Walmart Ethical Issues

This article is written using an enlightened self-interest approach. The author describes Wal-Mart behaving in a way that increases its own benefits, with the outcome of their actions being the most important consideration. An example of this is the author’s notion that Wal-Mart’s low prices are due to “the exploitation of its workers” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 289), “systematic use of ‘maquiladoras’ in conditions of extreme exploitation” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 289), and Wal-Mart’s threat to move production to China to obtain lower prices. In this article, the author implies that Wal-Mart’s actions demonstrate that they are not concerned with finding the most ethical behaviour; they are merely interested in the action(s) that most closely achieve their goal to remain the “biggest chain of direct sales to the consumer in North America”. (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 289)

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.

Walmart however claims that their managers can handle complaints and grievance and that their employees do not need to pay a union to advocate for them.

During the last 20 years, Wal-Mart has moved into many areas wiping out all the stores around causing people to loose jobs, slashing the tax base and causing many more disturbing problems to neighborhoods so people should stop supporting Wal-Mart for many of these reasons. Always low prices, does this sound familiar? Well this would be the slogan of the world’s most controlling company; Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart grew over the years into a 256 billion dollar company after making its name across the world in 1915. The major problem with Wal-Mart is that it maintains its own mini-economy. Some people believe Wal-Mart supports the American economy while most others hold that Wal-Mart’s global outsourcing will and has

Discuss: Laws are set rules that may help guide our conduct but they do not always agree. Some ethical issues are not legally required, but ethically warranted. We have recently seen a prime example of someone standing by their ethics, but breaking the law in the recent case of the Kentucky woman refusing to provide a certificate of marriage to a gay couple. There is a connection between ethical behavior within an organization and its chances of long-term survivability. Any unethical issues will come to light at some point and they will destroy the company. Although some unethical behaviors may not be unlawful, they can destroy a brand. Kathy Lee Gifford did not do anything illegal by allowing children in other country to sew her clothing

This factory collapsed and killed over 1,000 workers (Abrams, Rachel). In addition US companies use child labor that never would be ok in the domestic market. GAP has been accused of using 8 year old workers and Apple 15 year olds (Lamarque,Hannah). Other companies work minors over 19 hours per day (Lamarque,Hannah ). Can you imagine the backlash if a US company tried these practices? Overall, if they guarantee these rights in their home markets, they should treat their employees and customers abroad with equal human rights protection.

Every successful business have a bad side to it, such is Walmart, one of the top topic these days for cheating hours off their workers, low wages, and using public’s money (subsidies) for their business. There have been many reports against walmart, but we have rarely seen anything about it on the news or on any other popular site, and there have been too little thing done about it. Walmart have to be more in-check with the Union or the government, because walmart have done many things that hurt their employees and the community just for some profit, and get away with it. Some people might not see walmart as a threat of any kind, but walmart is a big trouble for our community, to small businesses, and our country’s economy.

Wal-Mart knew that in the United States it would need to give the American workers more benefits which could lead to more costs. So, Wal-Mart decided to expand to China, which brought lots of success. Although Wal-Mart can create products and sell them for a low price, this has affected American job seekers looking for Employment. Wal-Mart is expanding throughout the world by created factories which could lead to the production of goods for low prices. For example, “it is noted for highly sophisticated global inventory management as it brings to foreign markets quintessential American values—Darwinian competition, every widening consumer choice, and increasing shareholder value” (Garten 24). Mostly, the people who are benefiting from Wal-Mart’s expansion throughout the world is only the customers and shareholders. The employees are suffering due to Wal-Mart cutting the jobs in America and relying on other countries to do their production for them. Not only is Wal-Mart cutting jobs in America, they are treating their employees in other countries harsh. For instance, “the Chinese garment workers are mainly migrants from farms, where earnings are even worse than at Wal-Mart’s subcontractors and where the labor is more grueling” (Mallaby 622). Wal-Mart is abusing other people from different countries based on how the countries don’t have enforced labor laws. Explains why Wal-Mart prefers to expand globally and move their production facilities to other countries rather than the United

The practices of Wal-mart has impacted American workers and our economy in unthinkable ways. Charles Fishman reported that the chain is ‘helping accelerate the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries such as China.” Walmart has doubled its imports from China from 1999 to 2003, buying some 12 billion in merchandise in 2002. Fishman also states that “The giant retailer is at least partly responsible for the low rate of U.S. inflation, and a McKinsey & Co. study concluded that about 12% of the economy's productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s could be traced to Wal-Mart alone.” One way that I as a consumer confront the problems caused by globalization is to shop at local business that do not produce their products in low wage

One of the primary reasons Wal-Mart owners purchase foreign-made goods is that those imports are often less expensive and have great bargains. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, went overseas looking for goods to sell in Wal-Mart stores.1 “Low cost imports from Asia became a vital compound of Wal-Mart’s low opening price point strategy,” says Hendrick Smith, an esteemed journalist from the New York Times.2 Hendricks’s research shows that Wal-Mart stores make more profit on the items manufactured in China than on items that are manufactured in the United States. Other big brand retailers, such as K-Mart, Home Depot, Target, etc… have followed Wal-Mart’s example and long since turned to foreign production. Wal-Mart’s power has made a tremendous impact on American made companies, giving them no other choice than to negotiate on the very low prices for their products. Gary Gereffi, a Duke University professor who studies global supply chains, said in a PBS interview, “Wal-Mart is one of the key forces that propelled global outsourcing - off-shoring of U.S jobs - precisely because it controls so much of the purchasing power of the U.S. economy,” Wal-Mart used its buying power to force local small businesses into squeezing their costs and keeping their profit margins very

There are sometimes consequences of trying to lower costs to the consumers. One such consequence is that Wal-Mart has been under fire for their employee treatment. They were criticized for low wages and lack of benefits. After it became public about the handling of employees, they suffered a severe decrease in their stocks. In 2006, to help improve relations, Wal-Mart raised pay tied to performance and expanded and improved their health benefits package. They have also been accused of not sticking to proper workplace conditions, discrimination and employing illegal immigrants. In these three cases, Wal-Mart instead of actively addressing these issues, responded by deflecting that they were at fault.

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

Unlike Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart has not shown a clear and concise message of ‘never again’, but instead have made many moves that just seem calculated. For one, while the Department of Justice has investigated the Wal-Mart bribery case, the company has funded a Chamber of Commerce initiative to roll back certain portions of US bribery laws. In addition, the company has never officially admitted or denied the charges, but instead seemed to hedge its

•    The owners of Wal-Mart stand to gain enormous profits from this move while India’s economy will suffer and its workers will be subjugated to the unfair work practices of this Multinational Behemoth

This is a strong acceptance of capitalism (so the normative theory applied here is the ‘questioning versus accepting capitalism’ theory). Mona Williams implies that workers there should work in an environment, the same as any other factory in that country. This -in the advantage of Wal-Mart- keeps the costs for products low because they “adjust to local standards” and don’t give workers any more than their co-inhabitants with