Walmart, founded in 1962, is the largest retailer in the world, the first multinational corporation in the world in 2010 by revenue and number of employees. Transparency and accountability represent a lifestyle for Walmart that strongly believe that they are part of being a good and responsible company. Indeed, Cedillo Torres et al. (2012) have pointed to it as an important emerging private actor in the transformation of lawmaking in accountability field, so it is called the “global legislator”. They emphasize how Walmart is able to use its contractual relationships to regulate behavior and activities among its suppliers around the globe with respect to product quality, working conditions for the suppliers’ employees, and ethical conduct.
In addition, Walmart focus own investments on education, health, commitments to fight hunger support for local farmers and access to healthier and affordable food. To this aim, the corporation promotes integrity as an everyday behavior by building a globally consistent ethics education experience for associates and integrating ethics content into existing functional-area training. They have implemented a consistent education program “Integrity in Action Award” in the U.S. and are continuing to expand e-learning and instructor-led training around the world. This program consists in a voluntary recognition of associates who demonstrate integrity through consistent actions and words and inspire other associates to always do the right thing. By sharing associate stories, the program fosters and sustains our culture of integrity that has and will continue to drive our success.
Currently, Walmart publishes a full and complete report on CSR issues called “Global Responsibility Report” which deals with People, Planet, Profit highlighting gender equality and the importance “to be green”.
Overall, Walmart because of a strong accountability force, has an significant social impact on community both with education program and firm policies founded by Sam Walton: “Personal and moral integrity is one of our basic fundamentals and it has to start with each of us”. These behaviors led to high degree of accountability with better consequences on social impact.