BUSINESS ETHICS (BMO2004)

Assignment 02

Title：Applying ethical theories to analyze and discuss

Foxconn's exploitation of employees leading to suicide

Name：Li Yicong

Number: 4651062

Overview

The title of this article I chose is After the Foxconn Suicides in China: A
Roundtable on Labor, the State and Civil Society in Global Electronics,
released in 2022 Volume 48 of Critical Sociology. The article critically points
out the unethical behavior of the factory that caused employees to commit
suicide by squeezing employees to overload their work and violating their
rights and interests. The selected article proposes that the government should
adopt legislation to improve the legal framework to protect the rights,
enterprises must have moral qualities in order to gain public trust and
enterprises themselves should abandon the employment of large numbers of
labor and turn to cultivating high-tech talents.

Article from: Chan, J, Distelhorst, G, Kessler, D, Lee, J, Martin-Ortega, O, Pawlicki, P, Selden, M &
Selwyn, B 2022, ‘After the Foxconn Suicides in China: A Roundtable on Labor, the State and Civil
Society in Global Electronics’, Critical Sociology (Sage Publications, Ltd.), vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 211–233,
viewed 8 October 2022, <https://discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=e0ccb213-1804-3d03-
b495-d82d4454aaef>.

Theories

Egoism:
Firstly, the theory of egoism holds that our actions are guided by self-interest
and are only moral when they bring long-term benefits. Secondly, while it
argues that people have no obligation to promote the interests of others, but if
they bring benefits to others, it will promote our long-term interests, and
egoists will do the same. Moreover, this theory holds that all our actions are
motivated by self-interest, and that selfless action is impossible (Shaw et al.
2021).

When we apply the theory, we first determine who the moral agent is and then
identify the possible consequences, which are divided into positive and
negative aspects, and then weigh the two (Shaw et al. 2021). In this case, we
see Foxconn as a moral agent. The positive consequence is that giving
employees a high workload increases productivity, generates huge benefits
for Foxconn's shareholders and customers, and in turn benefits Foxconn to
make a lot of profits from them. The negative consequences may lead to
physical and mental injury to employees, and even the phenomenon of
employee suicide, which affects goodwill, destroys the corporate image,
reduces public confidence in the enterprise, and the income of the enterprise
will also decline. Since the 2010 scandal, Foxconn's market value has
plummeted from $39.09B in 2010 to $29.29B in 2011 (CompaniesMarketcap
2022). Market cap can be a valuable tool for investors who observe stocks
and evaluate potential investments. Market capitalization is an estimate of a
company's value by inferring what the market considers a public company to
be worth (Steinhardt 2019). Therefore, this will make investors think twice
about investing. In the company again and affect corporate financing and
future development. According to Daboul (2020) corporate image is positively
correlated with corporate earnings, and damage to corporate image is not
conducive to the long-term development of enterprises. In summary, we have
found that maintaining goodwill and corporate image has a greater impact on
the long-term development of ethical subjects than making profits. Since the
negative consequences ‘outweigh’ the positive ones, Foxconn acted
unethical.

Kant’s Theory
Kant emphasized that our actions are not judged by the quality of the
outcome, and proposed three moral principles: First, the categorical
imperative, that is, the unconditional universality of moral theory. Second, you
can't use people as a means to an end and you shouldn't use humanity.
Instead, treat others with the respect you want them to treat you. Third, good
will, that is, our actions have moral value only if we act out of a sense of
responsibility (Timmons 2021).

