Since its establishment, Wal-Mart has faced a number of ethical issues that have significantly impacted on the entity’s performance. Today, the suing of Wal-Mart has become a cottage industry with approximately 5000 lawsuits being filed against the company annually (Riper, 2005). Some of the ethical issue lawsuits filed against the company in the past have been inclusive of discrimination accusations, product safety concerns, leadership misconduct as well as bribery. Nevertheless, despite the numerous ethical crime cases filed against the corporation, today, Wal-Mart has adopted effective measures aimed at reassuring its stakeholders of its effectiveness in ethics adherence.
Today, Wal-Mart has strived to improve its ethical reputation in social responsibility as well as corporate governance. Such efforts by Wal-Mart are executed through the Global Ethics Office that was formed in 2004 (Ferrell et al., 2016). The office is tasked with the responsibility of spreading an ethical corporate culture among the entity’s global stakeholders. Moreover, the Global Ethics Office provides Wal-Mart’s personnel in the ethical decision-making process based on the company’s global statement of ethics as well as ethics concern helpline. In addition, the helpline offers all the company’s stakeholders an anonymous and confidential method of contacting the company on all forms of ethical issues (Ferrell et al., 2016).
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Wal-Mart has also opened a website that helps in providing clarifications on an array of ethical issue concerns filed by the corporation’s stakeholders. Through the platform, the stakeholders can raise their concerns and attain satisfactory feedback from the company’s customer care support staff. The seamless communication between the company’s stakeholders has subsequently, helped the corporation to resolve multiple ethical concerns and to some extent lowered the number of lawsuits filed by individuals on ethical matter infringement each year. Conclusively, such measures have enabled Wal-Mart to affirm its strong ethical compliance position among its staff, customers, shareholders, suppliers and other stakeholders of the company.
References
Ferrell, O. C., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell. (2016). Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making & Cases. New York: Cengage Learning.
Riper, T. V. (2005). Wal-Mart Stands Up To Wave Of Lawsuits . Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/2005/11/09/wal-mart-lawsuits-cx_tvr_1109walmart.html#4321e6977729
