Introduction
Businesses today need to act participative with their stakeholders for mutually shared benefits of sustainable businesses. The preferable way for such practice is following socially responsible guidelines for operating a business. The contribution to saving energy, reducing the land waste size and caring about the health of consumers are becoming morally obligatory for food products retailers (Attaran, 2007). The present essay will look into the success and failure of two different food product retail stores (The Whole Food Stores and Walmart) in behaving socially responsibly.
On the other hand, Walmart has failed to establish and run its business operations sustainably. It has been accused of selling shoddy consumer goods that only expand the number of staffs that Americans buy and discard because they are low quality and less durable. Walmart stores lag in its renewable energy efforts, and it might take decades before it can realize its goal of becoming a 100% renewable energy user (Chen, 2015). The company’s efforts in waste reduction are also dismal and are done solely as a requirement of the law; it is not committed to meaningful waste reduction.
Discussion
Wall Mart is one of the world’s largest companies, leading its competitors successfully at the top in generating revenue. Despite all its economic success, Wall Mart is not considered successful as per corporate social responsibility performance. Over its history, the company has demonstrated little concern for the social welfare and benefits of the stakeholders (Dauvergne & Lister, 2012).
News stories have been appearing on protests by Walmart employees. Suppliers of Walmart have also been complaining of being dented by the company and forced out of their contracts by the company. According to Michelle Chen (2015), “Walmart’s sustainability record is anything but ethical” She further reported that agricultural subsidies back all the price tags on food products in Walmart, exchanges of commodities on a financialized basis and overblown marketing. What was the real cost of the products sold at lower prices at Walmart? The “Food Chain Workers Alliance” tracked down the supply chain to investigate “violations” against “ethical sourcing.”
Walmart faced a huge amount of public pressure on ethical issues and resultantly came up with guidelines for sustainable and ethical sourcing, pledging that all associated suppliers and outlets must comply with laws and regulations applicable to health and safety, environment and labour. Though the company, in the past decade, has demonstrated much positive behaviour from the perspective of social responsibility, it is still lagging in many ways on sustainability. Especially on climate change, which is a crucial environmental issue, Walmart has hardly made any progress (Coote, 2006). Even after promising in 2010 elimination of greenhouse gas emissions, the company’s stores and fleet emitted huge amounts of greenhouse gases in 2012. Overall, as per the sustainable approach towards climate change, Walmart has failed to set scientifically achievable targets.
In 2006, the company announced performance-based wage increments for the employees and also declared health insurance packages by reducing the deductibles and adopting a general policy that would save employees an amount of twenty-five million dollars. The management announced the packages and policies quickly to spread the word of positive and ethical professional practice at that time, but later, it failed to fulfil the commitment and eliminated the implementation of healthcare policy for the employees whose work was under 30 per week. The company stated that it reserved the right not to provide health benefits for employees working less than 30 hours a week. Such actions by Walmart even distorted the image of the company through its stakeholders, including employees especially.
The company, according to some analysts, might be attempting to let the healthcare on the federal government. Discrimination in payments based on the ender of the employees has also been reported evidently. Two-thirds of Walmart employees are women, and they make as little as 10 per cent less than the payment made to the store management by the company.
The company keeps on insisting that it is an equal employment opportunity provider and train women employees and promotes them on fair basis, however, it was reported in a an internal study conducted in the year of 2001 that women managers are paid less than their male counterparts on the same positions. Walmart had to face a lawsuit on the basis of gender discrimination in payment, which was a result of complaints by 1.6 million present and previous female employees who suffered discrimination in the company in wage rates. These women were discriminated against not on the mere basis of payment rates, but their complaints were related to unfair promotion policies, job assignments and training as well. This lawsuit is known as a class-action suit, against which Walmart argued that promotions were made on individual performances in each store separately involved the Supreme Court by complaining that such cases were disrupting the practising of the rights of the company that it holds for due procedures. This class-action case was a huge stamp on the impression and image of the company, often under criticism for unethical and socially irresponsible behaviour.
It is quite advisable and recommended for Walmart to devise policies of employee welfare, renewable energy management and reduced waste management as do its counterpart food supply store “The Whole Food Store” that is well known and enjoys high recognition for its socially responsible and ethical behavior in the market. An instance of “The Whole Food Store” ‘s stewardship in environmental concern is that it bought worth over $4.3 billion of megawatt hours of energy produced by windmills. One of their distribution centre and fourteen of their stores use solar power, and the company has a commissary kitchen running with biofuel energy that is generated internally from waste cooking oil.
Conclusion
Walmart is way behind in building a reputable image of sustainable business in the market as it is moving too slowly towards its social responsibility goals, such as buying 100% renewable energy and controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Efficient ways of renewable energy use and positive contributions to environmental sustainability are quite advisable practices to adopt by retail food stores such as Walmart.
Businesses are increasingly revising their corporate philosophies as the old-fashioned, conventional ways of operating business are no longer enough to bring success to the firms in today’s era of conscious and fully aware consumers and other concerns. State governments, non-profit organizations, health care associations and the general public now expect corporate businesses to serve society with not only innovative products but with more socially responsible codes of conduct. Socially responsible corporations are taking steps to work in collaboration with the communities they are operating in, investing in the projects in more responsible and ethical ways, developing relationships with customers and employees and adopting policies that are environmentally protective and sustainable. Critiques assess the success of the companies more on socially responsible operating methods, and organizations tend to achieve long-term strategic goals by being socially responsible and ethical. Being a food supplier, Wall Mart is a supermarket providing many foods and beverage products but with little social responsibility and professional ethics.
References
Chen, M. (2015). Here Are All the Reasons Walmart’s Business Is Not Sustainable. The Nation. Retrieved https://www.thenation.com/article/here-are-all-reasons-walmarts-business-not-sustainable/ from
Attaran, M. (2007). RFID: an enabler of supply chain operations. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 12(4), 249-257.
Dauvergne, P., & Lister, J. (2012). Big brand sustainability: Governance prospects and environmental limits. Global Environmental Change, 22(1), 36-45.
Coote, A. (2006). What health services could do about climate change: They must embrace sustainable development and reduce their ecological footprints. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 332(7554), 1343.
