12-15 slide Microsoft PowerPoint presentatio

6

Keenya Davis

South University

Title

Introduction

Walmart is one of the largest retailers in the world and it has a very large workforce. There are always some ethical challenges in big organizations. Walmart also faces a lot of ethical challenges (Leite, 2016). High work pressure is the major ethical challenge for Walmart. Harassment is also an import ethical issue. Such challenges are faced by almost every big organization but these are mostly ignored by the higher management of organizations. Such challenges have been prevailing over a long time. No concrete steps have not been taken yet to cope with these challenges. The reason for this is that corporate world focusses on performance and revenue. Employees are not given the best environment in which they can give their best. It is very important to make strategies to overcome ethical challenges.

Ethical Challenges

High Work Pressure

Thousands of customers visit Walmart stores every day and there are only small number of employees to entertain all those customers. Employees have to give their cent percent to entertain such large number of customers. This leads to very high work pressure on the employees. There is also pressure of achieving targets that are assigned to them. The targets are quite high and it is difficult to achieve those targets. Employees are worried all the time to achieve the targets and it causes stress. High work pressure over longer period of time may lead to depression. Not only Walmart, but a large number of large organizations face the ethical issue of high work pressure. Walmart has not succeeded in handling the challenge of high work pressure.

Harassment

Harassment at the workplace is one of the most common ethical challenge in business organizations (Schooley, 2020) and Walmart is no exception. Women are mostly at the receiving end of the harassment. Harassment of a man by a woman is rare but there have been some incidents in the last few years. Sexual harassment is the worst form of harassment and Walmart is struggling to cope with this challenge. This leads to a sense of insecurity among the female employees of the organization. An employee could not perform well who feels insecure at the workplace. Below par employee performance leads to high work pressure that eventually leads to stress. The organization could also face law suits for not providing good workplace conditions to female employees. No effective strategy has been devised to handle this challenge.

Gender Discrimination

Another great ethical issue faced by Walmart is discrimination against female employees. Chances of promotion for a male employee are greater than a female employee of the same potential. Gender discrimination is exhibited in almost every department of the company. It is a form of exploitation of the female workers because they are not given their due reward. It discourages female workers and ultimately they are unable to give best performance. This could lead to decreased productivity of the workforce. It also leads to inferiority complex among the female employees. Gender discrimination in promotion could demotivate male employees to work less hard because they would feel that they can get promotion even though they work less hard as compared to their female counter parts. Lack of merit often results in decreased employee productivity. Organizations are seeking ways to improve productivity of the employees. Promotion of employees on merit without any gender discrimination could be key to increasing productivity of the employees. Walmart has to come up with an effective plant to cope with the challenge of gender discrimination.

Coping with the Challenges

It is crucial to make strategies to deal with the ethical challenges faced by Walmart. One effective strategy to deal with challenge of high work pressure is to increase the number of employees. In this way, the workload will be divided among greater number of employees. Another important strategy is to lower the targets given to employees. It would ultimately lead to lower work pressure and it could reap huge productivity benefits for the company. The company should implement the policy to fire employees who are involved in harassing someone. Firing culprits of harassment would set an example for other employees. In this way, harassment cases could be sharply decreased. To prevent gender discrimination, the organization could use artificial intelligence and big data analysis for promotion of employees. The organization can ask the employees to suggest strategies to cope with the ethical challenges.

Positive Ethical Aspects

Contrary to ethical challenges, there are some positive ethical aspects of the Walmart. There have been negligible privacy issues of the customers of Walmart. The main reason for this is that Walmart does not share data to its customers with third parties. This protected the organization against ethical challenge of protection of privacy of customers. Walmart can continue using this strategy to protect the privacy of its customers.

Conclusion

Walmart faces many ethical challenges like high work pressure, harassment and gender discrimination. These challenges can be dealt through devising effective strategies and implementing the strategies. Walmart has continue positive ethical practices like protection of privacy of customers.

References

Leite, R. (2016). Walmarts Ethical Troubles, Lowest Prices for Customer's at Expense of Employees (2016). Retrieved from Business Ethics Cases: http://businessethicscases.blogspot.com/2017/04/walmarts-ethical-troubles-lowest-prices.html

Schooley, S. (2020). Workplace Harassment: How to Recognize and Report It. Retrieved from BusinessNewsDaily: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/9426-workplace-harassment.html