The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It's Transforming the American Economy

“‘For most people, it is so much easier to be critical of things if you don’t know the people who are involved,’ says Scott. ‘You just don’t have to have a sense of compassion, so you can be blatantly mean. When you start meeting with people, and you understand that they are human beings, that they really are not trying to do harm—then all of a sudden, even though you might still criticize them, the edginess of that criticism is lessened. If you let us in, the Wal-Mart story is compelling.’”

Fishman’s conversation with former Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott inspires much of his formal, structural, and stylistic approach to writing The Wal-Mart Effect. Fishman relies upon human stories and conversations in order to shape his own arguments. He includes his subjects’ voices throughout his journalistic writing in order to humanize Wal-Mart representatives, suppliers, and customers.

“It is easy to get caught up in the fresh energy of Wal-Mart’s new environmentalism and its new openness. You can lose track of the fact that while Wal-Mart is changing in ways that are dramatic and important, the new Wal-Mart is in most ways the same as the old Wal-Mart.”

Fishman uses his own findings in order to craft a complex account of Wal-Mart’s true character and practices. Fishman doesn’t accept Wal-Mart’s new sustainability efforts as ready evidence that the corporation has changed. Fishman therefore maintains a critical stance and continues to hold Wal-Mart accountable.

“That very attitude is why the book that follows remains so important. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, who would have thought that Wal-Mart’s obsessive effort to keep prices low would have had unpleasant consequences? Who could argue against low prices? That most of Wal-Mart’s potential environmental impact comes not from changing its own operations, but from once again reaching back into its supply chain, into the operations of the companies whose product it sells, means that Wal-Mart’s influence in the United States and around the world is likely to increase, not stagnate or fade.”

In his Introduction to the 2011 edition of the text, Fishma argues that his original 2006 publication remains relevant to national and global understandings of the economy and the global supply change. The Introduction discusses the ways that Wal-Mart has amended its policies, but also considers the superficiality of these policies and thus Wal-Mart’s continued need to change.