Question

Give an historical example of a business or manager that suffered from excessively focusing on profits for either the company or themselves.

**keeping the potential problems associated myopic views in mind

Answer 1

The greatest example I can take is of Walmart, the hunger for profit has put Walmart in jeopardy many a times “Save Money, Live Better”. You will find this slogan beneath the posters of Wal-Mart’s, but if you ask from any employee of Walmart, then he might certainly would not say that they live better after beginning employment with the retail giant.

According to a study, Wal-Mart reduced the take-home pay of workers by astonishing billions of dollars annually, adding insult to injury considering that workers were often forced to work overtime for zero pay. Wal-Mart did everything it can to deny its workers basic rights, spending an enormous amount of time and money keeping unions out. They believed that by keeping the employees cost at minimal they can generate higher profits. Strange to notice, the leadership failed to realize that they are spending a whole lot more on keeping the unions away than their employees overhead cost. Well that can be attributed to their vision of generating higher profits without caring about anything else.

In addition, Wal-Mart pushed its suppliers to go lower and lower on their wholesale prices, Thanks to its concentration on low, low prices; the retailer started ignorning child slave labor in its manufacturing facilities abroad, particularly in China and Bangladesh

And, despite all of their claims about ‘going green’, Wal-Mart had broken one environmental law after the other, these resulted in high amount of fines and penalty ultimately it impacted their balance sheet and profit statements,