Essay on The company is Walmart Stores, Inc.
It is important for any organization to have a code of ethics in order to guide employees how to behave in ambiguous situations and to share the principles of ethical behavior accepted in the organization. The purpose of this paper is to select a company, to identify whether this company uses a code of conduct, to analyze this code if it exists and to draft a code of ethics if the company does not have one.
The chosen company is Walmart Stores, Inc. This is a multinational retailer operating in 27 countries and running chains of discount stores and warehouse stores. Walmart pays significant attention to ethics: the company has a Global Ethics Office which is responsible for encouraging ethical decision-making and resolving ethics concerns (Walmart, 2014).
Walmart has a separate document named “The Statement of Ethics”. This document is meant to share attitudes and values that create an ethical workplace and expected standards of ethical conduct. The document also helps recognize ethically questionable situations and prompts how to act in such situations. The document includes letter on ethics from Walmart CEO, guiding principles, employee responsibilities, approaches to reporting ethical violations, principles of leading with integrity inside and outside the company, community ethical principles and relevant contact information.
With regard to code content organizing principles outlined by Berenbeim (1999), Walmart’s code of ethics pays moderate attention to the role of business, does not pay much attention to company autonomy aspect and focuses strongly on three next principles – global business practice, ethical decision-making procedures and ethical decision-making environment.
Walmart’s code of ethics satisfies the stylistic requirements to such documents (Berenbeim, 1999): it is easy to read, has sufficient detail (but not excessive detail), is graphically appealing, is relevant for the industry and market and is firmly grounded on Walmart’s key values. Similarly to other codes of ethics, Walmart’s code addresses such questions as security of proprietary information, environmental responsibility, employee privacy, substance abuse, employee privacy, etc.
It is notable that Walmart’s code of ethics largely addresses potential internal ethical issues such as conflicts of interests and potential community ethical issues such as safety, environment, international trade, public relationships, etc. In general, Walmart’s code of ethics has all the necessary elements described by Berenbeim (1999) and can be viewed as an example of an efficient code of ethics.
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