The article in the url below emphasizes the value of firms remaining on good terms with all stakeholders (Issues: Stakeholder Relations, p138). This particularly applies to those stakeholders who have embarrassing video archives of past activities that a firm would rather keep quiet:
“About 15,000 videotapes of Wal-Mart executives at work and at play over the past 30 years have suddenly become available to the public thanks to a series of blunders by the retail giant - which paid too little attention to the company it hired to make the tapes before abruptly terminating their relationship two years ago. … Astonishingly, Wal-Mart never drew up a written contract with Flagler to establish who owns the tapes.”
The tapes are already providing valuable evidence for parties that have brought lawsuits against Wal-Mart and the resource (available for anyone to research at a cost of $250 a time) could easily open the firm up to further liability claims:
“A Kansas City lawyer representing a 12-year-old boy who suffered extensive burns when a gasoline can bought at Wal-Mart blew up in her face was astounded - and delighted - to find footage of employees making jokes about their gasoline cans blowing up at a Christmas party.”
Take care
Dave
Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther
For sale: the video archive Wal-Mart should have erased
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
591 words
11 April 2008
The Independent
Page 25
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/for-sale-the-video-archive-walmart-should-have-erased-807813.html
