Wal-Mart! Who Knew?
Imagine, the corporate retail giant that so many adore, and so many others loathe, is really a good citizen disguised as a big bad retailer. Undercutting the lowest prices that most other retailers sell at, they've scarcely any competition. Mind, if the shopper is assiduous enough in determination to discover lower prices, they can be found, for goods of like value.
It would appear that Wal-Mart's low, low prices are more myth than fact, but it would also appear that the great shopping public has become addicted to the fiction of Wal-Mart as their primary shopping destination. What, after all, cannot you get there? Hard goods and groceries, everything from flat-screen television sets to cartons of eggs. One-stop shopping, a retail adventure.
So there's that aspect of the great shopping emporium whose presence just about everywhere has given small-shop owners heartburn, and left-wing activists cause for action. But there's another side to Wal-Mart; it also does things to ingratiate the community with its overwhelming presence, from encouraging employees to represent them while doing volunteer work, to making sizeable corporate donations to area charities.
Community involvement.
And there's one other little thing. After Hurricane Katrina extinguished hope for the future in Louisiana and Mississippi in August 2005, when the federal government vanished from sight, Wal-Mart stepped up to fill the noticeable void. While FEMA was wringing its metaphorical hands and doing nothing whatever that could be minutely construed as helpful, Wal-Mart was instructing all of its employees to use their compassionate judgement.
"A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level" regional and store managers in the affected disaster areas, were informed by chief executive officer, Lee Scott. "Make the best decision that you can with the information that's available to you at the time, and above all, do the right thing."
Authority was thus delegated to become responsive and be responsible on behalf of Wal-Mart, which was, after all, footing the not-inconsiderable bill. This, and much else has been revealed in a literary look at that catastrophe by an economist at St.Lawrence University in New York, Steven Horwitz.
Mr. Horwitz follows the outstandingly inept failures of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, their institutional incapacity to deliver essential life-saving supplies. He parallels that failure with the actions of Wal-Mart managers and their subordinates who did everything in their power to facilitate assistance to the desperate survivors.
From a store employee who smashed a warehouse door with a forklift to obtain water for a nursing home in Louisiana to another store that became a barracks for police constables whose homes had been submerged in flood waters. In Mississippi where an assistant manager ordered a bulldozer through the store to retrieve necessities for community disaster use. Another where a locked pharmacy was broken into to provide medicines for a local hospital.
It was Wal-Mart trucks loaded down with supplies from regional depots that were spot on the case wherever refugees were collected by officials unable to supply the people they corralled for safety, with the necessities to maintain themselves. In recognition of these volunteer good works, FEMA officials went out of their way to persuade the volunteers to desist.
Well, it wasn't only Wal-Mart that responded with such alacrity to the urgency of the situation, but other big-box businesses such as Home Depot and Lowe's as well, all of them handing over millions of dollars of stock, without charge, in a concerted effort to assist where they could.
Although the people representing Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe's were acting out of pure concern for the people in desperate straits living among them as neighbours and shoppers at their places of employment, the concern emanating from the companies wasn't entirely altruistic. But that point, in a sense, needn't be belaboured.
It's a simple fact that a healthy community, where people live comfortable lives, shop regularly and profitably for the stores involved. A community where disaster has struck and jobs evaporate, where homes are destroyed and people die prematurely as a result of disease and accidents resulting from that climatic disaster, is an unhealthy community.
Where people cannot reside, they migrate elsewhere. Where they cannot be employed, they travel to find employment. Where people are exposed to unclean water, mouldy interiors, they become ill and cannot function, and die before their normal life-span. There's the incentive for business to respond, to help in ensuring the previous health of the community will endure.
And so will their corporate enterprise. It is all about the bottom line, after all.
It's a two-way street, right?
It would appear that Wal-Mart's low, low prices are more myth than fact, but it would also appear that the great shopping public has become addicted to the fiction of Wal-Mart as their primary shopping destination. What, after all, cannot you get there? Hard goods and groceries, everything from flat-screen television sets to cartons of eggs. One-stop shopping, a retail adventure.
So there's that aspect of the great shopping emporium whose presence just about everywhere has given small-shop owners heartburn, and left-wing activists cause for action. But there's another side to Wal-Mart; it also does things to ingratiate the community with its overwhelming presence, from encouraging employees to represent them while doing volunteer work, to making sizeable corporate donations to area charities.
Community involvement.
And there's one other little thing. After Hurricane Katrina extinguished hope for the future in Louisiana and Mississippi in August 2005, when the federal government vanished from sight, Wal-Mart stepped up to fill the noticeable void. While FEMA was wringing its metaphorical hands and doing nothing whatever that could be minutely construed as helpful, Wal-Mart was instructing all of its employees to use their compassionate judgement.
"A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level" regional and store managers in the affected disaster areas, were informed by chief executive officer, Lee Scott. "Make the best decision that you can with the information that's available to you at the time, and above all, do the right thing."
Authority was thus delegated to become responsive and be responsible on behalf of Wal-Mart, which was, after all, footing the not-inconsiderable bill. This, and much else has been revealed in a literary look at that catastrophe by an economist at St.Lawrence University in New York, Steven Horwitz.
Mr. Horwitz follows the outstandingly inept failures of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, their institutional incapacity to deliver essential life-saving supplies. He parallels that failure with the actions of Wal-Mart managers and their subordinates who did everything in their power to facilitate assistance to the desperate survivors.
From a store employee who smashed a warehouse door with a forklift to obtain water for a nursing home in Louisiana to another store that became a barracks for police constables whose homes had been submerged in flood waters. In Mississippi where an assistant manager ordered a bulldozer through the store to retrieve necessities for community disaster use. Another where a locked pharmacy was broken into to provide medicines for a local hospital.
It was Wal-Mart trucks loaded down with supplies from regional depots that were spot on the case wherever refugees were collected by officials unable to supply the people they corralled for safety, with the necessities to maintain themselves. In recognition of these volunteer good works, FEMA officials went out of their way to persuade the volunteers to desist.
Well, it wasn't only Wal-Mart that responded with such alacrity to the urgency of the situation, but other big-box businesses such as Home Depot and Lowe's as well, all of them handing over millions of dollars of stock, without charge, in a concerted effort to assist where they could.
Although the people representing Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe's were acting out of pure concern for the people in desperate straits living among them as neighbours and shoppers at their places of employment, the concern emanating from the companies wasn't entirely altruistic. But that point, in a sense, needn't be belaboured.
It's a simple fact that a healthy community, where people live comfortable lives, shop regularly and profitably for the stores involved. A community where disaster has struck and jobs evaporate, where homes are destroyed and people die prematurely as a result of disease and accidents resulting from that climatic disaster, is an unhealthy community.
Where people cannot reside, they migrate elsewhere. Where they cannot be employed, they travel to find employment. Where people are exposed to unclean water, mouldy interiors, they become ill and cannot function, and die before their normal life-span. There's the incentive for business to respond, to help in ensuring the previous health of the community will endure.
And so will their corporate enterprise. It is all about the bottom line, after all.
It's a two-way street, right?
Labels: Environment, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ 5:26 PM
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