WAL-MART

Wal-Mart



Wal-Mart

Ethical conflicts are a common phenomenon in today's healthcare settings. As healthcare executives focus on balancing quality care and cost containment? recognizing the costs associated with ethical conflicts is only logical. (Hoy 2009)

No doubt Wal-Mart managers are looking for the least oppressive way to deal with whatever might come down the pike in the way of federally mandated health care. Under the Obama Administration's proposed plan? large companies would be mandated to provide or contribute to health care coverage for employees.

At the moment? hanging onto the traditional system of employer insurance groups no doubt seems preferable to government-based insurance? the most frightening alternative coming from the White House. Wal-Mart has endorsed another Obama proposal? for mandatory employer group insurance? probably figuring this allows more employer control than whatever might come down in the form of a government insurance plan. The largest retail workers union? which joined Wal-Mart in its stance? also would rather deal with an employer now willing to give a benefit previously hard to negotiate.

If Wal-Mart's support makes it harder for White House opponents to keep the health care status quo? it also stymies real reform? which can't logically occur through employer groups.

A primary goal of private insurers is to preserve these groups rather than having to deal with the population at large. Negotiating terms with an employer for a finite group of workers lets companies manage risk much more easily and poses a smaller challenge in negotiating provider costs. (Hoy 2009)

As in the case of the Wal-Mart? there will be situations where an ethical leader? as an agent of change? will to act in a way which benefits the good of the organization to the detriment of the leader. This is radical departure from conventional understanding of a leader. In essence a leader who chooses this course of action may be marginalized by the very organization they are trying to improve. The efforts of this type of leader may go largely unrecognized. (Ellis 2007)

A leader? as an agent of change? always operates in the present. The decision of how to act and when to act is always in the present. It is difficult to consider "We should have done X." (the past) or "We should do Y." (the future) leadership. Action is the key element. A lack of action at the proper moment is an abdication of leadership. Action only occurs in the present. The implication of this logic is that an agent of change acting as a leader only has control over the means. A leader has no control over the end because the end is in the future.

Wal-Mart has so improved its health-care benefits for employees that it's now at a competitive disadvantage to rivals. So Wal-Mart is calling on the U.S. to force all private-sector employers to provide a high minimum level of health-care benefits to employees? "in order to level the playing field". What's more? the notoriously anti-union Wal-Mart in this initiative has joined forces with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)? America's ...