Ethics and Laws: A Comprehensive Study of Walmart's Business Practices

This essay provides a detailed examination of the ethical and legal practices of Walmart Inc. It begins with a brief overview of Walmart's history and its commitment to a global ethics and compliance program, highlighting the company's efforts to foster integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness among its employees. The essay discusses Walmart's values, including customer service, transparent relations with third parties, and fair treatment of employees. It also explores the structure of the ethics and compliance program, including the roles of the Global Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer and the Chief Ethics & Compliance Officers at each retail business. The essay references various sources to support its analysis and concludes by acknowledging Walmart's adherence to its Global Statement of Ethics and its compliance with applicable laws, while also noting instances of legal challenges related to gender discrimination.

Running Head: Ethics and Laws Essay 1
Ethics and Laws Essay
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

Ethics and Laws Essay 2
Founded by Sam Walton in 1962, Walmart Inc. is an American international retail
business that was incorporated on October 31, 1969 (Bartleby.2016). It runs a series of
hypermarkets, discount department stores and grocery stores with its headquarters being in
Bentonville, Arkansas. At Walmart Inc., there is designed a Global Ethics & Compliance
program to maintain the culture of integrity and to help create an honest and fair workplace.
The vision statement of Global Ethics is “to promote ownership of Walmart’s ethical culture
to all stakeholders globally”. Walmart Inc. employs approximately 2.2 million associates
around the world with 1.5 million of those from the United States alone. This essay will
discuss the laws and ethics of Walmart Inc.
Jorgensen (2018) states that the employees and associates of Walmart undergo a
multifaceted training program regarding integrity and ethical conduct. The company culture
at Walmart is one that promotes respect, integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness. Harassment
and improper use of drugs and alcohol is forbidden in the workplace. Nygaard, Biong,
Silkoset, & Kidwell (2017) illustrate that, the associates and employees are encouraged to
develop personal and moral integrity as opposed to having warning and threats on ethical
conduct.
"Personal and moral integrity is one of our fundamentals, and it has to start
with each one of us" Sam Walton, Founder.
Walmart has invested heavily on enhancing and training its employees and associates
on the significance of the company culture because like the wind, the culture is imperceptible,
but its results can be perceived and felt. When blowing in your direction, sailing is calm.
When gusting against you, the whole lot is tough as stated by Ryan (2016).
As a way of appreciating its environs and the neighborhood of its operation, Walmart
gives back to society in various ways, one of them being through charitable giving. Jorgensen
(2018) states that in the year 2017, Walmart, and Walmart foundation gave $1.4 billion
throughout the world. These donations are however governed by procedures that dictate the
requirements for donations.
One of the values at Walmart is that the customer comes first; should be listened to
and served with their wants and needs. The employees and associates are empowered to
serve customers every day, to be creative in their service and to move with speed in their
service. Walmart Inc. maintains transparent and objective relations with its dealers and other

Ethics and Laws Essay 3
third parties, and hence the dealers keep the costs low. These objective relations eventually
lead to a transfer of the savings by Walmart to its customers.
Walmart is dedicated to paying employees and associates on time, for the work done
and keeping clear payroll records. Equal opportunities are offered at the workplace, equal
services, and benefits while preventing discrimination and harassment. Third-party
employment compliance requires that the contracts and relations with third-party service
providers comply with the federal, state, local and immigration employment laws. The
International Labour and employment compliance requires that there is fair treatment of all
associates and payment of benefits and treatment accorded to them by law.
Jorgensen (2018) stated that before 2012, Walmart Inc. had separate and independent
ethics compliance programs spread out across the various chain stores and hypermarkets
around the globe. In 2012, the company reconceived the ethics and compliance program to be
a single, comprehensive global group. Jorgensen and Marshallb (2015) illustrate that the
integral ethics and compliance program's structure is designed with an aim to improve the
transparency, accountability, and expertise. This explains the steady success of Walmart,
seeing as companies that tolerate corruption get weaker with time as they do not rise through
merit, as illustrated by Kochanova (2015). Chêne, (2014) also states that people in society get
poorer due to corruption.
In the ethics and compliance program structure, there is the Global Chief Ethics and
Compliance Officer, who reports to the company’s Corporate Secretary, the Executive Vice
President of Global Governance and also to the audit committee of Walmart’s board of
directors. The board of directors sets goals in relation to ethical compliance and it receives
regular information regarding the same. There is appointed a full-time Chief Ethics &
Compliance Officer (CECO) for each of the retail businesses around the globe, who reports
directly to the headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. This is in line with the
recommendations by LeBaron, Lister, and Dauvergne, (2017).
Given the complexity of licensing procedures and permitting obligations, Walmart's
licensing and permitting compliance program is designed with strong policies, processes, and
procedures for better management of the over 50,000 licenses and permits outside of United
States. Walmart Inc. has also adopted a world-wide licenses policy with auxiliary systems
that lay out the procedures to be tailed to get and recommence permits, along with all-
inclusive training, monitoring and trailing programs as stated by Jorgensen (2018).

Ethics and Laws Essay 4
In conclusion, Walmart follows the ethics detailed in the Walmart Global Statement
of Ethics (2008) as can be seen from the conception of the global ethics and compliance
program. Walmart Inc. follows the laws applicable to it with a few exceptions of lawsuits
claiming women discrimination. However, this is not the first of kind seeing as in 2011,
Walmart won a gender discrimination case at the Supreme Court.

Ethics and Laws Essay 5
References
Bartleby. (2016). Walmart Inc: An American Multinational Retail Corporation
| Bartleby.com. Retrieved 7 May 2019, from
https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Walmart-Inc-An-American-Multinational-Retail-
Corporation-FKZ3SJ25YLCXQ
Chêne, M. (2014). The impact of corruption on growth and inequality. Transparency
International. Retrieved 7 May 2019, from
https://www.transparency.org/files/content/corruptionqas/Impact_of_corruption_on_g
rowth_and_inequality_2014.pdf
Jorgensen, J. T. (2018). The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Turns 40:" Reflections on
Walmart's Enhanced Ethics & Compliance Program". Texas A&M Law Review, 5(1),
237-252.
Jorgensen, J. T., & Marshall, C. K. (2015). UC Davis Law Review Symposium “Corruption
and Compliance: Promoting Integrity in a Global Economy” Keynote by Jay
Jorgensen. UC DAVIS L. REV., 49, 425.
Kochanova, A., (2015). How does corruption affect economic growth?. World Economic
Forum. Retrieved 7 May 2019, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/05/how-
does-corruption-affect-economic-growth/
LeBaron, G., Lister, J., & Dauvergne, P. (2017). Governing global supply chain sustainability
through the ethical audit regime. Globalizations, 14(6), 958-975. Doi:
10.1080/14747731.2017.1304008
Nygaard, A., Biong, H., Silkoset, R., & Kidwell, R. E. (2017). Leading by example: Values-
based strategy to instill ethical conduct. Journal of Business Ethics, 145(1), 133-139.
Ryan L., (2016). How Important Is Corporate Culture? It's Everything. Forbes.com.
Retrieved 7 May 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2016/09/16/how-
important-is-corporate-culture-its-everything/#2aa2ea4e6883
Walmart Global Statement of Ethics, (2008) Retrieved 7 May 2019, from
https://az301759.vo.msecnd.net/statementofethics/pdf/U.S_SOE.pdf