Wal-Mart - Playing the Role of a World Leader or Not?

635 Words3 Pages
In 2006, Wal-Mart the largest retailer of the world was known for its innovative and tough management of its global supply chain. Not only these factors differentiated the giant from other players but also made it a global leader in a short span of time – both sales and net income showed an increase of 9% over the previous year. Wal-Mart’s Supply Chain: To aid the massive expansion, Wal-Mart relied heavily on global outsourcing. The company never owned, operated or manage the production units but purchased merchandise from suppliers who were spread in 60 countries. This obviously meant lesser control on production activities. Although, Wal-Mart had a supplier contract that was based out of the regulations from the ethical sourcing committee that complied with the all the local jurisdiction laws of the suppliers, Wal-Mart did encountered suppliers with unethical practices and cancelled the contracts. It also put controls in place such as – the social responsibility team to conduct various surprise audits and work with the suppliers to eliminate the issues. The Norwegian Pension Fund (NPF): The objective of the fund was to grow the capital at an annualized rate of 4% through investments in global corporations. Reflecting the teleological conception, the pension fund strived for long-term financial returns by purging out companies that are in complicity in gross or systematic breaches of ethical norms within the areas of human rights or the environment either through negative screening or disinvestment. Investigation of Wal-Mart: While investigation Wal-Mart, the NPF relied on several external sources. Areas that Wal-Mart fell short by leaps can be summarized as - Child labour in textile factories; Serious violation of labour hours; Hazardous working conditions; Prohibition of unionization; Gender discrimination. Etc. What was interesting was most of

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