Case study: Wal-Mart Brazil Thinks Green

Subject: Topic:

Business Ethics Issue Management Approaches

Submitted By: Zeeshan Haider Awan Roll # IC-2145 BBA-3-B Submitted to: Madam Farhat Dated: 11th October 2010

|National University Of Modern Languages Islamabad, Pakistan|

I'm going to make the case for event as the most influential (or at least a very close): the Wal-Mart Sustainability Summit held in Sao Paolo, Brazil. This is mainly an economic environment segment targeted study case. It all started with the clearing of Amazon forest for getting food requirements of cattle and livestock industry that wall-mart and other companies ran. Apart from this also for clearing a land and using it for soybean cultivation by Wall-mart. In addition to this Wall-mart was wrongly accused for having forced labor that is a problem of developing countries. This all lead to a boycott campaign and strike against wall-mart that in turn decreased its business, market ratio and credibility in Brazilian market. Wall-mart basically held this summit to overcome this crisis. So now as we have discussed the main reason just go through all the solution made by Wall-mart Brazil through step by step method of issue management approach. 4 Stages Issue Management Approach: We will see and view all the solution and points delivered by Wallmart by the four steps issue management approach. Stage 1: Social Expectations: Wall-mart after analyzing the situation went up for public exposure and clearing their stand over all the accusations people and competitive monopolies made on them. They did this by holding a summit in principal city of Brazil and in that the wall-mart president Hector Nunez invited general public, his suppliers, buyers and major corporations such as Cargill, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly Clark, PepsiCo, P&G, Sara Lee, and Unilever.

 Stage 2: Political awareness: Wall-mart politically involved Brazilian Minister of the Environment and the director of Greenpeace Brazil, an organization that just a few weeks ago produced a damning report titled "Slaughtering the Amazon" that points the finger at the cattle industry as the primary cause of deforestation and growing soybean another leading cause. This made the companys intensions more clearly to political powers and NGO, s that they want to and are serious to run with them. This also gave them political support from government and on private organizations level. Stage 3: Legislative Engagement: At the Summit, Wal-Mart announced significant goals and mandates to tackle some of the thorniest environmental and social problems in the world. WalMart Brazil ensured that its supply chain will use:. No companies that employ slave labor; forced labor is a common problem in developing countries. No soybeans sourced from illegally deforested areas; 20% of the world's carbon emissions (and 70% of Brazil's emissions) come from burning down trees. No beef sourced from any newly cleared Amazonian land; globally, deforestation emits more carbon than all vehicles. Brazil and Indonesia are at the heart of this enormous challenge. Wal-Mart also dropped some more tactical goals on their suppliers, such as a 70% reduction in phosphates in detergent by 2013 and a 50% reduction in plastic bags by 2013.

 Stage 4: Social control and Litigation: After that Wall-mart announced to have a campaign with five renowned NGO,s of Brazil on awareness of these issues and solutions to all general public on National level and then to implement the forestation of cleared lands involving public and other willing organizations. For implementing these publicly and practically twenty top executives stood on stage and signed these aggressive agreements. Many of these companies have been environmental leaders for years, but it was hard not to wonder why they hadn't made these commitments already.

Outcome: This event took a radical and historic turn. Wal-Mart Brazil managed to get twenty major suppliers onstage to sign an agreement to meet all of these goals. On very short notice, the company corralled the presidents of the Brazilian operations for major corporations such as Cargill, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly Clark, PepsiCo, P&G, Sara Lee, and Unilever.