Using the first principal mentioned above, Foxconn's practice of giving

employees a high load of work, a rational person does not accept it as a
universal law. If we take everyone into account. As a reasonable person, we
don't want to be exploited. Instead, people prefer to work in a well-paid
environment without high workload. Although greedy shareholders and
company managers will think that this will bring huge benefits to the cost of
the product, if they themselves become exploited workers, they will no longer
agree with this practice. Therefore, it is not universally accepted. Using the
second principal, Foxconn does not respect the personal interests of
employees. In contrast, it uses them as tools to reduce costs, earn more
profits and expand into larger markets. Using the third principal, the act of
squeezing employees is not out of duty. Because the plant allows employees
to work up to twelve hours a day, some employees even have swollen hands
and feet and cannot move, which shows that the factory does not respect the
humanity of exploited employees. "Almost every worker needs to work
intensively for 12 hours a day in order to live on low wages." said a Foxconn
front-line manager (Smith 2022). Not only that, but the company has a policy
that no one can leave the bathroom for one minute unless they can find
someone to take over their duties. This shows that even people's basic needs
are being neglected (Ukessays 2018). In summary, Foxconn's actions do not
conform to the above three principles, so such behavior is unethical.

Ethic of care
The theory of care is a non-consequentialist theory that holds that moral
behavior centered on interpersonal relationships and care or kindness is a
virtue. Besides, the theory emphasizes emotion more than rational thought. It
emphasizes that we should take people's emotions into consideration and
focus on how to care for each other better (Shaw et al. 2021).

Next, we analyze through the theory of care: First, forcing employees to work
for a long time to damage their physical and mental health and destroy their
normal lives is a lack of justice. Second, it is unfair that employees who work
here do not receive the same respect and safe working conditions as workers
in other parts of the world Third, a rational person will not be willing to work in
a low-waged, oppressed working environment through empathy. Fourth, the
exploited workers are suffering. The company set the minimum wage in
Shenzhen at 900 yuan as the basic wage for factory workers. In fact, these
so-called base wages simply do not provide for the basic needs of employees,
as the company ignores inflation as a factor over the last decade or so. As a
result, workers' wages were far from keeping pace with the changing
economy. So, employees who work for long periods of time in an environment
of high repetition, heavy workloads and low wages become anxious and
desperate, even triggering suicide (Ukessays 2018). Using Maslow's
hierarchy of needs theory, he divided people's needs into five levels:
physiological needs, security needs, belonging needs, respect needs, and
self-actualization needs. He believed that only when the lower-level needs are
realized can the higher-level needs be further realized. Among them,
physiological needs refer more to employees' income, labor conditions,
working hours and welfare benefits (Aanstoos 2021). It is obvious that the
employees working in Foxconn enterprises, even the first level of
physiological needs, are not met, because they do not have enough wages to
support their lives and sufficient rest time and good welfare benefits. Lastly,
the right thing to do is to understand the employee's thinking, raise the
worker's wages, arrange the working hours reasonably, give the worker care
and other ways to improve the happiness and satisfaction of the employee
(Ludwigs et al. 2020). However, this company did not do. Taking all of this into
account, we can conclude that the company's approach is unethical.

Conclusion
In short, the protection of the interests of employees has received more and
more attention, and the attitude of enterprises to employees will also affect the
goodwill of enterprises and thus its sustainable development (Daboul 2020).
Through egoism, Kant theory, and ethic of care theory, we analyzed that
Foxconn's behavior of squeezing employees with low-paid and overloaded
tasks is unethical. ln order to prevent similar situations from occurring again,
in order to better protect rights and interests of employees, based on the
suggestions given by the selected article, we can also make efforts from the
following aspects: First, employees themselves enhance their legal
awareness and rationally use the law to protect their legitimate rights and
interests. Second, companies should strengthen ethical training for managers
and promote people with good moral character. Last but not least, the state
should seize the trend of the times, promote economic transformation and
upgrading, and transform into capital-intensive industries, so as to improve
productivity and reduce costs. And the introduction of relevant support policies
to promote the transformation and upgrading of enterprises, the introduction
of more advanced technology to replace a large number of labors, so as to
improve the level of employee welfare (Song 2019).

Reference:
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Chan, J, Distelhorst, G, Kessler, D, Lee, J, Martin-Ortega, O, Pawlicki, P,

Selden, M & Selwyn, B 2022, ‘After the Foxconn Suicides in China: A
Roundtable on Labor, the State and Civil Society in Global
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211–233, viewed 9 October 2022,
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b495-d82d4454aaef>.

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