WALMART

SUBITTED TO: MAAM SHAZIA

BY; MOIZ NAVEED, TABARAK ALI SHAH AND ARBAZ AKRAM

BUSINESS ETHICS | Final Report

 Introduction
Walmart Inc.is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of
hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores, headquartered in Bentonville,
Arkansas. The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 and incorporated on October 31,
1969. It also owns and operates Sam's Club retail warehouses. As of October 31, 2019, Walmart
has 11,438 stores and clubs in 27 countries, operating under 55 different names. The company
operates under the name Walmart in the United
States and Canada, as Walmart de México y Centro
America in Mexico and Central America, as Asda in
the United Kingdom, as the Seiyu Group in Japan,
and as Best Price in India. It has wholly owned
operations in Argentina, Chile, Canada, and South
Africa. Since August 2018, Walmart only holds a
minority stake in Walmart Brasil, which was
renamed Grupo Big in August 2019, with 20 percent
of the company's shares, and private equity firm
Advent International holding 80 percent ownership
of the company. Walmart is the world's largest
company by revenue, with US$514.405 billion,
according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2019. It is
also the largest private employer in the world with
2.2 million employees. It is a publicly traded family-
owned business, as the company is controlled by
the Walton family. Sam Walton's heirs own over 50
percent of Walmart through their holding company
Walton Enterprises and through their individual
holdings. Walmart was the largest U.S. grocery
retailer in 2019, and 65 percent of Walmart's
US$510.329 billion sales came from U.S. operations.
Walmart was listed on the New York Stock
Exchange in 1972. By 1988, it was the most
profitable retailer in the U.S and it had become the
largest in terms of revenue by October 1989. The
company originally was geographically limited to the South and lower Midwest, but it had
stores from coast to coast by the early 1990s. Sam's Club opened in New Jersey in November
1989 and the first California outlet opened in Lancaster, California in July 1990. A Walmart in
York, Pennsylvania opened in October 1990, the first main store in the Northeast. Walmart's
investments outside the U.S. have seen mixed results. Its operations and subsidiaries in Canada,
the United Kingdom, Central America, South America and China are highly successful, whereas
its ventures failed in Germany and South Korea.
 Theories explained
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a family of consequentialist ethical
theories that promotes actions that maximize
happiness and well-being for the majority of a
population. Although different varieties of
utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the
basic idea behind all of them is to in some sense
maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of
well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy
Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described
utility as "that property in any object, whereby it
tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness or to prevent the happening
of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered." Utilitarianism
is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only
standard of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism and
altruism, utilitarianism considers the interests of all humans equally.

Virtue Perspective
Both teleological and deontological ethical theories are called deontic or action-based theories
of morality. This is because they focus entirely on the actions which a person performs. Those
theories focus on the question, "Which action should I choose?" Virtue ethics, in contrast, take
a very different perspective. Virtue-based ethical theories place less emphasis on which rules
people should follow and instead focus on helping people develop good character traits, such
as kindness and generosity. These character traits will, in turn, allow a person to make the
correct decisions later on in life. Virtue theorists also emphasize the need for people to learn
how to break bad habits of character, like greed or anger. These are called vices and stand in
the way of becoming a good person. Virtue ethics has not been a very common topic for recent
study. It does, however, date back to the ancient Greek thinkers and is thus the oldest type of
ethical theory in Western philosophy. Plato discussed four key virtues: wisdom, courage,
temperance, and justice. The first systematic description of virtue ethics was written down by
Aristotle in his famous work "Nichomachean Ethics. “According to Aristotle, when people
acquire good habits of character, they are better able to regulate their emotions and their
reason. This, in turn, helps us reach morally correct decisions when we are faced with difficult
choices. Virtue ethics emphasizes the central role played by motives in moral questions. This is
one reason why they can be popular and why they make an important contribution to our
understanding of morality. To act from virtue is to act from some particular motivation. To say
that certain virtues are necessary for correct moral decisions is to say that correct moral
decisions require correct motives.
 Ethical Issues of Walmart
Wal-Mart Violates Workers Basic Rights
Despite being the world’s largest retailer with more than 2 million workers operating in 8,500
stores worldwide, the organization has yet to develop a proper policy for its labor condition.
Concerns were raised by the trade unions, in regard to the severe violation of workers basic
rights in the Wal-Mart factories from Indonesia, China and Bangladesh. Wal-Mart’s exploitation
of its workers’ right extended to forced labor, minimum wages paid, healthcare violations and
even bathroom break limitation.

