Far Eastern Economic Review
12/01/2007
Talk about big. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., headquartered in rural Bentonville, Arkansas (population 29,000), is the world’s largest corporation, with annual revenues approaching the $350 billion range. Wal-Mart’s revenues are larger than the combined GDPs of Hong Kong and Malaysia. Wal-Mart imported about $27 billion in merchandise from China last year—about the same as did Singapore. What began 45 years ago when hillbilly entrepreneur Sam Walton launched a no-frills mom-and-pop discount store in a remote corner of the American South, now is a corporate empire that spans the globe. In the United States, Wal-Mart directly employs a workforce of about 1.4 million so-called "associates" who work in 4,000-plus Spartan big-box stores...