Social Sustainability In The Retail Sector Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Empowering women has also been an important factor in Wal-Mart’s charter as it launched an online platform which is aimed at providing a global customer base to the women-owned businesses. Additionally, the Wal-Mart foundation also aims to provide thousands of individuals with training and support so that they could lead a better life once they meet the outer world. Furthermore, since the trend of the manufacturing companies has shifted towards the cheap labor countries, Wal-Mart makes efforts through Wal-Mart foundation to bring back the US manufacturing business in the country (Wal-Mart, 2014).

Wal-Mart believes that addressing the social issues help build their business stronger which aids in maintaining good reputation in the eyes of customers. In 2013, Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart foundation performed many tasks to contribute towards addressing the environmental and social issues. The company aims to achieve a target of becoming the largest green power generator for renewable energy sources and has developed a milestone to increase its production by 600% by 2020. Increasing the sustainability index is another milestone for Wal-Mart which it aims to expand in international markets. This particular index carries a goal of promoting product sustainability at international level. Since the company had stated to inspire and empower women, Wal-Mart developed a ratio for hiring their new employees and US associates for the year 2013. Amongst those new associates, 51% were female, whereas, 49% belonged to others. This shows that the company cares for addressing the social issues through actions as the famous quote relates ‘Action speaks louder than words’(Wal-Mart, 2014).

Malnutrition and hunger are growing concerns around the world and the company addresses the issues by offering $2 billion in cash for the hungry people of America before the scheduled year. Therefore, Wal-Mart is fighting hunger by donating money to the Wal-Mart foundation as the world moves forward to fight against malnutrition and hunger. The US associates that were hired by Wal-Mart in the year 2013 helped the local organizations to manage their businesses by volunteering 1.8 million hours which had resulted in $17 million in donations for those companies. After eight months of launching the Wal-Mart Home Commitment, the company hired over 32,000 US military veterans in providing them support and help for their future in making their lives better. Moreover, working and providing support to the UN in maintaining their Disaster Risk Reduction department has also been provided by Wal-Mart in order to build resiliency in communities (Wal-Mart, 2014).

The statistics show that Wal-Mart is the most diverse company around the world as it hires employees from different origins irrespective of the race, color, or creed. Currently, Wal-Mart has 1.3 million US associates, whereas, over 800,000 international associates. Amongst the total number of associates for the company, 57% of women and 39% of different color and races have been hired by Wal-Mart. The total workforce of Wal-Mart of 2 million employees have been divided as 760,000 women, 258,000 African American, 172,000 Hispanic, and 45,000 Asian. This strategy is aimed towards providing opportunities to those communities who have always been neglected and Wal-Mart holds them together in re-shaping the world. Through a journey of becoming a diverse employer, Wal-Mart presents figures of the employees’ percentage of growth from the year 2003 to 2013. The data suggests women workforce have increased from 19% to 31% and people of different color group from 11% to 23% to the officer level position, whereas, increased percentages are recorded for the position of executive vice presidents and senior vice presidents for the similar group (Wal-Mart, 2014).

Wal-Mart has a strong commitment towards ethics and integrity as their culture indicates that an air of honesty, fairness, and legal workplace environment is created. Similarly, the company emphasizes over treating their employees and suppliers the same way as they treat their customers. In ensuring ethics and integrity culture prevails within the organization, the company has provided their associates with tools and resources to maintain ethical decision making in different departments and operations of the company. In 2014, the charter of Wal-Mart also aimed at developing world-class teams through their ethical practices, strong governing systems based on integrity, training of ethics, and corporate support programs. The company made sure that various Asian countries develop a work ethic program devised by the company in order to maintain ethic and integrity culture (Wal-Mart, 2014).

In remaining knowledgeable of the entire scenario around the world, Wal-Mart has developed an ethical reporting global system which identifies the latest trends, helps in spotting the issue, and also identifies leaders through which positive implementation could be enforced to retain a positive culture. The services of global helpline and local helpline are provided to all of its business operations around the world to contact the company and provide the necessary information................................

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