Advertisement(WALMART)
The issue in advertisement is based on the false advertisements where the Walmart production
industries have manipulated people to buying pure spring water that was actually
contaminated water. As a result of this, it has caused people to suffer from significant health
issues and has cost a loss of revenue. The stakeholder’s who are involved in the advertising
issues are consumers and managers.

Unethical behavior with shareholders by Walmart

Shareholders are ethically an organization’s obligation to serve their interest by performing well
in the short term as well as the long term. With many similar incidents in this case the only way
to reward shareholders and owners are to utilize ethical behavior. I believe that my obligation
to the shareholders of all organizations in this deal are to ethically make decisions that will help
all organizations short term and long-term. Full disclosure of financial reports is very important
because it shows important information that helps senior managers make decisions for a
company
 Solutions

Solution for workers:

From coffee and electronics to apparel and footwear, most of the products we enjoy and use
every day are made by men and women in factories and on farms around the world. These
workers harvest the cotton used to make our shirts,
sew buttons and zippers onto our jackets, grow the
cocoa our children drink, and make high-tech soles
for our running shoes. Unfortunately, many of them
work in deplorable conditions. It can be by the
economy situation or violations by certain private
business organizations. Sadly, one of the big name in
super market business is violating the rights of their
workers. They should provide proper healthcare and
incentives for the workers so that they can be more
loyal to the company and can show more efficiency
at workplace. How can someone stop their employees by bounding them not to use washrooms
if their body and mind isn’t relaxed how will they perform at work let there be more space at
the production company for workers to use washrooms. The higher management should
discuss the problems of workers and they should find permanent solutions for the workers. In
spite of having poor economic conditions the wages of the workers should be given on time so
that they can run their financial burden back at home. As we know inflation is increasing every
year and it cannot be individually controllable by any company or any employee the
organization should raise the wages of the employees as per their legal requirements and
demands.

Solution for unethical advertisement:

Being unethical means not adhering to the proper rules of conduct for the industry, and also
lacking moral principles. In everyday life, examples of this include, but are certainly not limited
to: lying to your spouse, exaggerating skills on
your resume or gossiping about a friend or
family member. While these are not
examples of good behavior, you're not
really breaking any laws. You're just
relaxing your moral code to get what you
want. The same can be true of a business.
For example, a doctor or dentist dating a patient is not against the law, but it is definitely
considered unethical. Or, if a company consistently asks a salaried employee to work longer
than 40 hours’ week after week, leaving him or her exhausted and highly stressed, that's
unethical. Same problem Walmart faced many times of unethically sell their products. Walmart
should train their marketers and give them on job trainings about ethical marketing the
religion, culture, traditions and most importantly the sentiments of the people should be kept
in mind before launching any ad campaign. There should be proper survey of people views and
sentiments before launching any advertisement.

Solution of Stakeholder problems:

ssssssWhen facing difficulties, many of us have been trained to define the challenge, brainstorm
possibilities and create solutions to
take to stakeholders for their support.
Such a process works OK if a problem is
merely hard; after all, our supervisors,
donors and board members want us to
provide leadership, including solving
problems. But when a problem is
“wicked,” our impulse to bring a
solution to stakeholders -- rather than
engaging them in generating the
solution -- won’t adequately address
the challenge. Solutions to a wicked
problem can only be found by
expanding our field of vision and attacking the problem from various angles. Too often we have
mistakenly tried to treat genuinely wicked problems as if they were merely hard problems, and
have belatedly discovered that rolled-up sleeves and sweat equity haven’t gotten us where we
need to be.
 Conclusion
In conclusion, business ethics is a complex field that is significant in every organization. Despite
having much controversy about the ethical theories, philosophers have concluded that the
ethical theories have its own positive and negative consequences. Comparing the ethical
theories, even though utilitarianism is determined to be the most useful in guiding company
decisions, it might not work for every organization or decision-making process. Thus, it is
important to be critical towards the ethical approaches to foster an appropriate corporate and
social responsibility that is best suited to its own interests toward the stakeholders, employees,
customers and business partners. Nevertheless, with an appropriate ethical combination well in
placed with the organization objective, it could definitely serve as a guideline for effective
ethical decision-making.