Case Study : Legal Issues And Wal Mart

This case study involves America’s largest and most recognizable retail chains. Walmart steadily grew from its founding in 1962 as a small Arkansas based retail store into the multi-national giant that it is today. One of the issues that Walmart’s unprecedented growth has raised is how it can maintain the ethical standards and principles held by its founder, Sam Walton, when it has grown past its humble roots and continues to grow in an ever more competitive and hectic world. Some of the current ethical issues that Walmart is facing are the treatment of its employees, the methods it employs to obtain retail goods at low prices, the sustainability of its products, and the use of bribery to further corporate interests (Ferrell 407). Therefore, this paper will examine each of these ethical issues and the stakeholders that are involved in the issues to create a global picture of the totality of the ethical dilemmas currently facing Walmart.

Wal-Mart is commonly known for its low prices, clean appearance, and large variety of products; however, the super store has constituently been the center of many ethical issues. From working conditions, wages, benefits, product issues, and even bribery, Wal-Mart has been shrouded in ethical disputes for years. In the next few pages I intend on discussing these issues, the impact they have had on the company, and the actions that management has taken in response to them.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes was perhaps the most closely watched cases when the largest discrimination lawsuit was taken to the Supreme Court by Wal-Mart in 2011. The divided opinion was highlighted in the case video with Justice Antonin Scalia claiming that “the women failed to show Wal-Mart has a policy of discrimination that worked to harm all female employees,” while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg maintained that discrimination can be subtler.

Jeffrey Seglin, a business ethics columnist for the New York Times, participated in an event sponsored by Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. He described two Wal-Marts one as evil and one as good. The evil company is very, very big and does everything to grow bigger. They use illegal immigrants to mop floors and are accused of locking employees inside overnight. They practice gender discrimination, pay low wages and deteriorate suppliers and competition. The bad one "is the enemy of all that’s good and right in our nation" (Seglin, 2004).

In the corporate world, everything is a competition. With so many companies fighting to be on top, do some ethical dilemmas get slid under the rug? In 1991 Walmart opened its first international store in Mexico City. Since then, Walmart has rapidly taken over the supercenter industry employing 2.3 million associates worldwide and ending the fiscal year of 2016 with a total revenue of $485.9 billion. (Walmart, Inc.). How has Walmart been able to grow so much so quickly? Ever since the Wal-Mart de Mexico’s bribery scandal that surfaced in 2005, the company has been under fire for allowing such illegal acts to take place. It’s first important to understand how Walmart got involved in the bribes, how corporate dealt with the allegations when they became aware of them, and then discuss ways in which Walmart can improve their policies and practices to make sure that this undesired behavior doesn’t happen again.

In a case that continues to reverberate across borders, Wal-Mart Stores, the world’s largest retailer, announced recently that it has started its own probe into allegations that its executives in its Mexican operations made hundreds of illegal payments – worth more than $24 million – to help expedite the opening of new stores. According to a report in The New York Times, Wal-Mart officials in the U.S. learned about the bribery allegations in 2005 but failed to alert U.S. and Mexican officials at the time. 1 The charges have cast a dark cloud over Wal-Mart, which is also the largest retailer in Mexico and the country’s top private-sector employer. Wal-Mart’s own probe of possible bribery could force the firing of the firm’s top executives, and bring fines from the U.S. government if investigation reveals that the company’s senior managers knew about the illicit payments but did not take sufficient action. The day after the allegation were made to the public, stocks fell nearly five percent. 1 Even though this practice may act as typical behavior in a multicultural behavior,

Big multi-national corporations have, throughout years, left aside ethics and morals to only focus on profit and market shares. In my essay, I am going to take Wal-Mart as an example. On November 25, 2012, fire consumed a factory outside Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, in which 112 people (many workers from them, including Wal-Mart outsourced employees) were trapped and killed inside without any exit. (CBC 2000)

