Bloggers with Attitude... Inside Wal-Mart?

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  kajira203/03/08 Report as spam
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  Wal-Mart and blogging

  Hmm ... makes you wonder: was the blu-ray leak unintentional or was it planned? How did management at the world's largest retailer respond to the revelation? Was Wal-Mart sitting on a pile of now nearly useless HD-DVD players? Or had they stocked up on blu-ray players and let the blogger do the rest?
  
  I assume that management currently views the buyers' blog as having at worst a neutral impact and at best a net positive impact both on the company's image and the bottom line; I'd like to see what happens when the impact on the bottom line is perceived as being negative -- will management sacrifice the benefits to its image and rein in the bloggers?
  
  An alternative perspective on the Wal-Mart blog, from the admittedly tendentious Wal-Mart Watch blog:
  
  http://walmartwatch.com/blog

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  hotweir03/10/08 Report as spam
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  Alt. view

  Thank you. Your reservations re: Wal-Mart senior management's reaction to blog posts that actually cut into its profits is indeed the key question here.

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  macnamband03/03/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Bloggers with Attitude... Inside Wal-Mart?

  Perhaps, it comes down to Warren Buffett's confidence .... A cynic would say 'he can afford to be honest,' to take a chance, to gamble that in fact freedom will make his company stronger. Regardless of his motivation you wonder what it would take for W to have had that kind of confidence for the last 8 years.....

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  hotweir03/03/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Bloggers with Attitude... Inside Wal-Mart?

  Thank you for your comments. I have only visited Wal-Mart stores twice, once with my Mom late in her life when my kids and I pushed her wheelchair through a Wal-Mart store in Lansing, Michigan; and once with my ex-girlfriend as she bought supplies for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, Mississippi late in 2005.
  
  Both times, I have to confess, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of goods available. But it is easy for me to understand that if Wal-Mart changes for the better, we all will benefit.
  
  In that spirit, Go Wal-Mart!

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  adaiyeg03/04/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Bloggers with Attitude... Inside Wal-Mart?

  Yeah, and when they begin investing in the elimination of poverty and not creating it, it will be even better.

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  hellodavid03/04/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Bloggers with Attitude... Inside Wal-Mart?

  Fact is that I am more likely to visit the Check Out blog than I am to visit a Wal-Mart store. Such are the choices of modern life. And kudos to them for the green leadership whether it gets my dollar or not.

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  hotweir03/10/08 Report as spam
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  hellodavid

  Understood.

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  interestedreader03/04/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Bloggers with Attitude... Inside Wal-Mart?

  Wal-Mart is easy to hate, but corporate social responsibility, when it's done in a way to be as effective as it is good PR, is laudable. Whether it's done because it makes good business sense or just because it makes sense, the fact is that plenty of corporations don't bother. It's easy to be cynical about such programs, in line with an armchair socialist critique of corporations per se, but in the end isn't that sometimes just a reflection of our laziness and blase attitude?

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  hotweir03/04/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Bloggers with Attitude... Inside Wal-Mart?

  I agree with those who recognize that socially responsible change, whether it happens at the grassroots or at the top of a huge corporation, is always worth supporting. That's why I posted this article. If Wal-Mart does the right thing -- for whatever reason, including boosting profits -- they have my gratitude.

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  femisola03/04/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Bloggers with Attitude... Inside Wal-Mart?

  When will execs learn that PR approaches do not work with employees?
  I live in Nigeria, an emerging mass market and the cultural hang ups of our execs will be their handicaps. you'd be amazed what you'd hear if you are really ready to listen.
  we never thought we'd see a society where people cahnge jobs three or more times in a single year but it's happening.
  It is no longer a cliche that a good employee retention plan, chief of which is the freedom to say what you are REALLY thinking without threat or fear, will decide the fate of most of our private sector.
  FJ

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  danogram03/06/08 Report as spam
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  Bloggers with Attitude

  Ah, the Big Company Culture. If you have ever been inside the middle or upper management strata of a large corporation, you will have a deep sense of appreciation for the innovation this represents. If you care to look back to the roots of Wal Mart, you could also see the fundamental ? and courageous ? changes that Sam Walton actually started almost a half century ago. He set in motion, among other things, the notion that treating your employees ever more like partners would free them to be enormous assets to whatever you were trying to do.
  
  Sam died 16 years ago. In his last months, finishing his book Made In America, he worried over the very question of bigness: He wrote that he wondered whether it would be better to have one company of $100 billion, or five companies of $20 billion each. He was well aware of the implications of size in corporate culture. That book is an excellent read, by the way.
  
  Ah, the advancing technologies of communication. Wal Mart's refreshing experiment in the power of truth pales in the face of what's going on today inside the likes of Cuba, Communist China, Iran... oppressive governments continue to fight the onslaught of knowledge via this new technology, but they are losing. To be sure, the battles will rage for a long time to come. Despots reigning over information starved masses will continue brutalize people to shield them from knowing who their true enemies are.
  
  To those responsible in Wal Mart, Thank You. To those in this great nation who whine about supposed oppression here, please sit down and shut up. If you must have a cause to pursue, let it be to help those truly oppressed elsewhere on the globe.