Business Ethics Case Study: What Is Foxconn's Ethical Issue?

What is Foxconn’s unethical issue?
In mid 2010, Foxconn Technology Group (Foxconn) was facing a crisis of having its workers held protests and riots against the company in Shenzhen, China. Being the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer (Pun, 2010), the company exploited its migrant workers by providing them with exceptionally low pay and allowing unacceptable number of overtime working hours in the manufacturing site. Such method of raising workers’ efficiency is unethical in the eyes of many. Not only was it abusive, but also illegal. This resulted in 13 workers attempting to commit suicide.

For Foxconn to kill its competitors, product parts were sold at “zero-profit” to one of its main customers, Apple. This was a tactic for Foxconn to get hold of Apple’s other lucrative contracts and gain a larger market share in the industry (Pun, 2010). Foxconn was responding to expectations of shareholders at the expense of other constituencies, in this aspect, the migrant workers. Thus, resulted in workers getting very little pay to offset the expenses,

However, a cheaper alternative would be to sincerely hold workers’ appreciation day every year. Workers of exemplary performance would receive employee benefits in the form of paid leave or extra percentage of wages for the year. A more effective method is to tie the workers’ wages with the performance of the company. Showing appreciations to the workers would effectively build the motivations of the workers. While tying their wages with the company’s performance would improve their efficiency. Therefore, to the workers, working overtime would bring out results in not only monetary values but also emotional values of the satisfaction. This solution can only be made possible with the cooperation of the respective head departments to organize such valuable activities. Simple does not mean ineffective, simple works just