Business Dispute
The nature of disputes in business is varied and in some instances they come because of the wrong performance of people. Let us take the case of Mr. Coughlin who retired from Wal-Mart in January finally gave his resignation from the board of directors on March 25th. According to Wal-Mart there was a pattern of expenses account abuses by him, as also the use of incorrect invoices for getting reimbursement of expenses. This action has been accompanied by the sacking of a few other employees also. The investigation into the matter is being carried by the US attorney for the Western District of Arkansas. The matter is also being investigated by Wall Street Journal and they feel that Mr. Coughlin often forced his subordinates to create false bills so that he could get payments for his personal expenses from Wall-Mart. He is now 55 years old and this mode of working has been used by him for more than 5 years and got him payment for hunting vacations, a $1,359 pair of alligator skin boots tailor made for him, as also a $2,590 dog pen for his house. This activity is certainly not expected from a person of the stature of Mr. Coughlin who had earned over $ 6 million during last year. (Bandler; Zimmerman, 2005)
Regarding the attitude of Wal-Mart towards its employees, the facts are well known as it had forced its employees in Oregon to work overtime without pay from 1994 to 1999. This was determined by a number of juries across the country when the matter came to trial. The case had been started by 400 employees from 24 of the 27 stores that it has in Oregon. At that stage, the company's sales were 4218 billion with more than a million workers and 3,250 stores in the country. These law suits were class law suits and similar cases were started in 39 other cases in 30 states. The states concerned varied from New York to California, and involved many hundred of thousands of workers. Wal-Mart had also settled two such cases in Colorado and New Mexico. (Wal-Mart Loses Unpaid Overtime Case) There are always challenges in business cases and it is often not enough to have funds and start a company. The organization has to concentrate on the developing technology, and not end up being a bully. IT is one of the areas which can also cut costs without hurting people. (Franke, 2004) The ultimate test of business in correct behavior is more in the organization's ability to get along with its competitors and employees rather than the amount of profit it is able to collect in a particular year. This is what will make the business last long. The previous chain of The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. had the largest number of shops all over the country and those numbers have never been repeated. When that group was at its best, it had five times the number of shops that Wal-Mart has now. Of course those shops were smaller in size, but still it had been controlling about 80 percent of the entire business that was being controlled by the supermarkets. There are now many laws against predatory pricing and many of these had come from the attempts of A& P attempts to muscle over its suppliers. Today, the same sort of problems is being created by Wal-Mart. It
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1311
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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