Walmart Ethics and Principles

8/2/2019 Walmart Ethics and Principles

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Wal-Marts founder Sam Walton set 3 beliefs, respectful for the individual, services to

the customer, striving for excellence. The guiding principles are as follows:

At all times act with honesty.

Guide with honesty, and expect others to work with honesty. Always obey the law. Be truthful and reasonable. Respect and encourage differences, and never discriminate against anyone. Work, actions, and relationships outside of your position with the company should be free of any

conflicts of interest.

Ask your manager or the Global Ethics office for help if you have any questions about ourStatement of Ethics, or if you face an ethical problem.

Inform the Global Ethics office about any suspected violations of our Statement of Ethics.

Reveal and report all information truthfully, without manipulation or misrepresentation.

Cooperate with and maintain the private nature of any investigation of a possible ethics violation. When involved in an ethics investigation, you should reveal and report all information truthfully.

You should present all the facts you are aware of without personal opinion, bias, or judgment.

The global responsibility areas are corporate governance, environment, global supply chain,

associates, diversity, communities, health and safety, financial contributions, in-kind donations

and volunteerism, progress updates for commitments, audit results and rewards.

Wal-Mart set three main goals; operate with 100% renewable energy, create 0 wastes, and

sell products which maintain people and the environment. World-wide, Wal-Mart saw a 10.61%


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transaction, prices, and description. Record keeping is vital to assure they are compliant with all

requirements.

Wal-Mart is an American made company but yet it does most of its business with foreign

nations, and treating the American market as if it were a puppet. The 3 key insights are: lower

your costs if possible but never compromise your standards, repay your real customers/clients

with exceeding their expectations and finally if your employees are happy then business will

thrive because happy employees precipitate into happy returning customers and clients.

Wal-Mart imports approximately 18 billion dollars from China every year, which are

held to a lower standard of quality control and basically no oversight to the approval of good for

public consumption when compared the same American aspects, as well as employing thousands

of mistreated child-laborers. Wal-Mart does not buy American made products but they produce

and distribute lower quality, some time hazardous, foreign products in America. Wal-Mart is

feeding foreign markets, instead of creating American jobs, fueling domestic commerce and

raising the number of American companies/American entrepreneurs. Although usually I agree

Milton Friedmans school of thought when it comes to free enterprise and the unnecessary idea

of corporate responsibility, if I as an owner of a company can keep my labor force domestically I

can oversee the production and the operation of my business. When jobs are outsourced because

of financial reasons this usually means that you are compromising your standards in order to try

and lower costs, which is one thing I would not do as a business owner of an American company.

The customers of Wal-Mart are those who affected by the actions of the corporation,

theses customers do not even have to have ever walked into a Wal-Mart store. As long as their

lives have been affected or altered in any way these individuals are customers of Wal-Mart.

From the mom and pop hardware shop that cant keep their family business alive, since they can


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not incur their monthly overhead costs if business is low or non-existing, to the small local

communities that are turned into ghost towns with sporadic abandoned commercial zoning areas.

Wal-Mart is killing American industrialism and any incentive to start new businesses. When the

surrounding businesses are dying, so are those employees and those local employees are Wal-

Marts customers. I think Wal-Mart will be a victim of their own poison because once the Wal-

Mart customers stop showing up, they too will be no longer in business. Once you learn how to

repay your real customers for keeping your business alive you can be sure that they will return

and you repay those real customers by exceeding their expectations every time they enter the

door. Remember, everyone affected by the actions of the company is a real customer even if they

are not directly affiliated with the company.

Employees are the life force of the company. If the employees are being mistreated it

will be apparent through their work and their attitude while at work. The employees will transfer

his mentality to the customers and people they interact with everyday. The Wal-Mart

employment strategy is to employee as little number of people to save on the payroll expense but

that financial decision is again not in the best interest of the company. Yes the sole function of a

business is to make the largest profitpossible, but most CEOs do not take into consideration that

they personally are not usually affected by these actions. If they were the floor employee that is

assigned to half of a 300,000 square foot facility because the store was short staffed I do not

think they would think that CEO would pass the policy. Lying to that employee does not know

that their own company is doing this to them on purpose is plain wrong. Lying and mistreating

your employees is a good way to put yourself out of business, not a successful business strategy.

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Walmart Ethics and Principles