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Wal-Mart: Companies
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Before Wal-Mart infiltrated the urban infrastructure, crime was virtually non-existent in most communities. Studies show that crime rates have soared to a dramatic level in areas within a 2-mile radius of Wal-Mart. 78% of crimes are committed in Wal-Mart parking lots. This is due to the rapid expansion of the company. The USGS estimates that by 2009 50% of all land in the US alone will be Wal-Mart owned.
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In January 2006, Wal-Mart announced that "diversity efforts include new groups of minority, female and gay employees that meet at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville to advise the company on marketing and internal promotion. There are seven so-called Business Resource Groups: women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Gays and Lesbians, and a disabled group."[98]
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Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, faces intense criticism. Its leading critics, including two union-backed groups, have accused the company of skimping on wages and benefits, discriminating against women and hurting small businesses and the environment. In January, Maryland passed legislation requiring Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health care. More than 22 other states are considering similar measures.
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Wal-Mart recently conducted a thorough evaluation of its financial information systems to determine what was needed to support the company's $350 billion business as well as its next stage of growth. Wal-Mart plans to implement SAP globally in phases, with the first phase expected to be completed in calendar year 2010. This solution will replace some legacy systems while integrating with other internal Wal-Mart systems.
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From 2002 through 2006, Wal-Mart received steadily increasing scores on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index, a measure of how companies treat LGBT employees and customers. The company's rating increased from 14% in 2002 to 43% in 2004, due to an expanded antidiscrimination policy to protect gay and lesbian employees.[94] The score increased to 57% in 2005, because of the company's new definition of family that included same-sex partners,[95] and increased again in 2006 to a high of 65%.[96] However, the rating for the 2008 edition dropped back to 40%, attributable to losses in two key areas: not renewing its membership in the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (which it joined in 2006), and a discrepancy from last year's study that was discovered in this year's answers and resulted in another 10-point loss. (By comparison, Target scored 80% and Kmart 100%.) As a result of the 40% rating, HRC encouraged consumers to "strongly consider other [shopping] options."[97]
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Wal-Mart was founded in 1962 in Bentonville, Arkansas, by the Walton family, who now account for five out of the ten richest people on the planet.[3] Its expansion has been phenomenal. A so called ‘strategy of consolidation’ smashes local small town businesses, often leaving inhabitants without alternative local retailing outlets. In many ways the story of Wal-Mart reads like a textbook case study of how well a company can do in the current global economic system, and how the rest of the world reacts. H. Lee Scott, the company President, was in 2004 named by Vanity Fair magazine as the most powerful person in the world – above Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch.[4]
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