...[pic] Foxconn ----- current issue and future forecast Table of Content Executive summary 4 Introduction 5 Overview of the company 5 Economic 7 Current Issue 7 Responding the suicide case in China in economic aspect 7 Current economic issue in Foxconn 7 Future opportunities and risk in Asia region 8 Opportunities 8 Risk 9 Recommendation 10 Political 10 Current Issue 10 Suicide case on political aspect 11 The relationship with China and Taiwan 11 Future forecast 12 Opportunity 12 Risk 13 Recommendation 13 Social 14 Current Issue 14 Current social issues in Foxconn- Suicide Case 14 DISCUSSION ON LABOR, HUMAN RIGHTS AND OHS 15 Future Opportunity and Risk 18 Opportunity 18 Risk 18 Recommendation 18 Environment 19 Current issues 19 Future opportunities and Risks 19 Opportunity 19 Risks 23 Recommendations 24 Conclusion 25 Reference 26 Executive summary This report provides the current economic, political, social and environmental issues, future opportunities and risks, and recommendations for Foxconn. There were a series of suicide incidents happened in Foxconn around 2010 which puts the company under the spotlight. The huge net deficiency in 2010 is the biggest issue in economic part. The political issues involved the...
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...of Foxconn Introduction Foxconn, or Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, was founded 37 years ago in Taiwan by Terry Gou. The company initially started as a local computer component manufacturer. Over the past decades, Foxconn had been continuously growing to become the world’s largest electronic components manufacturers with the consolidated revenue of 59.32 billion US dollars in 2010. As the largest electronic manufactures, Foxconn provides electronic components to major electronic devices manufacturers across the world. Its clients include Apple, Amazon, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Dell and HP. Broad Environment Sociocultural: In the past year, Foxconn’s image has been tarnished by reports of labor protests and employee suicides. These were the result of harsh working conditions, unfair wages and a lack of communication with the media. The sociocultural trend has driven Foxconn to improve its working surroundings and its impeccable image in society. In addition, Foxconn has remained highly confidential on its internal information. Today’s society has required the company to communicate frequently with external stakeholders. This foreseeable trend will require Foxconn to become a more transparent company in the future. Political: Foxconn’s manufacture sites are located in developing countries. These countries have the trend to change in laws and regulations frequently. For example, China has changed its labor regulations in recent years. In addition, Foxconn has...
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...Exploitation of Workers In China: Analyze with suicides of Foxconn Abstract As globalization affected the whole world, the contradiction between leaders and labors has become a world-wide problem. In China, a series of employees’ suicides attracted the public and media’s concentration to consider this problem. A Taiwanese electronics corporation, is acting as the protagonist in this issue and now earning an internationally notorious reputation of running sweatshops. This paper analyze the cause of ongoing trend of exploitation of workers in China with the example of Foxconn, and examine the reasons behind those suicides from the perspective of management, workers and related laws. Based on the fundamental information of China, to illustrate my own analysis about this case from ethical and legal point, and to criticize Foxconn’s management strategy, labor relations and the gaps of Chinese laws. Keywords: workers’ exploitation, China, Foxconn, suicides, management, laws Introduction In the three components of business market, producers, retailers and consumers, corporation is the most common for managers to execute economic activities. The two elements involved in corporation are employers and employees. However, when compared with employees’ welfare, managers prefer to choose maximum profit as their prime selection. In the Marxist theory, this act of utilizing and maximizing employees’ labor to gain more profit without providing them with the equal compensation that...
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...A Suicide Survivor: The Life of a Chinese Migrant Worker at Foxconn Sunday, 25 August 2013 12:50By Jenny Chan, The Asia-Pacific Journal | In 2010, 18 employees working for Foxconn in China attempted suicide. These shocking events focused world attention on the manufacturing supply chains of China's export industry and the experience of working within them. What had driven these young migrant assembly line workers to commit such a desperate act? This article provides a first-hand account of the experiences of one of those who survived a suicide attempt, 17-year-old Tian Yu. Her personal narrative is embedded within the broader context of labour process, work organisation and managerial practice at Foxconn, the Taiwaneseowned multinational whose 1.4 million Chinese workers provide products and components for Apple and others. Factory conditions are further shaped by the company trade union and Chinese government policies. The paper concludes with additional contextualisation indicating the emergence of an alliance of workers, students, scholars and transnational labour movement activists who are campaigning for Chinese workers' rights. Among the most prominent firms in the global supply chain that operates in China is Foxconn, the Taiwanese-owned multinational electronics contract supplier. Foxconn is the trading name for Hon Hai Precision Industry Company and, with a workforce of 1.4 million, it is the largest private sector company in China and one of the world's largest employers...
