WAL-MART ETHICAL ISSUES

Wal-Mart Ethical Issues

Wal-Mart Ethical Issues

Introduction

A company has the perfect legitimacy in monitoring an employer in its business for several reasons. One of the reasons is that a business owner has a right to increase its resources by increasing productivity through his or her workers. Electronic monitoring can help can manage accomplish this goal by effectively evaluating employees for pay raises, promotions, discipline or termination. The employer or business owner can also provide the employee with proper feedback when noticing any lack of productivity so the workers can then improve their job performance. Monitoring employees can also reduce, or even eliminate, daily Web surfing that is not related to the job or work that needs to be accomplished, since bandwidth resources are then preserved. Employee monitoring and filtering can discourage excessive Internet use and save the cost of adding additional bandwidth, instead of clogging pipes with unnecessary traffic or video streaming. Another factor is creating fear by just having a sticker on every computer saying that all traffic and computer usage is being monitored. Employees will now be discouraged of even thinking to do stupid things.

Another reason is that sexual harassment and a hostile work environment can be also reduced or even eliminated. Anticipating that they are being watched, employees will naturally reduce the use of any sexual, prejudicial, hateful, defamatory language at the work place. They will also try to be friendly to their co-workers so that the employer sees and notices the worker's friendliness, values and productivity. Inappropriate emails and the viewing of pornographic material can be also eliminated in the work place. Employees with low productivity who tend to be the creators of a hostile work environment, can be now easily fired, since proof of act the can be supplied. Employee monitoring is a way of filtering out the bad or unproductive workers and keeping and rewarding the good ones.

One more reason is the reduction of theft and other unethical acts. There are many ethically good and ethically bad people. In order to track the bad ones, some sort of surveillance has to be used. Companies keep losing cash in merchandise due to employee theft. Business owners are also concerned with protecting intangible property like trade secrets and other important information, since these are easy to be smuggled through e-mail. By using electronic surveillance, employers can also ensure that employees who steal can be caught, and employees who deter others from doing so can be awarded. Surveillance can also help prevent employees from violating copyright laws by illegally uploading or downloading commercial software and other copyrighted materials.

Although a company may pay top dollar to their employees, there are many other factors to take into consideration when looking for employee loyalty. If working conditions are unpleasant and employee morale is low, people will start to look elsewhere to work. This paper will cover how job specialization, working in a team that has some control over the design of a product and a decentralized organization helps win ...