WALMART'S: SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION FOR

EQUAL PAY AND PROMOTIONS

Vitashik Margarita
Shesterin Oleg
Levkov Maksim
December, 6, 2018
BBA 1400
Randall Ferguson
Table of content
WALMART'S: SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION FOR EQUAL PAY AND
PROMOTIONS ................................................................................................................................... 1
Case .................................................................................................................................................................. 3
Kantianism..................................................................................................................................................... 3
Utilitarianism................................................................................................................................................ 3
Aristotle’s virtue theory .......................................................................................................................... 4
Rawl’s theory ................................................................................................................................................ 5
Our vision ....................................................................................................................................................... 6
Solution ........................................................................................................................................................... 6
Reference ....................................................................................................................................................... 6
Case
Walmart is an American well-known multinational retail corporation that operates a chain
of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores. Among the data from
official site of Walmart, nearly 265 million customers and members visit more than 11,200
stores. With fiscal year 2018 revenue of $500.3 billion, Walmart employs over 2.2 million
associates worldwide. Walmart continues to be a leader in sustainability, corporate
philanthropy and employment opportunity.

Even though, Walmart present itself as an organization with philantrophycal ideas, it still
had some ethical issues. In 2001 for the first time Walmart faced issues of unfair treatment
of female employees. In 2003 one of the workers, Betty Dukes, enter a complaint to the
court about it. After hearing the case, it was revealed that Walmart in fact had a policy that
allowed local managers the discretion over pay and promotion decisions. Another thing that
was founded is that male employees were more privileged and paid more. After hearing
Bielby's testimony, the Court decided that these 1.5 million female employees did not
provide enough evidence to show that this treatment was consistent among all female
employees. Therefore the Court dismissed the case and threw future cases into individual
lawsuits.

Kantianism
Kantianism was first created by Immanuel Kant and spotlights to a great extent on
discernment and the Good Will. A standard of Kantianism is to dependably act in
manners that regard and respect people and their decisions. Don't lie, cheat,
manipulate or harm others to get your way. Rather, use informed and rational consent
from all parties ( Salazar, 20). Another part of this theory of Categorical Imperative,
which Kant used to help people reason. Within the Categorical Imperative is the
Formula of Humanity which states, " It is wrong to use people as a mere means to get
what you want "(Salazar, 22). Ultimately individuals ought to act in a very means
that's rational by having sensible intentions and having the ability to use reasoning
once creating choices, successively creating those selections effective.
By applying Kant theory for Walmart case, it could be said that the organization did not
comply with the Imperative because bad and unequal treatment of females was continued.
This inequity is visible in payment and promotion among female and male employees. Kant
would also say Walmart has continued to make poor decisions by not changing their unfair
policies.

Utilitarianism
«Utilitarianism involves maximizing the most amount of happiness for all people affected
by a business action». According to utilitarianism everyone should get some benefits, it
refers to all the stakeholders such as customers, employers, employees. This means
utilitarian consider that all the acts will lead to benefits for everyone. In these cases, a
Utilitarian would say that 1.5 million female employees are the most affected part. So as
Walmart continued not to pay salaries, the families of those employees were suffering, they
were not able to pay taxes, to afford some goods of the society. Thus, it caused a big
contesting. In spite of all the judges, people did not consider that Walmart is unfair
company. It seemed to be that employees were treated and happy. But indeed, it was
completely opposite. Due to this, according to utilitarianism, Walmart stayed unfair and
unethical to employees, so as the company did not want to create more equal opportunity
for employees.

