Discussion
In this report external approach of Walmart’s engagement with CSR activities have been analysed with identification of stakeholders and engagement channels for communication. Also the ways that are adopted by Walmart to resolve CSR concerns have been presented and a framework for CSR model has been explained for better understanding. Lastly recommendations are provided that can be used by Walmart to improve further.
According to European Commission CSR is defined as amalgamation of social and environmental issues with business functions and interacting with stakeholders about such issues and responsibilities in an autonomous manner (Moczadlo 2015). Further CSR illustrates a firm’s liability to increase its positive effects and decrease negative ones by being citizen of community and expressing consideration for social needs and wants in long term.
According to Duarte, Gomes & Gonçalves (2014) Carrol’s CSR framework describes CSR as activities that are carried out by firms to become economically profitable, abide with legislation and to support ethical and social concern. In order to become socially responsive corporate needs to abide with laws at priority so as to remain productive and ethical in approach that would help to assist society with augmentation of money, time and talent.
The four obligations that community expects from corporate: (Ojasoo 2016)
Economic: obligations of corporate to produce goods those are beneficial for society and selling them to be profitable. Hence to survive and leverage community needs for long time corporate need to operate adequately their economic units to stay in business.
Legal: corporate should withstand with laws and other rules as because if they opt to be negligible it can be serious for business. Example, corporate should abide with employment, consumer protection and health & safety regulations.
Ethical: corporate should be ethically and morally responsive in their actions which are expected by community above economic and legal obligations. Example, moral obligation for suppliers and employees.
Philanthropic: corporate should be responsible to contribute to society through improvement of lives of employees, public and local communities. Example, charity funding, staff engagement in CSR initiatives
As an elementary condition of survival, Walmart has economic liability towards the society that allowed them to produce and survive. As such economic expectation as part of social liability is desirable as society expects and wants that Walmart as a corporate business be capable to sustain. This is possible only when Walmart operates in profitability and is capable to offer good returns to their shareholders so that they invest further in more resources to continue the business operations. Thus basically society observes Walmart as corporate that can produce and sell good that are needed and desired, so as an encouragement the society permits Walmart to take profits. Hence Walmart generates profits when they add value to their offerings to society and in doing this they leverage stakeholders as well. Profits are essential to incentivise investors and for business development as these profits are re-invested back to business for growth. Hence critical significance is related to profitability and performance generation in context to add better benefits to Walmart’s associate, society and suppliers. With better profitability of Walmart the associates get benefitted in form of better bonus, job advancement schemes and more promotion, society gets scope for more new jobs that are created and suppliers also get benefitted in form of better collaboration, support and encouragement for business from Walmart. Moreover with better performance supplier also get inclusive training that makes them prosper further in business adaptability to meet desired standards of production and quality levels. So performance effectiveness and management is related and vital for society which is leveraged through business profits and focus to revenue, cost effectiveness, investments, better marketing and operations approaches and decisions that augment long term financial performances for Walmart.
Framework of CSR Practice Model
Additionally strong inclination towards CSR has strengthened the sustainability needs in the social concerns dialogues of Walmart by offering momentum for CSR’s strong position as centrepiece of their business for confronting and attaining competitiveness. These approaches include Walmart’s focus towards globalisation of CSR initiatives, harmonisation of CSR across different markets and business segments, strategic settlement with financial objectives and intellectual reproduction in form of various measures that can endeavour future development towards sustainable environment and business with good practices. Walmart effectively maintains balance and accord between different stakeholder’s expectations which sometimes are competing and pressurising enough between home and host nations of business operations. Moreover harmonisation of CSR practices of Walmart reflects more formalised and in-depth integration with corporate structure, policies and practices and from strategic viewpoint CSR is widely accepted as mainstream approach at Walmart that has changed the purpose and direction of their business to attain better sustainability needs.
According to Mazutis & Slawinski (2015) Walmart’s different stakeholders includes shareholders, customers, associates, front runners of community and people and the firm engages with them either directly or indirectly for involvement towards ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) concerns. Walmart gets engaged with their stakeholders periodically through review meets.
In order to support CSR or Sustainability framework aspects in context to economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic aspects, Walmart practices the following responsibilities for different stakeholders:
Shareholders: according to Gauthier (2017) Walmart interacts with shareholders about CSR or Sustainability during frequent calls with partners of investment network, periodic earning materials, SEC filing, investor’s congress, investment community meets, annual reports and through website publications. During each of these communication channels Walmart offers their shareholders with updated and potent data on financial performance and other prime affairs. Walmart also carries out shareholder outreach initiatives to communicate corporate governance elements. During each of these engagement ways Walmart carries out open conversation with shareholders to give updated information on corporate approaches and responsibility actions.
