The Wal-Mart Effect and a Decent Society: Who Knew Shopping Was So Important?
探讨沃尔玛作为全球最大零售商，其经营方式对工资、价格和经济的广泛影响，并指出其保密性阻碍了公众问责，呼吁理解巨型企业的行为与影响。
Executive Overview The phrase “The Wal-Mart Effect” has made its way into the culture as a shorthand for the range of effects resulting from Wal-Mart's way of doing business. A megacorporation with sales that consistently rank it as the number-one or number-two publicly traded company in the United States and in the world, Wal-Mart has impacted wage rates, prices, and economies on a local, national, and global scale. It is arguably the world's most important privately controlled economic institution. It not only has no rivals, it actually influences the prices set by its suppliers and has often seemed impervious to challenge, let alone accountability. Many of the most basic and most urgent questions about Wal-Mart, those at the core of a public debate over the “Wal-Mart Effect,” go unanswered. Wal-Mart's own 40-year history of absolute secrecy, including forbidding its suppliers to talk about their relationship with Wal-Mart, has only deepened the mystery of its impact. Answering the questions is vital—not just to understand the impact of Wal-Mart but to understand the behavior and impact of all kinds of megacorporations emerging in the global economy.