter the Guatemalan Market. My family is very good friends of the family Paiz, owners of the super market chain “PAIZ” in Guatemala. When Wal-Mart was planning to start operations in our country, they basically offered a ridiculous amount of money to buy-out the Company “PAIZ” and they threaten to start a frontal Business war if they don’t sale the company. Our friends, the family Paiz didn’t had a choice to accept the cash for the company and sell completely the company to Wal-Mart Corporation. The entry strategy of Wal-Mart in Central America was clearly the acquisition of Central American retail holdings companies. Myself as a business owner love to study successful structures to try and apply them to my company, of course in this case, I cant really apply the divisional organization of Wal-Mart because of the magnitude and size of the company but I could get very healthy tips to the continuous growth of my company.
2. Why do you think Wal-Mart has had a recent number of ethical issues that have been in the news almost constantly?