Business Ethics Discussion at Walmart INC

Ethics have been broadly defined as the set of rules, written or unwritten that govern our expectations of our own and others’ behavior. They seek in finding solutions on conceptualized morals such as like or dislike, fair or unfair, responsible or irresponsible, praiseworthy or blameworthy. Business ethics are regulations and procedures that govern members’ conduct relating to a given business field. In this century, international environmental businesses often encounter issues dealing with the code of ethics (Arnold, Beauchamp, & Bowie, 2014). Every Business should have their principles and guidelines with responsibilities towards developing good conducts through which the organizational members should be abiding and residing by the given set of ethics.

It is essential for the authoritative institutions to pass given regulations in favor ethical enforcement against entity-businesses and their units as well. However, many international entity-driven businesses provide specialized and generalized branding for usage by the public, whereby some of these entities usually get an engagement in unfavorable behaviors regarding business environments with penalties of most of them through fining by the authoritative powers for million accountabilities (Arnold et al., 2014). It is worth noting that the company’s name is much prevalent and the essential values and framework of which if lost it becomes a difficult task to rebuild.

With consistent ethical behavior, a company starts to build a good reputation. Noumenon investing and shares between the company holders will be the attraction developed to the company in adherence to the ethical procedures and individual affirmations made. This makes the shares relating to the companies higher. Moreover, comfortability is felt within the workers as well as their need of staying in the company for a long period in working with business companies with strong ethical concerns (Sonenshein, 2016). Workforce reduction, as well as incrementing produce, is enhanced in return. By retaining the employees, the company ends up getting most talented employees. There is customer attraction to the business companies and their products with effect to sales boost and profitability thus increasing the overall productivity of the business. Therefore, this essay shall provide a detailed discussion of Walmart Inc., by describing what it does while describing the bad ethics that were portrayed in public. Additionally, the paper shall also propose recommendations for the bad ethics to fix it in public.

Walmart Inc. that was formerly Walmart Stores is among the contemporary world that faces fundamental concerns on ethics that compromises rectitude and confidence regarding various business companies (Consumer Law Magazine, 2017). It operates as a retail store to provide its customers with access to various sorts of merchandise such as products and services not found in its physical stores through by offering online selling services through its e-commerce application. Other services that have been integrated with the physical segments or store of the Walmart Company include various store formats like supercenters, discount stores and other small store formats (Consumer Law Magazine, 2017). The United States segment provides fuel as well as services involving financial and associated product like money orders, credit cards, wire transfer, money transfer and check cashing and payment of bills.

However, its customers complained of false discounting of goods and unhealthy relationships between the customers and the customer care service-providers. This was a case where employees took advantage of false pricing of products in an online advertisement while they offered the goods at quite different prices (Consumer Law Magazine, 2017). This unethical issue occurred in line with the reported cases of rude customer care service providers at Walmart Inc. the occurrence of this cases was an unethical issue that needed immediate attention to protect the reputation of the company in public and in specific, in the presence of its customers (Consumer Law Magazine, 2017). A given apprehension on probity and reliance involves opinions on the business conducts with fairness in customer treatment with virtue and sincerity. In this case, honesty and integrity also apply to the methods used, and data as well as results in business. Data should not be made up, or inclusion of extrapolating and unreasonable data from the results and should not be misleading to the people in the firm. Similarly, the present and able workers to the company and customers are people with the great diversity who require respect in their work endeavors with the clients of the business (Sonenshein, 2016). Thus, getting the maximum contribution o every worker and client is essential for business success.

Equally, employees-to-customers’ relationship is important. The incident that occurred at Walmart Inc.’s customer care service centers mostly spoilt the reputation of the company in public. There were about three or out of four rude customer care service providers identified. Some of them were reported to have neglected the request of the customers (Sonenshein, 2016). Customers are the ones who purchase or receive products or services from a business or with an intention to do so. Therefore, customers are very important for a business to thrive and achieve its goals. The bosses and workers should put into consideration the virtues required around their interactions. Suppliers with unethical practices must be avoided by business partners (Kennedy, Welch, & Monshipouri, 2017). In working with the merchants, data usage by the people in the business organizations should be ensured without product advertisement and work sub-standardization. Workers must also adhere to the ethics of being polite to the customers.

