The Wal-Mart Doctrine

Wal-Mart is a global institution. With a quick change in it's policies it can create major global impact whether that be good or bad. Wal-Mart has enormous impact by having 1.9 million associates, over 200 million customers, and a astounding 10 percent of all retail spending that takes place in its stores worldwide. All of this is well documented, giving the Wal-Mart world a major stake in its responsibility to all of the global ills. Wal-Mart drastically changed the global business landscape through it ruthless focus on price. This has become their doctrine.

Doctrine (Latin: doctrina) is a codification of beliefs or "a body of teachings" or "instructions", taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system.

For Wal-Mart, price-availability-choice, this is the belief structure of its patrons. They expect a great value and a low price. Quality is not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Wal-Mart. But, people or industry can become brain washed as to what value is based on the mass appeal.

Often doctrine specifically refers to a religious dogma as it is promulgated by a church, but not necessarily: doctrine is also used to refer to a principle of law, in the common law traditions, established through a history of past decisions, such as the doctrine of self-defense, or the principle of fair use, or the more narrowly applicable first-sale doctrine. In some organizations, doctrine is simply defined as 'that which is taught', in other words the basis for institutional teaching of its personnel about its internal ways of doing business.

Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization, thought to be authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from.

It is the 'not to be doubted, or disputed' that can sometimes get us all in trouble. Look at the Catholic Church for example. If it weren't for Martin Luther and his thesis nailed to the doors of the church or Galileo and his discoveries as precidents for doubt and dispute, and the list goes on, we could still be living in the dark ages. And they do still try. But, I digress.

Charles Fishman, author of the bestselling book The Wal-Mart Effect says, "If Wal-Mart is serious about sustainability, it can have an incredible impact on how the economy operates,". How could one store have such an impact? Well here are a few amazing stats that makes this one company a global retail institution:

94 percent: the number of Americans who live within 15 miles of a Wal-Mart.
62 percent: the number of Americans who live within 5 miles of a Wal-Mart store.
57 percent: Percent of American adults who shop at Wal-Mart every week.
127 million: Number of Americans who shop at Wal-Mart each week.
$6,778: Profit per employee at Wal-Mart. (1.9M +/- employees)
$180,000: Profit per employee at Microsoft. (63,564+/- employees)
$480,000: profit per employee at Exxon/Mobil. (106,100+/- employees)

Wal-Mart has been touting their major moves to be a more green and conscious company. While this is a great thing due to their enormous power on such a mass scale, is it real? We have dicussed at length the mob mentality of our society. The following of trends and such. We have also discussed the republican ways of by saying something enough times, whether it is truth or not, people will begin to believe it. With Wal-Mart, if they master this technique it can have major repercussions throughout the world.

Wal-Mart created what is called, the Personal Sustainability Project, or PSP. It began in 2007 to which its employees, primarily in the U.S., were asked to become more green. They were asked to become examples to their community and take steps that will benefit themselves, their community and the earth. Easy tasks include driving the speed limit to save on gas, cleaning up trash, quit smoking, switch to a reusable bottle, or turn off the tap when brushing one's teeth.

Wal-Mart sells a lot of cigarettes and bottled water, again I digress.

It's part of a company wide sustainability effort Wal-Mart launched in 2005. This campaign has seen the company do everything from pledging to double the efficiency of its truck fleet to pushing General Mills to shrink Hamburger Helper boxes by replacing crinkly noodles with straight.

"The program", says Fishman, "is an example of corporate America filling a role akin to churches and community organizations—and that's not a bad thing as long as it doesn't drift in the direction of being some kind of compulsion, it's wonderful."

Critics say that if Wal-Mart cared for making the world a better place, and the quality and sustainability of their employees lives they might think about starting with the paychecks, benefits, and their labor practices. Wait, that would directly cost the company money. Wal-Mart has been involved in numerous lawsuits over sex discrimination, anti-union tactics, mandatory overtime, and more. But some would say with an organization as large as this that goes without saying. What community with over 1.9 million people would NOT have these kinds of claims.

Being the largest retailer in the world, could they not also use their platform to change how their suppliers and manufacturers use slave labor sweatshops, and their dumping of pollutants and toxins in rivers, their massive production of inexpensive non-recyclable plastic products which are barged and shipped halfway around the world? What about the perfectly good products that get thrown out because they are now outdated and past regulatory time lines? What about the hundreds of thousands of employees who earn 7 dollars an hour at Wal-Mart with no health insurance, a car payment, a school loan payment and must support a family of five?

There is a large societal complaint of social justice before environmental justice. This is a company with many ills that must be addressed. Are they beginning their campaign through the fashioned phrases of our society vs the necessary needs of it employees survival? There are many small towns in America today that, due to Wal-Mart the character and small business communities have been closed and disappeared due to the locale of the superstore. Despite these complaints, this is the most shopped store in the country.

Although, Wal-Mart is known to do audits of all of their suppliers factories at least 4 times a year. They are testing both solar power and wind power potential and implementing hundreds of stores to be 0 energy, as well as initiating mandatory subtle changes with their suppliers relating to sustainability. Some would say, that it is changes like this that are putting some these companies out of business or pushing them to manufacture overseas.

Despite all of the good and the bad that this company can create we all must realize that there are three sides to every story. Their side, our perception, and the truth.


Thanks to:
Mother Jones
The Wal-Mart Effect



This, the 209th entry in bloggoland! Thanks for reading and coming back. I always enjoy the comments, emails and the banter!!



(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs