53 pages • 1 hour read
Charles FishmanThe Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It's Transforming the American Economy
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Epilogue-AfterwordChapter Summaries & Analyses
Epilogue Summary: “Peoria, September 2005”
Fishman likens the Wal-Mart effect to a ship moving across the horizon and creating waves in the water. He returns to his descriptions of the corporation’s impact on the L. R. Nelson sprinkler company. In 2005, Nelson’s president Dave Eglinton gave a public address about Wal-Mart’s influence on his company’s layoffs and outsourcing. Shortly thereafter, Fishman interviewed five former Nelson employees about their experience working for Nelson over the course of their careers. The employees included Sally Stone, Mary Fail, Rose Dunbar, Terri Graham, and Vickie Black, all of whose accounts offered firsthand insight into the Wal-Mart effect (250).
Stone, Graham, and Dunbar told Fishman about their positive experiences making sprinklers during their time with Nelson. They supported Nelson’s mission and believed the company had strong, American values (251). When Nelson began selling to Wal-Mart, however, the women noticed that they were using cheaper materials in production. The tubes and jets were of particularly low quality and caused malfunctions in the final products. Meanwhile, the women stopped enjoying their time at Nelson. Dunbar, Stone, and Black particularly started to dislike going into work, and they feared losing their jobs beginning in 2002 when Nelson started shipping jobs overseas to China. Dunbar, Stone, Graham, and Fail also stopped believing in the Nelson products. They didn’t like to buy things made in China and didn’t think the products were reliable or up to Nelson’s original standards.
Graham, Stone, Dunbar, Fail, and Black also told Fishman about their reactions to losing their jobs at Nelson. Some of the women were confident they could find work elsewhere, but they missed the way Nelson used to be. Others of the women struggled to find work afterwards and had trouble even applying for new jobs. Some even tried to apply to Wal-Mart, but without success. Graham and Dunbar acknowledged that they were small parts of the larger issue and worried that this cycle would never end (259).
Afterword Summary: “Inside the Home Office”
Throughout his reportage, Fishman was unable to secure a visit to Wal-Mart’s Bentonville home office. He didn’t get an invitation until April of 2005. He knew the company was unhappy that he’d “written a book about Wal-Mart that accounts for the good Wal-Mart does” while also sharply criticizing “the company’s often hidden negative impact” (262).
Throughout 2005 and 2006, Wal-Mart began to respond to complaints and criticisms by implementing changes. Fishman argues that these efforts were a sign of Wal-Mart’s fear. However, he holds that some of these changes will have negative impacts on depressed communities, the global economy, and the environment. He asks questions about Wal-Mart’s future, including if the company is capable of making real, lasting changes and accepting responsibility for its corporate policies. He also wonders if Wal-Mart could become a more trusted, reassuring presence in the global corporate market (273).
At Wal-Mart’s Bentonville headquarters, Fishman met the international director of corporate affairs, Bill Wertz (275). Wertz was on the defensive throughout their interaction. Fishman noticed the strangeness of the home office environment throughout his conversation and tour with Wertz, too. He was particularly surprised by the homely furnishings and the lack of natural light. Wertz’s most authentic moments were inspired by Fishman’s off-script questions and observations.
Fishman also gave a talk at the home office. He guesses that the turnout was due to people’s interest in Wal-Mart’s future, and not in his book or research. Fishman closes the book by stating that he understands why Wal-Mart was upset by the book but holds that the corporation needs to be held accountable, and he makes suggestions for how they can implement change.
Epilogue-Afterword Analysis
The Epilogue and Afterword sections provide concluding resolutions to Fishman’s overarching hypotheses, arguments, and claims. Fishman adds further nuance to his style and tone in these final two sections in order to offer reflections on his reportage and findings. In the Epilogue, Fishman subverts his stylistic patterns by presenting a transcript featuring the voices of five former L. R. Nelson sprinkler company employees. Fishman prefaces the transcript portion of the section with backgrounding narrative details, again highlighting Fishman’s expansive style and journalistic reach.
In the transcript portion of the section, Fishman’s authorial voice dissipates to the margins of the page. By removing his commentary from Stone’s, Fail’s, Dunbar’s, Graham’s, and Black’s accounts, Fishman allows the five women’s voices to speak for themselves. In doing so, Fishman symbolically grants his subjects the power and autonomy they did not have over the course of their time manufacturing sprinklers for their Wal-Mart account. In these ways, the Epilogue creates a tonal and structural reprieve before Fishman presents his closing arguments in the subsequent Afterword. True to Fishman’s pre-established style, the Afterword combines multiple tonal registers in order to add nuance to Fishman’s overarching conjectures. Fishman employs narrative descriptions, first-person anecdotes, investigative interrogation, and rhetorical reasoning throughout. By blending these styles, Fishman reinforces his comprehensive analysis of the Wal-Mart effect, while still leaving room for readers to form their own independent conclusions from the data he has presented.
The Epilogue section reiterates Fishman’s overarching thesis about the Impact of Corporate Policy on Suppliers and Competition and the Trade-Offs of Low-Cost Consumer Goods by further examining how Wal-Mart’s corporate policies have had the power to impact individual’s lives and well-being. Although he acknowledges that it is “rare indeed to catch the Wal-Mart effect as it is happening” (249), his subjects’ experiences prove that the Wal-Mart effect has lasting and far-reaching implications for a diverse network of citizens. The Nelson employees’ experiences offer a window into these implications. The transcript-style Fishman employs throughout the Epilogue further humanizes the five women’s experiences and places their first-person pronouns and experiences at the fore of Fishman’s argument. Fishman also organizes the section using a series of simple, two-word headers, including “Making Sprinklers,” “Getting Worried,” and “Getting Fired” (250, 251, 256). Instead of diluting the women’s experiences, these headings render their complex experiences accessible. Furthermore, the ordering of the headings enacts the rapidity with which the women’s jobs and lives changed in accordance with Nelson’s relationship with Wal-Mart.
In the Afterword, Fishman combines a retrospective and forward-looking gaze. He restates the majority of his claims, in order to summarize his findings in a clear and accessible manner. However, he also recontextualizes these claims in light of his more recent visit to Wal-Mart’s Bentonville headquarters. This narrative anecdote locates Fishman’s analytical and journalistic remarks in time and space and further humanizes Fishman. By describing his in-person interactions with Bill Wertz, Fishman offers a window into his face-to-face interaction with the corporate superpower. Wertz becomes the proverbial metonym for Wal-Mart, and Fishman becomes the metonym for all Wal-Mart dissenters, making the encounter a micro representation of Wal-Mart’s macro influence on the global economy. Placing this anecdotal reference point at the text’s end reveals Wal-Mart’s simultaneous humanity and corporate greed. Furthermore, the Afterword also functions as another call to action for both Wal-Mart and similar billion-dollar enterprises to address Ethical Concerns in Global Supply Chains, as Fishman reiterates his desire for change in the capitalist system throughout the latter passages of the section.
Related Titles
By Charles Fishman