Walmart is the one of the biggest retailers in the United States and one of the foremost and influential corporations in America. It has become one of America 's most successful retail chains by offering “everyday goods at low prices” for middle and lower class families. Even with all of its financial success, the company cannot open a store without dealing with an abundance of protest groups. Walmart always overcomes these groups, but nonetheless there is always opposition against them. Walmart has had a reputation for unfair labor practices by refusing unionization, offering really low wages, and discrimination. The protest groups defend local store owners, the environment, employee salaries, and discrimination against various minority groups. Walmart displays an image of being charitable and giving back to the community, but they are responsible for unjust and discriminating actions in the United States. To maintain its low-cost strategy, Walmart has been involved in ethically questionable practices, including gender discrimination in promotion and pay. While the Supreme Court recently ruled against class certification of 1.5 million women in the Dukes v. Walmart case due to a lack of proof that Walmart operated under a “general policy of discrimination”, there is much evidence that shows that gender discrimination is still a problem rooted in the culture of Walmart, despite gender-neutral policies (Biskupic, 2011).

The week one study is about a case that was considered one of the largest lawsuits in United States History. The United States Supreme Court had to come to a decision on a class act lawsuit between 1,000,000 female Wal-Mart employees and their greatly established employer. The discrimination suit mainly focused on the lack of promotions amongst the plaintiffs and the unequal pay received compared to their male colleagues. Unfortunately, in this case, despite the statistics generally exploiting the difference in compensation and advancement amongst the two sexes fell in favor of the retail giant. The decision was made mainly on plaintiffs’ lack of ability to demonstrate the discrimination that each individual encountered while employed with the large retailer. This reflective paper will look further into the court process, the opinions of a Supreme Court Judge, and the jurisdiction of the federal court.

Jeff Bezos the CEO and founder of Amazon has a unique work ethic, and one he demands his employees uphold as well. He believe in the conventional ideals of hard work and dedication, but to him they take on a whole new meaning. However, according to Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld; Bezos is seeing just how far he can push white collars workers before they break. Looking through the lens of Immanuel Kant’s respect for person ideology I will evaluate the morality of what Amazon is doing to its workers.

Wal-Mart emerged in the early 1960’s as a one-stop shop, advertising everyday low prices. The idea quickly took off and expanded beyond the original store in Arkansas to all across the U.S. by the 1980’s. People loved the convenience Wal-Mart provided, eliminating multiple trips to different stores and saving time. They also saved money by shopping here, so it was an obvious choice for many consumers to shop at and support Wal-Mart. But behind their low prices and convenience, a more sinister motive exists. The true price of big business like this is unfair wages, unethical practices, destruction of the environment and damage to local companies.

Standards, values, morals and ethics have become increasingly complex in a postmodern society where absolutes have given way to tolerance and ambiguity. This particularly affects managers in Human Resources, where decisions will affect people’s jobs and their future employment. This paper will look at the history of Wal-Mart and it will glance at the management style and Ethics of Wal-Mart towards it internal and external customers.

Some of the unfair practices that are given in Wal-Mart may be for the same reason that not as many benefits are given in that store than they are in any other local business. For example, Wal-Mart does not assure health care for any employee working under 30 hours a week according to a copy of the company’s policy. Under the strategy, slated to produce results in January, Wal-Mart additionally maintains all authority to take out social insurance scope for specific specialists if their normal weeks’ worth of work plunges beneath 30 hours - something that happens with consistency and at the heading of organization administrators. Work and human services specialists depicted Wal-Mart 's choice to prohibit laborers from its restorative arranges as an endeavor to breaking point

When we hear someone say they need to go to the grocery store, what is the first place that comes to mind? For most of us, it is Wal Mart. From its market end, to its home and beauty supply, all the way to its lawn and garden department, Wal Mart has been ordained one of the most profitable companies in the entire world. But it did not start out that way. With a dream, determination, leadership, and some sweat, Sam Walton, made a small mom and pop store into the multibillion dollar company it is today.

Over the past 30 years Wal-Mart has grown into the world leader in retail and supply chain management. However, the company has faced and continues to face challenges with its stakeholders and other parties who are very critical of their business practices and ethics. Wal-Mart has established a reputation of squeezing the little guy to acquire the lowest possible price for the most earnings at the expense of some of its stakeholders as addressed in the 2005 documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price by director Robert Greenwald. Various parties including community groups, religious organizations, grassroots organizations, environmental groups and Wal-Mart customers as well as current and former associates have