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Wal-Mart Ethical Case Study

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Wal-Mart is one of the largest retail stores in the world with total revenue of $421.8 billion and a net income of $16.4 billion in 2011. Wal-Mart has been engaging in illegal and unethical behavior by using bargaining power and market control to pressure countries to disregard environmental degradation and violation of national labor laws (Sethi par.1). There were six cases related to unpaid work that made Wal-Mart to pay $1 billion in damages to U.S. employees (Sethi par.2). Wal-Mart has faced several scandals in overseas such as multiple cases of bribery. According to New York Times, Wal-Mart paid more than $24 million to Mexican officials and their internal reports indicated hundreds of bribery and frauds. There were 90 reports of bribery …show more content…

One of the ethical issues of the Nike was abusing the employees and using the child labor in overseas factories. Employees were abused physically and mentally. The physical abuses of employees were slapping, kicking and scratching until some people bled. Management mentally abused employees by calling them monkey, dog, and pig. The employees were making $0.50 an hour and they were keeping their mouths shut. One the female employee was fired after she spoke up against the management (Stewart par.2). Like many Multinational Companies Nike employees in Indonesia had low wages and poor working conditions. The employees were getting $14 cents an hour, less than Indonesia’s minimum wage. Nike faced international criticism when the life magazine published an article about the 12 year old Pakistani boy’s hands stitching a Nike soccer ball at home (Stop Nike Sweatshops). Wal-Mart and Nike could have been avoided these issues by having loyalty and respect for rules and regulations, integrity, fairness, transparency, confidentiality, avoidance of an appearance of impropriety, and due diligence. Wal-Mart and Nike have to treat overseas employees fairly as they treat employees in the USA. Wal-Mart and Nike have to stop focusing on low cost output and cheap labor. They have to make an investment to improve unsafe working conditions and low wages. They have to stop buying outputs from the factories operating

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