Aristotle’s virtue theory

Virtue ethics claims that the main task of ethics is not to supply us with the rules for what is
the right type of action, or what is “good” action. Rather, virtue ethics aims to reveal the
right type of the person- the “good” person. Instead of concerning ourselves with ethical or
unethical actions, with the help of virtue ethics we can make ethical judgements about the
people undertaking those actions. In this regard, we are judging their character, which is
what the ethical school of thought knows as “virtue” ethics. The Question of Action: “What
should I do? How ought I to act”? The Question of Character: “What kind of person ought I
to be”? These are the main questions of Aristotles’ ethics. “…being virtuous is more than
having a particular habit of acting, e.g. generosity. Rather, it means having a fundamental
set of related virtues that enable a person to live and act morally well.”(James F Keenan,
Proposing Cardinal Virtues, Theological Studies, 1995). Virtue ethics not only deals with
the rightness or wrongness of individual actions, it provides guidance as to the sort of
characteristics and behaviors a good person will seek to achieve. In that way, virtue ethics
is concerned with the whole of a person's life, rather than particular episodes or actions. It
is a useful theory since human beings are often more interested in assessing the character of
another person than they are in assessing the goodness or badness of a particular action.
This suggests that the way to build a good society is to help its members to be good people,
rather than to use laws and punishments to prevent or deter bad actions. However, it would
not be helpful if a person had to be a saint to count as virtuous. For virtue theory to be
useful, it needs to suggest only a minimum set of characteristics that a person needs to
possess in order to be regarded as virtuous.
Virtue ethics teaches:
 An action is only right if it is an action that a virtuous person would carry out in the
same circumstances.
 A virtuous person is a person who acts virtuously
 A person acts virtuously if they "possess and live the virtues"
 A virtue is a moral characteristic that a person needs to live well.
Good points of virtue ethics
 It centers ethics on the person and what it means to be human
 It includes the whole of a person's life
Bad points of virtue ethics
  It doesn't provide clear guidance on what to do in moral dilemmas
 Although it does provide general guidance on how to be a good person
 Presumably a totally virtuous person would know what to do and we could consider
them a suitable role model to guide us
 There is no general agreement on what the virtues are
 It may be that any list of virtues will be relative to the culture in which it is being
drawn up.
If we talk about the Wal-Mart case, Walmart was not courageous in that their approaches of
giving local administration discretion over pay, and promotions has made inequality in the
working environment and they keep on leaving the issues unchanged. Walmart did not meet
honesty, because they have not been giving equal practicing and promotion opportunities
for all workers. Walmart did not also meet temperance and justice, because of the
continuation in unfair policies and practices. As for the proponents of the virtue theory,
they would say, that such a company’s behavior is very unethical; Wal-Mart should meet
the workers’ requirement in change of the disparity with respect in the work environment
among people associates.

Rawl’s theory
John Rawls (b. 1921, d. 2002) was an American political philosopher in the liberal
tradition. His theory of justice as fairness, or the theory of social contract, describes a
society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian
economic system. Justice as fairness aims to describe a just arrangement of the major
political and social institutions of a liberal society: the political constitution, the legal
system, the economy, the family, and so on. Rawls calls the arrangement of these
institutions a society's basic structure. The basic structure is the location of justice because
these institutions distribute the main benefits and burdens of social life: who will receive
social recognition, who will have all basic rights, who will have opportunities to get every
kind of work, what the distribution of income and wealth will be, and so on.
These guiding ideas of justice as fairness are given institutional form by its two principles
of justice:
First Principle: Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of
equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all;
Second Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions:

a. They are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions
of fair equality of opportunity;
b. They are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society
(the difference principle).
From that perspective, we can say the Rawls and people, who have the same point of view
would say, that this Wal-Mart position in this particular situation is unethical and wrong.
As we know, gender discrimination seriously affects natural human rights, which is a
violation in the theory of social justice. Difficult career growth is also a separate point by
which one can judge the unethical nature of this situation. According to Rawls theory, all
people should have equal access to all resources, including uniform rules of employment,
production and career advancement. According to Rawl, actions can be considered ethically
right, only when they are acceptable by every member of society. By analyzing this
situation, we understood, that there are a lot of people, who will think, that such an unfair
and discriminative way of business is unethical. This is the main criteria of unethical
behavior of WalMart towards its’ employees according to the theory of justice as fairness.

Our vision
During analyzes, it was realized that this situation cannot be evaluated only by one theory.
Due to our point of view, such behavior towards female employees is unfair. Walmart
should pay for women the same salary as for the men. Delay in their salary caused bad
consequences not only for women, but for their families as well. Our group consider that, as
a solution of this problem Walmart could exclude women harassment and delays refer to
salaries. Walmart had to get rid of all the discrimination in the company. It would lead to
benefits for stakeholders, such as employees and directors. Despite being one of the most
well-known company, nobody from the street can realize what is going on inside. In most
cases every brand has some problems with its’ employees. That is why every director
should pay enough attention in human resources and financial departments in order to
exclude the misunderstanding between employee and employers. One of the option to save
the reputation for Walmart is to act according to these suggestions.

Solution

The Walmart should reevaluate their policies and create equality in an organization. The
first step might be creating equal atmosphere by treating both genders the same way, so
both of them could feel valuable. Another step is creating special trainings and seminars for
managers, so they would be educated and have more skills to manage the business. Also,
after providing changes Walmart should make some surveys in order to check, if working
environment had changed positively. By adding these new changes and communicating
with the public, Walmart could continue to be the World's leading retailer in customer and
employee satisfaction.

Reference
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