Identifying Key Problems Related to Business Ethics Within Wal-Mart and the American Red Cross

Sam Walton was born on March 29, 1918 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Shortly after he was born his family uprooted and moved to Missouri. Sam grew up in Missouri playing sports in high school and was a good student. He later attended the University of Missouri where he graduated with a degree in economics. After serving in World War 2, he opened his first business, a Ben Franklin franchise in Newport, Arkansas. Over a 20 year period he came to own 15 Ben Franklin stores with the help of his brother. Walton became frustrated with the management of the chain and decided to branch out on his own. In 1962, Walton opened the very first Wal-Mart.

The values and attitudes in Walmart’s business situation deals with a lot of the overall ethics. This paper will discuss some situations that comes in walmart .ethics. This paper will include clear definitions of organizational values and a description of the organizational values of Wal-Mart. This research is conducted to understand the success of Walmart’s employment rate. The values and attitudes will be related to some examples of other companies and how Walmart was successful. Some arguments that will be addressed in this research paper is basic and common.

Wal-Mart Corporation is one of the largest retail stores in the world. They serve customers in meeting their needs with low cost saving items. On October 31, 1962, Wal-Mart was founded and incorporated by Sam Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas. Mr. Walton went into business because he felt that items sold were too high for the average customer to afford. His focus was to sell products at low prices to get higher volume sales at a lower profit margin. He bought bulk products from different suppliers so he could incorporate savings into his pricing to lower cost for customers. Under the savings cost concept, Wal-Mart grew rapidly and surpassed its competitors in sales and generating profits.

Wal-Mart was conceived and founded by Sam Walton in 1962, at Rogers, Arkansas. Sam Walton started with just a few small variety stores, funded with borrowed money. His goal

Sam Walton was born March twenty-nine, 1918 in a small town in Oklahoma. His father was Tom Walton and his mother was Nancy Lee. Walton lived on a farm until 1923, he moved around a lot from one small town to another. He was the youngest Eagle Scott in the state of Missouri history. While finishing his degree at the University of Missouri, Walton joined J.C. Penny as a trainee in the management program in Iowa. In 1942, Walton began the military until 1945 when he completed service. By the age of 26, he took over management of his first variety store by purchasing a Ben Franklin store in Arkansas. Afterward, he purchased his second store called the Eagle right down the street from his first variety store. Sam Walton gave birth to Wal-Mart in 1962. Later that year, Walton along with his brother Bud opened sixteen stores in several states.

To fully understand Walmart’s business one should first study the history of Walmart’s retail company. Born in 1918, Sam Walton married his wife Helen Robson while serving in the military. After Sam’s military term ended Sam and Helen moved around until they finally settled in the small town of Bentonville, Arkansas. Bentonville is when Sam’s Walton’s 5&10 store led him to open the first Walmart in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas (Founder of 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.

The following report will discuss American retail giant, Wal-mart’s current ethical and business objectives. The report will look at Wal-mart’s employee relations in regard to discrimination and other various issues involving their employees. It will look at how their ethical stance contradicts with what has gone on in the past regarding associates (employees) and management.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the world 's largest retail enterprise, with total revenue of $421.8 billion and a net income of $16.4 billion in 2011. 1 It is also the world 's largest employer, with 2.1 million employees worldwide in 2010 2, not including workers hired by its providers. In my opinion, Wal-Mart provides a clear illustration through which to look at how many multinational companies (MNCs) take part in an illegal and unethical behavior. They use their bargaining power and market control to pressure countries to overlook environmental degradation and violation of national labor laws. They dictate expected pricing for products, particularly through imports from overseas countries. Labor is fulfilled mostly by underage and underpaid employees. In the United States, since 2005, Wal-Mart has paid about $1 billion in damages to U.S. employees in six different cases related to unpaid work. 3 Furthermore, Wal-Mart opposes any form of collective action, even when employees are not seeking unionization, but simply more respect. 4 The fact that Wal-Mart opposes unions exist. The company has a long history of fighting them, to the point of closing stores after employees organize. Managers have been instructed to talk to their teams about why unions are so unwanted in their business. Overseas, the company was involved in a series of scandals, including multiple cases of bribery. In April 2012, The New York Times published a story that

Walmart is an extremely finnacially successful company, however, are they an ethical company? The response to this question is no on the grounds that from the perspective of the economic model of corporate social responsibility Walmart is hugely prasied because of its finnncial success, however, from an ethical point of view Walmart is not at all praised on the grounds of their history with their employees. According to DesJardins (2013), utilitarianism tells us that we can discern the ethical importance of any action by observing the consequences of that act. In other words, one should ponder the consequences, all the consequences, of our actions prior to concluding what to

Wal-Mart is widely recognized as one of the leading discount variety store chains. It is the nations largest discount department store chain, and also one of the largest discounters in the nation in terms of sales dollars.

In the early ‘80s the Johnson & Johnson company was a very successful brand. So successful, that some of their most popular brands were able to corner more than a third of their market. However, all of their accomplishments were threatened when a series of unfortunate murders tarnished one their most popular names: Tylenol.

Sam Walton is the founder of Walmart he was born in a small town called

Wal-Mart, the big giant, the place where a lot of people usually do their shopping for the low prices and the variety of products were founded by Sam Walton. Walton was an entrepreneur with an innovative vision started his own company and made it into the leader in discount retailing that it is today. In fact, Wal-Mart is considered to be the biggest company in the U.S. and it has stores worldwide. According to PBS, “Wal-Mart employs more people than any other company in the United States outside of the Federal government, yet the majority of its employees with children live below the poverty line.”(www.pbs.org) In addition, Wal-Mart likes to portray itself as a seller of U.S. manufactured goods

Wal-Mart was started in Rogers, Arkansas during the early 1960’s by Sam Walton. (Ghillyer, 2010). Walton traveled all around the country researching what consumers wanted in a retail store. When Sam Walton fist opened Wal-Mart he