Team A
Westley Bisson, Leah Bond, Ken Chrapkowski, Lisa Cochran, Christopher Cooper
MGMT560PA – Ethics in a Global Marketplace
June 17, 2012
Dr. Roger Fuller
Southwestern College Professional Studies
Wal-Mart Group Case Study
Team A’s paper will provide an in-depth review of Wal-Mart’s ethical challenges at home and abroad along with how Wal-Mart continues to make corporate social responsibility a priority in its business across the globe. The teams review begins with the history of Wal-Mart, which can be traced back to the 1940s when Sam Walton began his career in retailing. In May of 1950, Walton purchased a store in Bentonville, Arkansas and opened Walton 's 5 & 10 (Tribble, 1990). The company steadily grew throughout the 60’s and 70’s through a combination of underselling the competition at the expense of a smaller profit and by acquiring ownership of small regional chains to expand their brand. To the present, where Wal-Mart has annual revenue near $387.69 billion and employs over 2.1 million people and maintains more than 6,200 facilities around the world, including over 3,800 stores in the United States and 3,800 international units. In fact, their U.S. presence has grown so rapidly that there are only small pockets of the country that remain further than 60 miles away from the nearest Wal-Mart (Zook & Graham, 2006).
Despite Wal-Mart’s huge successes, there also have been many detractors who point to disadvantages that have come along with their rise to prominence. Over the last decade or so, Wal-Mart has become involved in thousands of lawsuits for a variety of reasons. The majority of these suits are class action lawsuits in which Wal-marts employees claimed ethical violations and sued for unpaid wages, race, age and gender discrimination among many other issues which have been brought to light.
U.S. Ethical Challenges
Wal-Mart has faced numerous ethical lawsuits and issues over the years that have caused much
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