MGT3120TAWIL

Dear Class,

This Wednesday we will have the author of the book “The Walmart Effect” speaking to us via Skype about the book and about the effect of Walmart on the economy. There will be time for the class to ask questions to the author so please be prepared. Below is the synopsis of the book. If you can read the book by then, thats even better.

BIO:
Charles Fishman is an award-winning investigative and magazine journalist who has spent the last twenty years trying to get inside, understand, and explain important organizations, from NASA to Wal-Mart. Three times in four years, he won the Gerald Loeb Award, the highest award for business journalism. The Wal-Mart Effect was chosen as a Book of the Year by the editors of Amazon.com, The Economist, and the Financial Times. Fishman, who started his career at The Washington Post, has also been a senior editor at theOrlando Sentinel and the News & Observer in Raleigh, and has written for Fast Company magazine since 1995. In reporting about Wal-Mart, he has visited 150 Wal-Mart stores in twenty-eight states.

Fishman’s most recent book is The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. Read more at www.charles-fishman.com.

Synopsis

Wal-Mart is the biggest company on earth, ever. Around 7.2 billion people shop there in a year – more than one visit for every person on the planet. It’s expanding across the globe from Brazil to Eastern Europe. And it has the power to change our world …

Charles Fishman takes us into the heart of the most successful superstore in history to show how the ‘Wal-Mart effect’ shapes lives everywhere, whether for overnight cleaners in America, bicycle-makers in China or salmon farmers in Chile. Now Wal-Mart’s influence is so great it can determine everything from the design of deodorant to the shape of a town, working practices to market forces themselves, Fishman asks: how did a shop manage to do all this? And what will the ultimate cost of low prices be?

David Tawil

Steven Esses

Jonathan Gong