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...3. The difficulties of Foxconn International Holdings If we shift from macro aggregates to company cases, it is much more difficult to be optimistic about Chinese manufacturing prospects for upward mobility towards competing on brand with established Western firms. The resources of generally favourable national ratios in manufacture are an advantage that can be negated in key sectors by Western firms which aim to relegate their Chinese partners to permanent junior assembler status by leaving them with nothing to invest in or no investment funds. This can be done in two ways. The first option is illustrated by the Sino-foreign joint ventures in car assembly (like SAIC) which hold more than 75% of the Chinese domestic car market and make almost no exports. Here, the dominant Western partner retains the intellectual property and know how in product and process, so that the Chinese subordinate may make profits but has no easy pathway to upward mobility through own account strategic investment in, for example, power train manufacture. The second option is illustrated by electronics assemblers like Foxconn International Holdings (FIH) which can derive little benefit from assembling premium products like smart phones for sale in Western export markets. The instrument of subordination here is the contract with the dominant Western partner which ensures the assembler makes little profit so that the Chinese Apple Business Model: Financialization across the Pacific 16 | ...
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...Nicole An Introduction of Foxconn Case Study The organization I want to research is Foxconn Technology Group, which is an electronics contract manufacturing company. Terry Gou founded Foxconn in 1974. The major fields that Foxconn focus on are consumer electronics, digital content, automobile parts and the development of new energy resources and new materials. Foxconn owns many high-end clients worldwide, such as Google, Amazon.com, Apple Inc., Microsoft, Dell, Sony, Nokia and so on. The well-known products that the company manufactures contain iPhone, iPad, iPod, PS 3 and Wii. What’s more, Foxconn assembles 40 percent of all consumer electronics products sold in the world. From 1988, Foxconn started building factories in Mainland China. Until now, it has 13 factories in China with almost one million employees. And after several years development it has factories in Asia, Europe, and South America now. Besides those glamorous sides, Foxconn is facing many tough management challenges. As a manufactory company, Foxconn has hired a significant number of young employees (age between 20 and 25) to accomplish its huge amount of orders quickly. So, a series of problems came out. It hit the headlines following a series of suicides and fights among its workforce in recent years. Thus, Foxconn began to be noticed about its poor working environment, strict working discipline, high working pressure, corporate culture, and worker’s psychological problems. So...
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...Have you ever heard of Foxconn Technology Group and its founder and CEO Terry Gou? It is the largest exporter out of China. Foxconn is a Taiwanese contract manufacturer employing 920,000 Chinese workers across more than 20 mainland factories. Its business is fuelled by the United States’ and the world’s hunger for high-tech gadgets and toys at rock-bottom prices, share-holders demanding solid profit margins, and workers eager to move up the economic ladder. Foxconn has been the most trusted name in contract manufacturing services. Some of the major companies Foxconn makes contracted products for include IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple. If you have a PlayStation, computer, or smart phone there is a good chance that all or pat of it was made by Foxconn. It is the only manufacturer that makes the ipad and one of two producer of the iPhone. Foxconn has a plant in Houston, Texas, that employs around 1,000 workers, specializing in high-end servers for corporate clients. Gou plans to move additional automated production to the United States and shop its goods to China. Foxconn is the second largest exporter in the Czech Republic, and it also plans to expand to Slovakia and Turkey and may lead to plan to expand Brazil’s electronics industry. Gou started Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, the anchor company of Foxconn Technology Group, in 1974 at age 23 with a $7,500 loan from his mother. He has been characterised as always thinking about...
