Ethical Issues With Walmart

Improved Essays
When an organization adheres to the set of principles, values and standards set by themselves and the laws that govern them, they are seen as ethical. In society today, many organizations are working hard to maintain their status industry but fail to comply with their corporate responsibility and values. According to the course textbook, many of these issues relate to overly aggressive financial or business objectives. When C- level executives engage in unethical or questionable business practices, they risk loosing the trust and confidence of their employees, clients and other members of the business community. They are all known as the foundation of the organization. A company cannot grow on a broken foundation. Due to that, many organizations are stripped down of their values and influence because their corruption. …show more content…
Businesses like Wal-Mart have been deemed very unethical when corruption scandals engulfed the company. Wal-Mart is said to be one of the largest retail enterprises and also the world’s largest employer. A lot of allegations have been made against Wal-Mart over the years and these issues have caused a great backlash in the status and name of the company. Over the years there have been reports of bribery amongst the Mexican officials, inadequate wage payments to employees and unauthorized plants constructions which made them responsible for the death of over 100 employees. These are only a few of many

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Wal-Mart has been recognized as one of the most unethical companies of this generation, the company has been getting away with multiple unethical and illegal acts for many years now. In 2010, Walmart was considered the world’s largest employer (Sethi, 2013). Some of the few unethical and illegal acts they have been accused of is, fraud, acts of bribery, corruption and mistreatment of employees with their powerful market status. Wal-mart has also been recognized one of the worst companies to work for as they have been accused on multiple occasions of underpaying their overtime workers, withholding alleged health benefits, mistreatment of employees and so on, because of which, the company has been sued on many occasions by its employees. As it’s…

    • 260 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The topic covered relates to specific companies that went against these rules and regulations to try and accomplish selfish goals. This information is significant for a businessperson because such examples portray topics that any businessperson may encounter. Understanding the background of ethics and how it ties to businesses is…

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Transformation of Cooperate Control by Fligstien is very interesting to say the least. He argues a different position than many economists would argue. Many economists would suggest that the economy works on its own, and that it is not controlled by anything. However, Fligstien suggests that political and social processes, for example government entities and institutions, control the economy. The social and political process involves three different contexts organizational fields, state, and the organization.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Ethics, broadly defined, is the a set of values or principles established by society for its betterment. Many of these values and principles are incorporated into culture and law. Organizations today integrate ethics into the foundation of their businesses in order to augment the professional value and trustworthiness of the their enterprise. Both public and private companies are expected to uphold certain ideals and internal controls for the benefit of their stakeholders. Operating with high virtues dictates an enterprise’s true value.…

    • 1234 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wal-mart is a large big box retail store that sells a wide variety of products. In the past, Wal-mart has done some dishonest things, “A New York times story alleged that Wal-mart bribed officials in Mexico to allow the company to open stores in Mexico” (Mielach 3). Also that is not all that has been learned about Wal-mart, notice that in general, “The only studies that support Big Wally are funded by or through Wal-mart” (Barrison 3). That is just a bit suspicious is it not?…

    • 1089 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wal-Mart is known for being a business that refuses to let its employees join a union. Wal-Mart has gone to extreme lengths in the past to prevent its workers from joining unions; for example, “At the first sign of organizing in a store, Wal-Mart dispatches a team of union busters from its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, sometimes setting up surveillance cameras to monitor workers” (Olsson 609). In making this claim, Olsson feels that Wal-Mart is too aggressive when it comes to union busting, and that the measures taken to prevent its workers from joining a union are too harsh. Some people will claim that Wal-Mart and its workers are better off not being in a union. According to one expert, “The unions would rather someone not be employed at all than earning a wage they believe is too low” (Hoenig 47).…

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Argument Against Wal-Mart

    • 647 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The biggest challenge now is whether or not Wal-Mart could afford to pay its employees better with medical benefits while keeping customers happy. The simply answer that Reich points out for many reasons is no. No, Wal-Mart cannot afford to compensate its employees better while keeping customers content. Wal-Mart will no longer remain competitive if it adds the extra costs of benefits for its employees. The extra spending would come at the cost of the customer.…

    • 647 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The cost saving employment practices of Walmart lead to the exploitation of their workers and prevent their workers from making living wages…

    • 1059 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Wells Fargogo Case Study

    • 1061 Words
    • 5 Pages

    According to Parnell (2014), an organization cannot of itself be ethical. However, an organization can promote ethical conduct from employees by having…

    • 1061 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wal-Mart a multibillion corporation is one of the largest companies in the US, employing about 1% of the American workforce. By offering some of the lowest prices on the market they quickly took over the business. But as Wal-Mart grew so did the grievances against it. In the documentary “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” by Robert Greenwald the effects of the business on its employees and the communities they serve was investigated, the harm the corporation brings to its workers through the world and communities is much higher than the benefits of lower prices.…

    • 865 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Walmart Discrimination

    • 216 Words
    • 1 Pages

    As a result of the law requirement, my analysis is that the Supreme Court decision not to allow this case to be decided as a class action was the perfect decision. The case was not about whether or not Wal-Mart discriminated but if a group of workers could bring a case forward based on gender. Had the decision gone the other way it would have changed how business hire and fire employees. The core of the plaintiffs' discrimination case is statistical. Wal-Mart draws most of its managers from its hourly wage employees, of which 72 percent are women.…

    • 216 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Thus, we often see articles about how companies covered up their soon-to-be scandals, how companies assured citizens but ended up hurting the environment (chemical companies and their wastes), and fraud among executives like the ENRON scandal. The ENRON scandal was a big event in American economy history, because such large energy company was doing illegal practices, from the executives to employees, no one said anything before it was revealed. There must be employees who knew about the executives’ action and were against it, but because of loyalty and they were afraid to be fired, what they could have done was limited, and this is just one example among many. In result, to prevent such big problems from happening, companies must guide their members in an ethically way. As Daryl Koehn, author of the article “Is Business Ethics an Oxymoron?”, wrote: “In more general terms, businesses must care about ethics because businesses are part of a human community.…

    • 1291 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Eduardo Castro-Wright, Chief Executive Officer of one of Walmart’s foreign subsidiaries, Walmart de Mexico, was accused of paying bribes to Mexican officials to receive permits to build Walmart stores all over Mexico. Investigators from Walmart found evidence that Mexican executives paid millions of dollars of bribery money. In addition, the investigators learned that the Mexican executives tried to hide the bribes from Walmart’s executives in the United…

    • 968 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    There are many ethical issues in the case of Walmart. If everything The New York Times reported is true and there is evidence to support it then Walmart would be guilty. It is an ethical issue that Walmart participated in bribery to get what they wanted in Mexico and lied once they were confronted. Executives were aware of the bribery and corruption taking place in the Mexican operations but failed to stop it. This choice affected the company’s reputation and created doubts and uncertainty with their…

    • 1060 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Wal-Mart Case

    • 1934 Words
    • 8 Pages

    3.0 QUESTION 1 What financial impact do you think the lawsuit could potentially have on Wal-Mart? Do you think the women deserve to win their lawsuit? What is the outcome of the case cost Wal-Mart so much it had to lay off thousands of its workers and close stores? Answer:…

    • 1934 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays