Wal-Mart's Culture and Success

Wal-Mart's Culture and Success
Name
Lecturer
Course
Date
Introduction
Sam Walton developed and implemented his idea of low prices in 1940s and as a result, Wal-Mart which is now the world's largest public corporation came to be. The company engages in several and complex relationships with diverse stakeholders. Wal-Mart tops the list of Fortune's Global 500 index and is the largest trucker, largest grocer and 3rd largest pharmacy within United State. Wal-Mart is a retail giant which has employed over 2.2 million employees globally where over 1.3 million employees work within United States only. As such, Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the nation and it collects the highest annual revenue as compared to other businesses (Joseph, 2014). This paper is aimed at discussing the success of Wal-Mart, its relationship with the employees and its unionization.
Over the years, Wal-Mart has realized high profits and the company's success can be attributed to how the company relates with its employees. The company being guided by Sam Walton's idea of offering commodities at low prices, it seems to have gone out of its way to ensure that this goal is achieved. The company has received criticism from various institutions including labor unions, grassroots organizations, environmentalist groups, religious groups as well as community members. Wal-Mart has experienced a lot of controversies over meager employee benefits, low wages, gender discrimination, overtime pay abuse, massive dealing with China, negative effect on small businesses, tax avoidance as well as lack of health insurance. Through such unlawful practices, Wal-Mart has been able to accumulate a lot of profits at the expense of its workers (Spencer, 2013).
The disaster experienced in Bangladesh garment factory can shed more light on how Wal-Mart operates. Bangladesh has been ranked second globally from china in the export of garments. In 2011-2012, Bangladesh earned $19.1 billion from foreign exchange and this represented 13% of the country's GDP and also a 78% of annual exports. Bangladesh expected to triple its garment export by 2016. This was a realizable goal because rise in workers' wages in China has made more production to migrate into Bangladesh. In addition, Bangladesh has no natural comparative advantage in garment manufacturing and as a result, it has not been able to create complementary industries or even expand its manufacturing base. Consequently, it is not a surprise that these low prices are actually obtained through low wages as well as unsafe working environment (Copeland & Labuski 1, 2013; Hinze, 2013).
Wal-Mart's 2012 guiding principles for overseas suppliers requires compliance with local rules on employment practices, voluntary labor, wages, working hours, collective bargaining and freedom of association, safety and health, dormitories and canteens, conflict of interest, environment, bribery and corruption (Spencer, 2013). On the contrary, Wal-Mart prohibits its suppliers, its sub-contractors and its primary/tertiary suppliers of materials and services as well as finished products from disclosing any information (such as plant audit, reports of shortcoming, corrective actions required) concerning the nature of and the scope of ...