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...presence. The company picked is Foxconn Technology Group. Within the paper the reader will gain a little insight on the cultural issue that affected the organization. The issue will be defined and an overview will be provided on how the issue became an issue in the organization. Also an analysis of the ethical and social responsibility issues Foxconn dealt with as a result of being global. Lastly the paper will identify the ethical perspectives, compare the perspectives across cultures involved, and describe a viable solution for the issue that was deemed acceptable to all stakeholders. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., trading as Foxconn Technology Group (forbes.com) is an electronic company based in Taiwan was founded in 1974. It is the world's largest electronics contractor manufacturer, and the third-largest information technology company. Foxconn is predominantly a contract manufacturer who is also known as a made to order manufacturer. Their clients include American, European and Japanese electronics and information technology companies. Products invented by this company are BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the Wii. The cultural issue that affected Foxconn’s interactions outside of the United States is the controversies that plagued the company in concern to how it manages employees in China. There has been a history of suicides in its factories blamed on working conditions. In January 2012, about 150 Foxconn employees threatened to commit...
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...DISCUSSION - In what ways does Bezos’s decision to develop and deliver the Kindle show systematic and intuitive thinking? First, Bezos has shown his intuitive thinking in the decision of unveiling Amazon Kindle, a new device that is completely outside Apple’s catalog though Amazon still sold Apple’s iPod. Furthermore, he introduced to Medias his product, it seemed like a declaration to Apple. Because Apple is a giant of technological industry, so the situation would be complex to be its competitor. However, it was the only way to make a technological evolution by Kindle. As a result, this situation required Bezos to have a quick and broad evaluation for making the decision. Besides, the systematic thinking of Bezos was shown by introducing the free application “Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch” when he realized the benefit of allowing readers to read books on a variety of devices. After, in order to upgrade Kindle, Amazon acquired Touchco Company, which specialized in touch screen technology. These decisions are systematic because Bezos had to analyze the situation step- by- step, thoroughly and carefully with full of information towards an effective and logical decision. DISCUSSION - How do you describe the competitive risk in Amazon.com’s environment as it leads the market for digital book downloads? Being the leader of digital book downloads market; Amazon.com is likely to face to the competitive risk from another e-commerce companies. Obviously, Amazon’s competitors...
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...money or reduce investments into robotics. You have been hired to conduct an environment analysis using case materials, library research and electronic data sources. Your presentation must demonstrate clearly the rationale, motives and implications of your decision, as well as how and why such as strategy is to be carried out by the business. You will be expected to engage with the literature discussed in class and specified in your reading list. Topic: Over the past decade, multinational firms have pursued various diversification strategies. One of these firms is Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturing firm, which in 2015 put to use more than 30,000 robots. Thousands of these are at its factory in Chengdu that has fewer than 100 workers (for more info see the enclosed text from the Economist). For this assignment you are required to examine the business environment and the operations of Foxconn that led to its investment into robotics. Please pay attention to the competitive landscape in the electronics manufacturing services industry (in particular Foxconn’s relationship to Apple) as well as political and social environment in China (such as labour practices and the peculiarity of migrant workers). Marking: Next to the content of your...
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...Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturing company. It is the world's largest electronics contractor manufacturer, and the third-largest information technology company by revenue (Foxconn, 2014). Foxconn Technology Group is a high-tech enterprise which was set up in mainland China by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. Foxconn, the largest private employer in China, is a contract manufacturer who deals with electronics and information technology companies in North America, Europe, and Japan (Foxconn, 2014). Many people know this company because it is Apple’s foundry in China. On the back of every Apple product are the words “designed by Apple in California, assembled in China”. The apple products sold worldwide were produced by this company. However, Foxconn is famous not just because it is Apple’s foundry, but because the Foxconn suicides happened in 2010 and made the company become a center of controversy. People started to ask what was the cause of so many employee suicides within such a short time, and what role Foxconn played in these suicides. The first suicide occurred on January 23, 2010, when a 19-year-old male employee jumped from the 13th floor of the dormitory and died instantly. This incident did not cause everyone's awareness, and they treated it as a separate incident. But then in March 2010, there were three consecutive suicides, which caused the media attention. Local media reported a lot on these successive...
