What Would Sam Do?

It was as warm-down-homey as could be imagined at Wal-Mart’s Annual Meeting (12.06.01). Thirty miles from Wal-Mart World Headquarters in the University of Arkansas Basketball Arena, Robson Walton, eldest child of founder Sam Walton, strolled onto a mock-up of his daddy’s first store and brought his bother Jim and his sister Alice on stage for a chat about what it was like growing up and working with Sam Walton. A driven retailer Sam Walton remained a down-to-earth hard working guy who didn’t take himself too seriously, as indicated by a famous quote at a time when he was listed as the richest person in America: “I still can't believe it was news that I get my hair cut at the barbershop. Where else would I get it cut? Why do I drive a pickup truck? What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?”

He seems a no-nonsense guy as well, a trait that makes one wonder how he would have reacted to the bribery mess Wal-Mart is now mired in. A mess it’s hard to imagine ever happening on Sam Walton’s watch. It appears that his son Rob, his heir and Chairman of the retail behemoth, along with the rest of the corporate hierarchy, turned a blind-eye to a growing culture of bribery in Mexico. Given the zillions of dollars that are alleged to be involved, it’s hard to imagine that someone pretty far up the food chain wasn’t signing off on this practice. It’s even harder to imagine that the company would be “investigating” years after these kind of allegations hit Mr. Sam’s desk.

And yet when the Walton siblings walked off the replica of Daddy’s first store and the Annual Meeting continued, that was the response every time the question of the bribery scandal was raised, “We’re investigating.” It doesn’t seem possible given the size of the scandal in Mexico and the passing of time since it came to their attention, that Wal-Mart’s leaders still have no results. It’s been six weeks since an in-depth article in the New York Times blew the lid off the scandal in a big way.

Seven years ago in 2005 a former Wal-Mart de Mexico executive sent an email with in-depth details of hundreds of bribes to Wal-Mart headquarters. Not a big investigative task. Either the cash left the hands of Wal-Mart de Mexico on the dates and in the amounts he claimed to the individuals he claimed, or not. That’s not a complicated investigation, nor one that takes a lot of time.

One can’t help but wonder what Sam Walton would have done. According to an Associated Press report on the meeting, Rob Walton said, his father "didn’t measure success by financial achievement, but rather by the lives we improve." We fail to see that goal advanced by any of this nonsense. Wal-Mart seems to have lost Sam’s moral compass, to be drifting, ignoring his ethical standards. We would guess that Rob Walton has all the money he could ever use. It would seem a perfect time for him to pick up the family flag and use his position to make his daddy’s company what Sam Walton would want it to be.