New Book on Wal-Mart Shows Both Faces of Corporate Giant (Gwen Moritz’s Editor’s Note)

By the time you read this, if all goes as planned, I will have served as moderator for author Charles Fishman’s presentation at the Arkansas Literary Festival. I lobbied for the job because I wanted a chance to meet the guy who wrote “The Wal-Mart Effect.”

I bought Fishman’s book after I heard him interviewed on “The Motley Fool” radio program on National Public Radio a few weeks back and was struck by his balanced view on the world’s largest retailer. He is not a booster like Robert Slater, author of “The Wal-Mart Triumph,” whose session I moderated at the literary festival two years ago; neither is he a basher, like Robert Greenwald, who made the film “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices.” Fishman is a journalist, a senior writer for Fast Company magazine, and he has approached his subject — the various effects of Wal-Mart’s unprecedented clout — with a journalist’s open mind. And he found that this corporate citizen is like every other citizen, with good points and bad.

That’s not to say that Wal-Mart or its defenders will be happy with his portrayal of the company. (Last year I wrote a column that merely asked why Target, whose business plan is virtually identical to Wal-Mart’s, should enjoy a public image that was much more positive than Wal-Mart’s — and got blasted in a letter to the editor that accused me of ingratitude.) I liked the book because it brought together concrete examples of both the good that Wal-Mart has done, such as pressuring deodorant makers to dispense with the useless cardboard boxes that used to surround their products, and the bad, such as ignoring the working conditions and ecological impact of some of the overseas plants that produce much of the merchandise on Wal-Mart shelves.

And he points out something that I think many Wal-Mart detractors have missed: The company’s profit margin is already razor thin, so any increases in its expenses — such as the more generous health care benefits it is easing into — will necessarily come at the expense of consumers. And that may sound fine to you and me, but many Wal-Mart shoppers are there because they truly need to stretch every penny as far as possible.

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I told Charles Fishman that Arkansas has a love-hate relationship with both of its most famous products, Wal-Mart and Bill Clinton. Both have put Arkansas on the map, so to speak, and both embody the smarts, ambition, work ethic and common touch that we like to think is typically Arkansan.

But both have carried their virtues to such an unnatural extreme that they become vices. Clinton put the common touch on Monica Lewinsky and used his gift of gab to lie under oath. Wal-Mart’s laudable goal of offering consumers “low prices always” has encouraged the offshoring of the paychecks those same consumers were using to shop at Wal-Mart. And a $99 lawnmower is great, but if you have to buy one every other season, wouldn’t it actually be cheaper — and easier on the landfills — to pay $300 for one that will last 15 years?

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Fishman’s visit to Arkansas was well-timed. Wal-Mart held its second media conference last week, and reports from the northwest corner of the state suggest a more subdued tone than at the first outreach attempt last year.

I confess I was surprised that Wal-Mart invited journalists back again. The RSVPs for the first event had already been received when Thomas Coughlin was kicked off the board of directors for what amounted, in his tax bracket, to petty theft. The conference itself yielded only a few polite stories, and the day after it ended, The Wall Street Journal caused seismic waves with its article suggesting that Coughlin may have been reimbursing himself for expenses related to secret anti-union activities. (Coughlin eventually pleaded guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion, and the talk of anti-union activities died down.)

Since then, Wal-Mart has announ-ced a number of initiatives — expanded health insurance and in-store clinics, “green” buildings, urban stores in high-unemployment areas, etc. The unions aren’t happy and won’t be until they get hold of every Wal-Mart employee, but I’m willing to believe that Wal-Mart finally is facing the fact that there is more to corporate citizenship than continually rolling back prices.