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...The iPad is a device with a colored display, wifi and 3G connections, functionality from over 250,000 applications available on Apple’s apps store, and with the ability to deliver video, music, games, etc. The main Challenges facing apple is how to convince the potential users that they need this new product with the functionality that iPads provide. This is the same challenges faced by the iPhone when it was first announced. As it turned out, the iPhone was a smashing success that decimated the sales of traditional cell phones through the world. If iPads become a hit, it will force many existing businesses to change their business models significantly. These companies may need to stop investing in their traditional delivery platforms (like newsprint) and increase their investments in the new digital platform. (More examples are mentioned in the case study questions) Nowadays, Apple understands that it needs high quality content from all the type of media it offers on its devices to be truly successful. The old attitude of Apple (“Rip, burn, distribute”), which were designed to sell devices are a thing of the past. In this case of disruptive technology, even the disruptors have been forced to change their behavior. 2 Case Study Questions: Q1. Evaluate the impact of the iPad using Porter’s competitive forces model. Due to the strong position of Apple, it can govern the tablet market but still there are many factors which are shown in the porter model that...
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...second largest Smartphone maker (Gartner, 2012). It is the largest technology company in the worth with a net worth more than Microsoft and Google combined (Hughes, 2012). Apple contracts with Chinese Foxconn to manufacture it’s iPads, iPhones, and iPods. Despite difficulties with, few stores, piracy and low app sales, Apple sales in China are only second to those in the US (iPhones make Chinese eyes light up: Apple doesn't just make stuff in China; its sales there are booming, too, 2012). Couple high sales with low labor cost and it is easy to see why Apple chose China as the location of it manufacturing headquarters. Fair labor practice advocates have accused Foxconn of sweatshop-like labor practices. In June of 2012, Foxconn experienced the suicide death of the 18th Foxconn employee in less than two years (Qiang, 2012). While suicide is the most heinous effect of a sweatshop, many advocates are not so quick to denounce sweatshops. According to Porter (2012) , China’s poverty rate has decreased since gaining more industrial jobs. While the average wages is still a pittance by Western standards, the focus of most Foxconn workers is staying employed by Foxconn despite the low wage. However, Apple is a Western company and has very specific demands for the product that Foxconn puts out as well as a bit of leverage in how it practices business. Apple voluntarily joined and asked the Fair Labor Association to review working...
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...as their international operations, Apple has, unfortunately let down investors by their unethical conducts. Apple has come under fire since around 2006 as details emerged surrounding the workplace environment at Apple's Chinese suppliers. An article in The New York Times exposed unsatisfactory work conditions that included exhausting 24-hour shifts, exposure to toxic chemicals, overcrowded housing, and horrendous explosions. Foxconn Technology Group operates many of the plants in question in Chengdu, China. According some Apple product users, Apple is said to be a trendy innovator that leads the industry and forces competitors to follow. Nevertheless, when it comes to its supply chain management and treatment of workers in the Chinese factories, Apple hides behind the constraints of prevailing industry practices. The fact that these practices are in violation of not only local and national laws, but also of Apple's own, self-imposed code of conduct. The majority of Apple's worker-related problems was directed towards Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn and its subsidiaries. Apple's China operations first caught international attention in June 2006 with a long story in Britain's Mail on Sunday.1 This was followed by a series of similar stories in other leading international news media, and has continued to this day.2 Because of Foxconn's secrecy, it...
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...1.0 Introduction Foxconn Technology Group is a multinational company for electronics manufacturing where the company headquarter is located in Tucheng, New Taipei, Taiwan. During the thirty years of development, the Foxconn scope of product has expanded and has formed series of electronic products manufacturing such as Card Readers Graphics Cards, LCD Monitors, and Power Supplies. They have become one of the largest electronic contract manufacturers working with many technology companies around the world. Even though Foxconn is one of the largest manufacturers, they are not really well-known as its size. However, in the recent years, the name of company became more aware of due to their issues on labour practices. This aspect of the company will be explored for this analysis. 2.0 The company’s background Foxcoon was established in 1974, also known as Hon Hai by Terry Geo as a manufacturer to produce plastic parts for television sets. As they started to grow larger, they have started to produce console Joystick controller through receiving orders from Atari. In 1985, Hon Hai established United States offices and successfully branded “FOXCONN”. At the same year, Foxconn entered the top 1000 companies of Taiwan. (Foxconn, 2014) In 1988, Terry Gou made a significant decision, which was to establish first factory in Shanghai China. This strategy proved to be so successful that Foxconn began to grow its business at an unbelievable speed. By 2001, Foxconn became the biggest company...
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