In arise of ethical issues, there is a need for the organization’s stakeholders to conduct an assessment and make effective decisions about the issues. It is an important task for the exploration of the dilemma virtues and the identification of virtuous programs in ethics, for instance, fact collection, action evaluation, decision making, and decision testing in featuring a reflective and just result (Kennedy et al., 2017). Making decisions based on virtues must be central to the workers and clients’ protection freedoms with the surety of activities being just, individual’s protection as well as ensuring that the virtues affecting business people are upheld.

During Walmart’s procedural rectification of the unethical incidents, the manager should apply key roles of leadership to ensure the issues are settled. To deal with the false pricing, it should be carefully assessed to determine the root cause and generators of the issue. In many organizations, the employee behaviors and focus determine the success of the business (Sonenshein, 2016). This ethical issue compromises professionalism and personal ethics. These behaviors equally violate the rights of the consumers. In this case, the employers shall be fired with immediate effect to stop the spread of the bad behavior or unethical issue in the company. This unethical issue can equally be treated as stealing on the job and taking the credit for Others' Work (Sonenshein, 2016). This is because false pricing without the knowledge of the managerial and the consent of the customers seem more of stealing on the job. It is well known that company defalcation is wrong by the law. To have workers’ hand in the till deteriorates the profits of the company. Reduction on the company profits lowers its future success and also downsizing it (Consumer Law Magazine, 2017). Acquisition of the company’s product regarding its small proportion is not virtuous.

It is important to plan for essential teaching based on training where every employee and the managing staff are taught of the ethical issues (Consumer Law Magazine, 2017). For the case of Walmart customer care services, the service can be warned and offered more training about customer relations and the intrapersonal skills that would help them build strong relationships with the customers. This would impart them with essential skills for relating and attracting more customers to drive the business towards its future success. Customers are the backbone of any business whether for-profit or a non-profit (Kennedy et al., 2017). This is because they ensure or support the progress and development of the business. Would I not be for the customers, the businesses will fail because they do not have any person to consume their products. Thus, the company must find the best way of addressing the customers in this case (Kennedy et al., 2017). Therefore, it is significant for Walmart Inc. to train its customer care service providers on the essential skills that are required to build strong interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships with other people outside the business or the public at large. In many companies with the strong customer-company relationship, in most cases have well build customer care services and service providers who can provide end-to-end services all time. Additionally, they are friendly with the customers thus building a good environment for the customers to interact with them.

In summary, various ethical issues face many organizations and corporations in the 21st century. This includes the compromise of professional ethics and the company or organizational ethics such as employee conflicts, false pricing and unfair treatment of the clients or customers. In many cases, employees come from diverse backgrounds who possess different values and personalities that need to be accommodated in the organization. Also, other employees can be oriented with the objectives of stealing from the company for self-gaining purposes. This is where they include false prices and discounts which in real-sense exploits the customers. Lastly, treatment of customers unfairly in various circumstances like being rude to them, not providing them with feed and generally violating the consumers’ protection law impact negatively to the business company operations. Conducts that are not virtuous to the working environment may be ceased earlier than workers beginning to let those in authority comprehend the company’s consideration of being unethically good. In the arising of ethical issues, there is a need for the organization’s stakeholders to conduct an assessment and make effective decisions about the issues. It is an important task for the exploration of the dilemma virtues and the identification of virtuous programs in ethics, for instance, fact collection, action evaluation, decision making, and decision testing in featuring a reflective result.

References

1. Arnold, D. G., Beauchamp, T. L., & Bowie, N. E. (2014). Ethical theory and business. Pearson.
2. Consumer Law Magazine. (2017, June 16). Walmart is facing a Class Action for ‘Rollback’ Pricing. Retrieved December 7, 2018, from http://consumerlawmagazine.com/walmart-class-action-rollback-pricing/
3. Kennedy, E. T., Welch, C. E., & Monshipouri, M. (2017). Multinational corporations and the ethics of global responsibility: Problems and possibilities. In Human Rights and Corporations (pp. 123–147). Routledge.
4. Sonenshein, S. (2016). How corporations overcome issue illegitimacy and issue equivocality to address social welfare: The role of the social change agent. Academy of Management Review, 41(2), 349–366. 

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