Case Study : Working At Wal Mart

Question 1: What were the rights of Walmart, the employer, during these two organizing drives?

The corporate world has an unfavorable view of itself by being selfish, evil, and against the average American. Companies market themselves and their products in certain ways that makes them and their products appealing to everyone and if not everyone then a certain group of people. Every company has a mission to follow and values to go by, but some companies lack ethics and morals. In this paper I am going to talk about one company that engages in ethical behavior and another that doesn’t.

The novel, Serving In Florida, introduces the ideas of studying the working poor in the United States. Barbara Ehrenreich, a scholar and author, explores this idea by working in a similar environment as the average working poor class citizen. For this particular project, she decides to work at a run-down diner called Jerry’s. From the excerpt of her book that was read, she is able to explain a lot about her experience with this simulation and her views on the working poor. Despite the respectable effort she made for the study, Ehrenreich can not give an accurate representation of the poor working class because she does not know their past or their home life and she will never fully understand what it is like to live as a working poor class employee because for her it is all a simulation.

Walmart employees, customers, and suppliers have seen their fair share of Walmart’s bad side. While Walmart’s founder, Sam Walton, claims to make their employees feel like they “are working for them” and that they care Walmart has done such a horrific job with the way they treat their employees that one day, the workers decided to walk out and go on strike. They walked out on the grounds that they “were emblazoned with the workers’ grievances: poverty wages, miserly benefits, dignity denied” (Eidelson 1). They felt like they weren’t only taking a stand against Walmart, but also taking a stand for the younger generations to come. Walmart’s employees are getting treated unfairly and are underpaid. The CEO’s, Michael Duke, annual salary gives him more money in an hour than an employee who works full-time would make in an entire year. In Bangladesh, over 100 workers “died in a factory without outdoor fire escapes, NGOs blame Walmart for pushing deadly shortcuts” (Eidelson 1). Not only are the employees being poorly paid by Walmart, but they are paying their life to Walmart just to make enough money to barely get by. Walmart even made a pregnant employee work around chemicals that eventually made her ill. After a trip to the doctor, Walmart allowed her to be put on a lighter duty, so they made her a door greeter; however, they

The Dollar General is an American wholesale company that was first initiated in Scottsville, Tennessee by Turner and Cal Turner. Its headquarters are located in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The mission statement of the Dollar General is "Serving Others." This mission statement helps to bring out the innate requests and intentions of the company in the United States of America and other countries in the world. The company has a vision that describes how it manages to cater for four different types of people. These four groups of people include the customers, the community, employees, and shareholders. Within these categories of people, Dollar General aspires to serve others through deliver of price quality and terrific prices for customers, opportunity, and respect for employees, a superior return for shareholders and a better life for the communities.

When one of her coworkers ecstatically announces to Ehrenreich that the Hearthside hotel allows her to use the parking lot to sleep, Ehrenreich sarcastically remarks that “With the Hearthside offering benefits like that, how could anyone think of leaving?” (181). When asking this question, Ehrenreich mocks her coworker’s joy. This satirical rendition, of what was a happy moment for her coworker, further highlights the sad life of a blue collar worker. Besides rhetorical questions, Ehrenreich also alludes to television commercials. In her explanation of why blue collar workers cannot take leave, Ehrenreich refers to an Aleve commercial. She describes the commercial as one “in which the cute blue-collar guy asks: If you quit after working four hours, what would your boss say? And the not-so-cute blue-collar guy . . . answers: He'd fire me” (181). By referring to this commercial, she adds a sense of humor to her writing. As a result of this humor, Ehrenreich’s message sits closer to the heart of the reader because the reader can now associate the worker’s lives with a humorous commercial they may even have

the superior tracking capability of RFID chips would reduce shrinkage and other forms of loss by up

The values and attitudes in Walmart’s business situation deals with a lot of the overall ethics. This paper will discuss some situations that comes in walmart .ethics. This paper will include clear definitions of organizational values and a description of the organizational values of Wal-Mart. This research is conducted to understand the success of Walmart’s employment rate. The values and attitudes will be related to some examples of other companies and how Walmart was successful. Some arguments that will be addressed in this research paper is basic and common.

Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) were introduced in 1980 with the purpose of saving energy. They initially were very expensive and consumers were aware of many flaws that made them hesitant to purchase the bulbs and bring them into their homes. The positive effects of switching from alternative bulbs to CFLs were overshadowed by media attention highlighting the issues that remained unresolved. Wal-Mart pushed promotional programs in 2007 that were very successful. They introduced a private label at a lower price, offered online ordering, posititioned the products well, installed interactive displays and engaged with new partners to promote energy efficiency. In 2009 the CFLs were redesigned and

Wages and benefits are not the only complaints Wal-Mart is now facing. Recently, Wal-mart was accused of denying women equal pay and opportunities for promotion (Bianco, 2003). Wal-Mart attempts to distract from their past and present diversity issues by devoting an entire section of their webpage to this subject but until Wal-Mart can show statistical proof reflecting their claims of fair wages, good benefits, and equal treatment, the complaints by the unions and consumers will continue. These upper level management decisions are having a negative impact on the company and providing an unhealthy organizational culture for the organization.

    The case “Does this milkshake taste funny?” presents a situation, where company employees  were confronted with an ethical decision.  Their thoughts and actions were shaped by several factors,  including their personal moral values and the corporate culture engendered by the management of the  company for which they work.  This case provides an example of how a lack of a code of ethics or ethical  training within a corporation can lead to negative consequences.    The major players in the case are the night shift employees of Eastern Dairy, and the  management of this company that set up the rules and expectations for the night shift.  The background  and the ethical situation

In Gail’s case, she has a roommate that drives her mad, but paying rent would be impossible to pay alone (pg 132). Many of the coworkers are in a similar type of situation, where they rather be in a different living situation, but they bear the negatives about their situation and does nothing to change it. Ehrenreich includes these living situations about her co workers as real problems that low wage workers can recognize as similar problems they face because of the low wage jobs. She builds her logos by recognizing the different living situation that are relatable to most low waged workers. Gail should move out to avoid her overbearing roommate, but with the salary she receives, she could not continue living in the

A. Wal-Mart realized through third party studies and internal research that the Chinese customer were significantly more cost-sensitive than those in other countries and that there existed a strong, established culture of frequently shopping around to find the absolute lowest prices. Through these studies, Wal-Mart also realized that customer satisfaction level greatly influenced customer loyalty in China. The greatest determinant of this satisfaction was made up of perceived value. The perceived value is composed of three sub factors: (1) Product price, (2) Relative price and (3) Promotion. The other factors for customer satisfaction in descending order of its importance are Image,

Wal-Mart is a company which operates in the service sector, more specifically in the “Discount, Variety Stores/Retail” industry. The company’s superior performance is demonstrated through the fact that it was America’s largest company (in terms of revenue) in 2002, and the reputation of the company is reflected in the opinion of “Fortune” who have identified Wal-Mart as one of the world’s most admired companies. In 2004 Wal-Mart had been hiring 1.4 million employees – making it the largest corporation in the world. Wal-Mart’s share prices have also been stable at time of stock market volatility. There are

We would like to show our gratitude to Resp. Prof. Mr. Sham Sharma, for providing us with the golden opportunity to prepare an intellectual report, on Distribution & Logistics Management of “wal-mart”.