Walmart Ethics

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Introduction

The word “ethics” is about knowing what is right and wrong, it’s a combination of self-consciousness and following what is “right” and not what is “wrong” if we say “business ethics” this is about doing business in an ethical way which involves being fair, environmentally friendly and not being corrupt or making a profit in any way that has a negative impact on the world or people themselves. Business ethics has been defined as “the rules of conduct by which business decisions are made” and these rules of conduct can sometimes relate to business issues, which are concerned in today’s world such as child labor for example. Other individuals have stated that business ethics is defined as “the application of ethical values to business behavior.”

This assignment will consist of a report of Wal-Mart’s own comapny Asda regarding the organization’s business ethics. By doing research in ethics regarding the Asda supermarket I the report will consist of main ethical dilemmas facing Asda, it will also progress by outlining the importance of these issues and how the company is dealing with them. The report will explain what their ethical best practice and values by referring to appropriate ethical theory are and it will then progress and conclude by making recommendations in order to enable it to answer its critics.

in China they would not be interested in doing business, the owner added "I would be the happiest man in the world if I could provide my workers with good money, air conditioning, health benefits. They are like children to me. But if I cannot cover the costs of running a factory, it will close." It is obvious that this company was asking for very low prices as exploitation in the developing world countries such as Bangladesh. John Hillary the campaigns and policy director of War on Want said: "Price wars between the three retailers Asda, Tesco and Primark have driven the price of high street clothing down to 50% of what everyone else is charging. You have this relentless pressure on suppliers to keep costs down and, faced with these incredibly powerful retailers, suppliers in Bangladesh and China have no room for manoeuvre. Even the ETI have agreed that the buying practices of the UK retailer sector are driving down wages and having a negative effect on working practices."

Internationally Walmart has had other allegations such as the Walmart supermarkets in the U.S where claims of the use of illegal workers were filed against them. It was reported that Walmart used illegal immigrants to work in stores and federal investigations report that Walmart was aware of this which they later denied and blamed on the contractors who won bids in order to work for them. The situation was so bad that on October the 23rd 2003 federal agents in the U.S raided 61 Walmart stores in an operation which they called “operation rollback” resulting in the arrests of 250 overnight janitors were undocumented. This is another dilemma that Walmart faces internationally as they were prosecuted of knowingly employing illegal immigrants especially overnight in order to cut costs and increase profitability. In 2004 New York Times reported that Walmart violated the rules against child laboring in the U.S where a report showed that after examining one week’s time clocks of roughly 25,000 employees, 1,371 were reported to be of minors that were working too late, too many hours in a day or working during school hours and a lack of break times taken.

Coming back to Wal-Mart’s ASDA supermarket in the UK other allegations concerning with being unethical regards the sale of cheap alcohol. One of the reports showed that in 2008 it was actually cheaper to buy larger than water and that ASDA’s shots otherwise known as “shooters” were designed to be sweet and packaging used bright colors in order to attract the underage drinkers. Their unethical approach to selling alcohol was seen as the blame for some underage drinkers drinking outside and it also implied issues to people who are alcoholics and are venerable to this type of promotion which was seen as selling cheaper alcohol than water.

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Figure 1: Bangladeshi workers interviewed, 8 individuals (Karen McVeigh, The Guardian, Monday 16 July 2007)

Dealing With These Business Ethical Issues

When identifying whether a business is ethical you have to consider the following factors, the work done and practices that are implicated in the company have to be legal, unlike some of Wal-Mart’s dilemmas some of the laws had been breached. The decision have to be looked whether it effects the environment or people in a negative way, transparency is another issue as decisions should be open to the public, for example when the guardian newspaper reported about the violations of human rights in Bangladesh it had a bad impact as the public was not in favor of this. The decisions have to be made in order to been seen as fair for other workers and people implied with the company and finally it is important at looking who benefits from the business, in theory ASDA should be trying to improve the community and provide jobs in Bangladesh, a sort of give and take type of approach should be given in oversea deals within an ethical business.