Abstract
We had our first inkling that something was up at Wal-Mart in May 2005 when a Unilever manager, responsible for its fish business, said that he was astonished by what happened during his just-completed visit to Bentonville, Arkansas, to “take orders”—in both senses of the term. The normal routine, as he described it, was to travel to Wal-Mart headquarters, struggle to get a parking spot, go through security, get a badge, and then wait on a bench to be “called.” Then you meet in a Spartan cubicle with a Wal-Mart rep, make your pitch, and more or less get told how much the world’s largest retailer and grocer will buy from you—and always at a lower price than last year—all in thirty minutes or less.
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Notes
For in October, 2005 Lee Scott, see “Twenty First Century Leadership” (October 24, 2005), online at walmartstores.com.
On companies doing best and worst job fulfilling social responsibilities for seven years running, this survey house, see Globescan, “Corporate Social Responsibility Monitor” (2006).
See Sam Walton with John Huey, Sam Walton, Made in America (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
For Anderson is a credible corporate spokesman, see Ray C. Anderson, Mid-course Correction (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 1998).
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).
For he also spoke of, see Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown & Company 1999); Interface Web site at interfaceinc.com.
For these methodologies, see description in Philip H. Mirvis,“Revolutions in OD: The New and New, New Things,” in Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader, Joan Gallos (ed.) (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006).
Good places to locate sources for countless critical academic studies are the unionhosted site, walmartwatch.com and www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/ secrets/.
For a company that hitherto “hit the sandbags,” see Edelman Group campaign in Kris Hudson, “PR Firm Remakes Wal-Mart’s Image,” The Wall Street Journal (December 7, 2006); and Geoffrey Goldberg, “Selling Wal-Mart,” The New Yorker, (April 2, 2007), at Newyorker.com.
For critics of the PR point out, see the comprehensive work by Charles Fishman, The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works—and How It’s Transforming the American Economy (New York: Penguin Press, 2006).
For poll after poll, see Globescan,“Corporate Social Responsibility Monitor” (2006).
For it also announced its Sustainability 360 strategy, see Lee Scott at Prince of Wale’s Business and the Environment Programme, London (February 1, 2007), at Walmartfacts .com.
For yet a late-2006 Business Week survey of factory practices in China, see Dexter Roberts and Pete Engardio, “Secrets, Lies and Sweatshops,” Business Week (November 27, 2006), online at businessweek.com.
For the utter incompetence of FEMA, see Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (New York: Morrow, 2006).
For recall that, after Katrina, see Alex Parry, “Unnatural Disaster,” Time Magazine (August 2, 2004); Jeffrey Sachs, “How to End Poverty,” Time Magazine. (March 14, 2005).
Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin Press, 2005).
Don Tapscott and David Ticoll, The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business (New York: Free Press, 2003).
For experts say that cost cutting was behind accident, see “U.S. Chemical Safety Board Concludes ‘Organizational and Safety Deficiencies at All Levels of the BP Corporation’ Caused March 2005 Texas City Disaster That Killed 15, Injured 180,” released by U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (April 20, 2007), at www.chemsafety.gov.
For there is in the United States an estimated fifty million people, see lohas.com; for more insight try Andrew Zolli, “Business 3.0,” Fast Company (March, 2007), at Fastcompany.com.
For Unilever, testing its commitment in, see Jayson W. Clay, Exploring the Links Between International Business and Poverty Reduction: A Case Study of Unilever in Indonesia (Oxford, UK: Oxfam Publishing, 2005).
For World Health Organization predicts, see Colin D. Mathers and Dejan Loncar, Updated Projections of Global Mortality and Burden of Disease, 2002–2030: Data Sources, Methods, and Results, World Health Organization (October, 2005).
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© 2007 Bradley K. Googins, Philip H. Mirvis, and Steven A. Rochlin
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Googins, B.K., Mirvis, P.H., Rochlin, S.A. (2007). New Rules for Business Success. In: Beyond Good Company. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609983_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609983_5
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