To complete this discussion, pick one of these companies: Intel, McKesson, or Wa

Question

To complete this discussion, pick one of these companies: Intel, McKesson, or Walmart, and explore their website to answer each of the below questions. Many times, the following website sections will contain the type of information required: about us, corporate governance/leadership, investor relations, sustainability/social responsibility, and media relations. If any of the pages or sections are not made apparent, you could also search for information using the company's search box which will sometimes provide a link to a page several layers into their website.

Enter the discussion and post your thread which should contain a separate, numbered response to correspond to each of the following items:

Explore the culture of the business by locating and reviewing its mission statement, code of ethics (or code of conduct), and its social responsibility activities and/or guidelines. Based on what you learn about your company, do you believe that the company is a good “corporate citizen?” Why or why not? Also, support your answer with how you believe this factor impacts the external environment and how international challenges play a role in acting as a good corporate citizen.

Define the state of external environment in which the company operates including its general and task environments. What do you see as the most impactful issue which currently affects or could affect this company?

Summarize the international level of business activity. For example, does the company sell products in the international marketplace or do they also produce goods abroad? Explain at least two challenges that you believe this company faces on an international level.

Explanation / Answer

Walmart, the largest retailer in the world both in terms of revenue as well as employee strength. Its corporate mission and vision statements act as a guiding principle for the entire business operation. It is a proponent of the Cost Leadership generic strategy as per the Porter’s model, and creates it competitive advantage solely with this focus. As a mission statement, it aims “to save people money so they can live better”. This culture was imbibed by the company right since its inception with the ideals of the founder Sam Walton. All strategic business decisions are directly related to the company’s slogan, “Save Money, Live better”.

Walmart uses price as a selling point to attract and retain their customers, all other allied areas look to minimize this selling price to achieve this competitiveness. This culture begins with a strong commitment to the nearly 2 million associates that run the entire operations of Walmart. The leaders believe in giving all associates a voice and come up with innovative ideas.

Walmart strongly believes in promoting its culture of integrity, this includes developing and upholding the policies for ethical behavior. It creates a globally consistent ethics education for all its employees and train them to integrate the same in all their functional area. They have also put in place an “Integrity in Action” Award to recognize individuals who have displayed integrity on a consistent level in their words and actions and are also an inspiration to their peers around.

In recent years, Walmart has been recognized as a leader on environmental sustainability. It has taken up initiatives to maximize energy efficiency, reduce waste production and sell products that sustain the resources and the environment. The idea is to create a more sustainable value chain. Some initiatives in this direction would be:

-       Phasing out Paint Removal Products with Methylene Chloride and NMP

-       Announced a Commitment of $200,000 for California Wildfire relief

-       Increase Access to Legal Education with partnership with Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO), increasing diversity and inclusion with the legal profession

As a global corporate citizen, Walmart indeed has strived hard to reach the zenith of success where it stands today. However, in the process of charting this path, Walmart has managed to retain the trust and belief of the society and the environment around it. It has successfully managed to work with innumerable suppliers, officials, leader and communities and transform the entire system. Today apart from the 2 million odd Walmart associates, there millions of lives who are dependent on Walmart’s supply chain and value creation. This, Walmart has managed to do without exploitation and improper usage of any resource. They set ambitious goals for themselves – power by 100% renewable energy, zero waste creation and sell products that sustain life as well as the environment – and have successfully achieved them. At a time when organizations compromise on ethics to gain short term objectives, Walmart has managed to think beyond and establish itself as a benchmark for the other organizations to emulate.

The internal challenges must have been immense in this arduous journey. With an objective to lower cost at every step, often achieving goals through compromises on the environment could have been opted for and internal teams would have vouched for the same. However, Walmart managed to stick to their guns and achieved their objective in an ethical manner. As a first in the world, Walmart set science-based targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction, launching Project Gigaton. In this project, Walmart aims to work with its suppliers to remove 1 billion metric ton of emissions from their entire supply chain, additionally working towards combatting forced labor in the global supply chain. The impact on the external environment would be immensely positive through these activities. This would be one of the most impactful issue that Walmart would be addressing.

Internationally, Walmart has significant presence in countries like Mexico, UK, Brazil, China, Canada among others. Wherever it has adapted the Walmart model to the local market, success has been good. However, a major challenge it seems to be facing is the growth in online shopping. Hence, on the strategy front to venture into emerging markets like India, it just concluded its investment in India’s leading Marketplace eCommerce Platform- Flipkart. This underscores its long term commitment to India, where it would serve customers, create jobs, and assist small businesses, farmers and entrepreneurs. However, another challenge that would hinder its operations in a country like India would be the regulatory framework in India. India is still in the phase of formulating its e-commerce policy and often bigger players like Walmart, Amazon face a lot of retaliation from the local retailers’ groups. Any populist measure taken up by the ruling government can severely dent the growth prospect of a major firm like Walmart.

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