The Social Responsibility Of Wal Mart

There are many opinions on the ethics of the Wal-Mart model, both favourable and unfavourable. The article “ROB Ranks Wal-Mart Among Canada’s Best Employers” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 287) offers a favourable viewpoint of the model, and the article “The Cost of Walmartization” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 288) offers an opposing unfavourable view. This paper discusses the theoretical approaches used in each article, along with the supporting evidence that was used in an effort to be convincing.

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.

Economic - Wal-Mart’s economic performance has been outstanding and its goal of providing quality merchandise at low cost to consumers fits well within this objective. Its stakeholders expect continual improvement to its bottom line, which is especially important to its shareholders, as they are the ones sharing in that return. “…2013, Walmart increased net sales by 5% to $466.1 billion and returned $13 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases” (573). As we will discuss later on, the struggle comes when the company tries to do this in a sustainable and ethical way. Further, the company must provide fair paying jobs and profit to shareholders with as little impact as possible to local merchants. This can be done by purchasing from U.S. manufacturers whenever possible.

Wal-Mart’s first responsibility is to its shareholders. Wal-Mart demands its suppliers provide cheaper goods, at faster paces

Social responsibility is a moral principle that an organization or individual act towards betterment of society at large. It is a duty that every firm and individual should perform to maintain the balance between the environment and economy. Their actions should lead towards sustainable development and safeguard the interests of the coming generations and at the same time fulfilling the needs of present population. The responsibility can be active, by performing activities that directly advance social goals, or passive, by avoiding any engagement in socially harmful act. Walmart being one of the nations largest retailers, corporations, and largest private employer with over a million employees is often targeted for many issues. These issues

Although prices at Wal-Mart are considered as reasonable they are still having their own issues in relation to ethical issues and unethical practices consists of consumers were complaining about how they were not paying what they consider a fair prices for their groceries. Wal-Mart use to cover up what they were doing to their customers the advocate group followed the Food Chain Workers Alliance in order to investigate the root of the problem in the outsourcing ethical systems. Wal-Mart worker are currently complaining they are not being treated fairly because they are overworking their employees and they are not receiving enough pay based on their skills and qualifications they should determine how qualified their employees are for the job of their choice. Wal-Mart just followed existing law.

In 2005, “Wal-Mart took a leading role in disaster relief, contributing $18 million and 2,450 truckloads of supplies to victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita”. In addition, Wal-Mart strongly believes in supporting our service members and veterans. Along with Wal-Mart’s charitable contributions, it has “made a major commitment to environmental sustainability, announcing goals to create zero waste, use only renewable energy and sell products that sustain people and the environment” (Wal-Mart, 2015). Even though this retail giant exceeds its competitors in profits and revenues and, is a very charitable organization, it still faces many

The establishment of big business within the United States also alters the social impact through the developments which take place. There are a variety of positive and negative variables which directly alter the social and cultural associations with products and services. Wal - Mart, one of the largest multinational corporations, often known as a big box retailer, offers a variety of products in it's store and is noted as one of the largest corporations in America. While the influence of the store continues to create demands, there are both positive and negative associations with the influences of the corporation and it's development.

Walmart is a worldwide store that a majority of the population shops at or has been to. With have 11,659 stores in 28 countries, Walmart must keep up with its publics and targeted audience. With being such a big company, Walmart has many charities and ways they give back to the community. They want to help as many people as possible with giving them affordable items for the whole family.

For instance, it has turned into a pioneer in introducing sustainable power sources in a considerable lot of its stores everywhere throughout the world including sun based, wind biodiesel, and energy unit establishments; it works with The Sustainability Consortium to build up a supportability file to quantify the maintainability of its items and procedures; and it has been fruitful in changing over utilized cooking oil into biodiesel, cleanser, and supplements for steers nourish and fertilizing the soil more than 1,900 tons amounts of natural waste. The organization has additionally been trying reusing strategies, which has brought about twofold the measure of cardboard being reused. The Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership Program has positioned Walmart the second biggest buyer of green power among its U.S. retail contenders and third biggest buyer in the Fortune 500. Walmart also strives to be environmentally responsible, for example, it made plans to introduce LED lights and utilizing sunlight when conceivable, turning off lights and other power sources when not being used, and supplanting its open coolers with optional circle refrigeration frameworks. Walmart has begun a morals instruction program that advances respectability as an ordinary conduct by building a universally reliable morals instruction encounter for partners and incorporating morals content into existing practical zone preparing.

As much as Walmart may care about the environment, they will not sacrifice some profit now in order to actually help it in the immense way they are able to. These large companies recognize that sustainability is good business, so why will they not actually change? Eventually, they will not have any choice. And by that point, it will cost millions more to reverse the damages. By looking at the environment through an economic lens, Walmart sees the importance of changing but also that the monetary value of changing is not as great as the monetary value of continuing on as they are. Despite already being the largest corporation in the world, Walmart continues to add more harm to the environment because they are still not satisfied with their

Sustainability has become a great topic of interest in many arenas. Particularly, leading organizations are recognizing sustainability needs to be an essential aspect of their long term strategies. With this recognition, better business practices are being sought by investors as well as sustainability is becoming a driving force for better efficiencies and innovation. Two organizations, Wal-Mart and Starbucks, have both took on sustainability as long term initiatives to address their customer needs and affect how their suppliers operate.

Due to increasing environmental imbalances, it is necessary for firms to achieve competitive advantages in the area of environmental convergence as well. Wal-Mart is putting continuous efforts from a long time for environment sustainability and energy conservation. It also received Aspen Institute Energy and Environment award for Corporate Energy Efficiency in 2009. Here are a few steps that Wal-Mart has taken to encourage environmental sustainability:

Corporate social responsibility has two parts. First, CSR means a company should seriously consider the impact of its actions on society. Second CSR, requires that a company or individual be responsible for how their actions impact the society. Walmart is a corporation that some can defend does display CSR, while other can defend that it does not. Walmart was the epitome of what a retail chain store should be. Sam Walton took what he learned from the JCPenny model and transformed it into something better. He was responsible for the social responsibility innovations of the “Buy American” plan and the “Environmental Awareness” campaign. These innovations display how CSR was displayed by Walmart. The “Buy American” plan showed corporate responsibility because when Walton discovered that his company outsourcing was contributing to American job loses he devised a plan to showcase the domestically purchased merchandise that Walmart was now stocking. This was an ideal way to incorporate the second definition of CSR into the corporation because Walmart was considering the impact it had on the society. However, the corporate responsibility Walmart once tried to incorporate was lost when it became one of the largest purchasers of goods made over-seas, which in turn forced US manufacturers out of business. In early 2013, Walmart announced they would be buying American again, however, it is a struggle to find vendors that will meet Walmart’s price points. Walmart could have avoided this

A. The Wal-Mart China work in co-operation with the government and employees in advancing sustainability. The best practices known by Wal-Mart should be shared with government and employees to reduce carbon footprints. Also Wal-Mart should abide by the regulations of the government pertaining to sustainability and also Wal-Mart should voluntarily adopt best practices which lead to greater sustainability. The employees should be trained for reducing carbon footprints resulting from their actions and should be rewarded to encourage them to continue addressing sustainability issues.