I have to say that after reading this case study last night, I had second thoughts about shopping at Wal-Mart today. I did go there today but must admit was more aware of the prices I was paying and bought much less than in the past. I had heard all the stories about the poor business practices of this company but never gave it much thought before.
The Wal-Mart management philosphy has me a bit puzzled. I see the Social Contract Approach in the way they are able to make so much money for their stockholders and suppliers. When they move into a community with a new store, they help the area by employing many local people and giving business to the local suppliers. At the same time, I see the Instrumental Approach where they are mainly concerned with profits and meeting the needs of the consumers. My question, though, is who are they really helping besides their stockholders when Wal-Mart moves into a rural area and basically takes over the town, closing the neighborhood stores, forcing the local suppliers out of business. This causes local people to lose their jobs and then, once Wal-Mart has accomplished this feat, they are free to raise their prices and treat their employees poorly since they no longer have any local competition. If this truly is the way, Wal-Mart does business, why is it that some many communities are allowing Wal-Mart to move into their neighborhoods?
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Wal-Mart may pay their employees more than minimum wage and offer benefits not required by law, but as I see it, are done for P.R. reasons. They are trying to overcome bad publicity from several lawsuits that have be filed against them. I believe that for the most part they follow the Strategic CSR. I base this on the fact that they do things to promote the good things they do to increase sales and have a good reputation in the community for helping local charities and organizations. They hope that people will want to shop in a store that helps out the community and will be willing to overlook the past issues. Do they get away with not promoting more women because as a society, we still believe men do the job better? ss
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To understand the ethics involved – let’s look at all this as a symbiotic relationship.
In a symbiotic relationship, both organisms survive and live together. A symbiotic relationship is the association where two different species live together, each benefiting, in one way or another, from its associate. Take a rhino and a certain species of birds—they live symbiotically. Each depends on the other for survival. The rhino has ticks that the bird needs for food. The bird helps the rhino in two ways. It remove ticks from the rhino’s body and when it (the bird) sees an animal that might attack the rhino, it jumps up and down making the rhino know it is time to run for cover. They need each other.
Is there a symbiotic relationship with Wal-Mart and the communities they serve.
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