Associates: according to Baddache & Nicolai (2013) Walmart engages with their associates in different ways such as face-to-face personal communication, team meets and cascade leadership interactions, through intranet, Facebook Workplace and social media as well as through email. Also random Associate engagement surveys are conducted annually to collect feedback on various issues including governance, CSR or sustainability. Moreover Open door approach of Walmart is another way that permits associates irrespective of the level to share opinions or raise concerns anytime without hesitation. Translucence and interaction are vital ways to push Walmart’s corporate governance and sustainable culture that is driven to continued improvement. Feedback from associates are utilised to interpret concerns that are prime and to respond as efficaciously as possible. For instance, as initiative to improve governance inside Walmart, they have revised starting payments, introduced scheduling systems change and have bettered training and development contributions to fulfil needs of associates.
Stakeholder Engagement at Walmart
Customers: Walmart engages with their customers through feedback mechanism such as surveys, individual discussion, social media communication managed through Facebook, Twitter, inperson interaction at stores, through emails and calls as well as through customer call centres. Walmart acknowledges customer concerns on different aspects like nutrition quotient of food, ingredient and responsible sourcing and responds them timely (Afreen & Kumar 2016). Example for various private labels of Walmart, they have created with supplier’s food products that support improving nutrition quotient through removal or reduction of sodium, sugar and transfat.
Suppliers: Walmart engages with suppliers to gather feedback and share company expectations through various channels like online suppliers portal that encloses information on standards for worker safety in factories of suppliers, code of conduct for emissions, product wastage and sustainability concerns. These also include codes for issues that impact products being sold and the procedure in which they are produced. In addition Walmart offers outreach and assistance for different women owned suppliers assisting them to interpret procedures to be followed by Walmart’s suppliers (Gauthier 2017). Moreover various live and online events are hosted for interaction like trade events to give updated information which assist suppliers and strengthen; improves the systems. For instance to deeply understand lives of people connected in roots of supply network like farmers, fishermen, factory workers who produce products being sold, Walmart and their leadership teams carry out a program “eat what you cook” during onsite visits which essentially brings forward the opinions of people who are at far end of supply chain. These engagement ways helps to improvise merchandising through responsive sourcing activities; human rights approaches like Responsible recruitment.
Communities: according to Kim, Ha & Fong (2014) Walmart engages with community through channels to create responsiveness for CSR where their store associates visit local organisations and engage by written or online interactions. Also Walmart Foundation works with different community bodies worldwide engaging them by proposal, meets and discussions.
NGO: according to Baddache & Nicolai (2013) Walmart engages with NGO’s and advisory bodies through Walmart Foundation to support issues of deforestation, human trafficking so as to address them with wide implication and system wide change through collaborative actions to resolve complex concerns. Also periodic meets and online updates on progress for goals are made for engagement. These facilitate actions on ecosystems and networks to amplify the implication of learning from and assisting each other.
- Value chains are normally effective to regulations and supervisions but some can result to prospective damage to worker dignity so Walmart needs to set more clear objectives for their suppliers and other units to support Responsive sourcing in context to generating awareness on operational sustainability and responsive ways to practices that can safeguard worker dignity.
- Walmart depends largely on social compliance audits, code of conducts that are set between them, third parties like auditing firms and suppliers. Though Walmart has appropriate practices in place but to ensure more trust they can enhance standard for auditors further in context to social adherence. Like conduct certifications and proficiency archetype for professional practices can be developed to enforce professionalism.
Conclusion
Hence it can be inferred that combining sustainability within the approaches and practices of Walmart is an integral culture which helps them extend support for various CSR and sustainability programs and further enact improvement in collaboration with stakeholders. To maintain effectiveness Walmart engages with stakeholders through various channels to communicate awareness and expectations on CSR and sustainability so as to form an effective and robust system to maintain responsibility for CSR implications in both positive and negative manner by maximising positive encounters and lowering negative encounters.
References
Afreen, S., & Kumar, S. (2016). Between a rock and a hard place. Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, [Online] 7(3), 350-375. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1826809680?accountid=30552 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018]
Baddache, F., & Nicolai, I. (2013). Follow the leader: How corporate social responsibility influences strategy and practice in the business community. The Journal of Business Strategy, [Online] 34(6), 26-35. Retrieved from doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JBS-01- 2013-0002 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018]
Duarte, A. P., Gomes, D. R., & Gonçalves, d. N. (2014). Finding the jigsaw piece for our jigsaw puzzle with corporate social responsibility. Management Research, [Online] 12(3), 240- 258. Retrieved from: doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/MRJIAM-11-2013-0532 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018]
Gauthier, J. (2017). Sustainable business strategies: Typologies and future directions. Society and Business Review, [Online] 12(1), 77-93. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1864035472?accountid=30552 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018]
Kim, J., Ha, S., & Fong, C. (2014). Retailers’ CSR: The effects of legitimacy and social capital. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, [Online] 42(2), 131-150. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1504107927?accountid=30552 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018]
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Moczadlo, R. (2015). CREATING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES – THE EUROPEAN CSR- STRATEGY COMPARED WITH PORTER’S AND KRAMER’S SHARED VALUE APPROACH. Ekonomski Vjesnik, [Online] 28(1), 243-256. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1695026343?accountid=30552 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018]
Ojasoo, M. (2016). CSR reporting, stakeholder engagement and preventing hypocrisy through ethics audit. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, [Online] 6(1), 1-14. Retrieved from doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40497-016-0056-9 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018]
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