Which, if any, of the five competing perspectives to HRM is a better approach to study the way people are managed at Foxco
Foxconn employs 1 million people. The electronics giant has tried to replace human labour in China with robots, but it still hires many adolescent interns on short-term contracts. It has more than 40 plants in China, including Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai. Foxconn, founded in 1974 in Taiwan, is a global supply chain leader. The corporation creates iPhones, iPads, iPods, Kindles, laptops, cameras, games, and TVs (and more). Foxconn ranks 23rd on the Fortune Global 500, with $175 billion in yearly sales. Foxconn's manufacturing facilities are more aptly defined as 'cities' or 'campuses' than factories. Over 500,000 people lived and worked at Foxconn in Shenzhen, South China, in 2010, when it made iPhones, iPads, and other electronics. Many rural migrant labourers work in these megacities. Many of these workers reside in workplace dormitories with 12 bunk beds each (some have 24 employees in one dorm room).
Of note, because of context factors and political and commercial pressures, the Shenzhen facility is transforming itself to a tech and financial hub. For example, there has been a rapid relocation of Foxconn and other factories inland (particularly to central and western China, where land is abundant and labour costs lower than that in the coastal region). So, today Foxconn’s Shenzhen site employs fewer than 500,000 workers because of pressure from Apple to move Foxconn to Chengdu city, Sichuan province (the iPad city) and Zhengzhou city, Henan province (the iPhone city). The result is that Apple has a tighter and more direct control over Foxconn production.
As a single corporation, it dominates the world market for outsourced electronics with about 50% of total market share and a client list that includes Apple, IMB, Google, Amazon, Sony, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and many others, who all use a global supply chain network of manufacturing firms assembling production in many developing regions of the world.
Foxconn offers a broad variety of human resource support services for personnel in these 24-7 day continuous production 'cities' in China. Foxconn's major locations in Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Zhengzhou (Henan) include on-site hospitals, banks, post offices, and fire services. Workers may pursue education. Foxconn's university co-organizes business management courses with Apple's. Through the firm app, certain workers may retrain and upskill. Soccer grounds, swimming pools, tennis and basketball courts are available. At Foxconn's Longhua site in Shenzhen, a movie theatre shows popular films and corporate movies on business strategy and environmental sustainability. Workers have access to supermarkets, restaurants, and a bridal dress store. Young people from China's rural areas may earn greater incomes and enhance their skills and career chances in cities.
However, considerable criticism has been levelled at Foxconn (and Apple) given reports about harsh working conditions and the way staff are managed. There is a military style work regime because of suppliers’ subordination to global brands in the buyer-driven commodity chains. For example, when the likes of Apple or Dell issue model updates or launch a new product, production and work pressures intensify for Foxconn employees. Many employees end up working 12-hour shifts during the peak production months, far exceeding the normal 8-hour day as stipulated by law. Supervision has been reported as intensive and intimidating, with workers having to take time-off during low peak periods as a way to circumvent overtime regulations. Evidence points to unsafe working conditions, including fatal explosions at Foxconn’s Chengdu factories, and other risks causing significant distress and health hazards to thousands of employees; for example, inhaling toxic aluminium dust for those workers polishing the new, shinier and streamlined iPad. In the first five months of 2010 12 suicides – attempted and achieved – by distraught employees who jumped from factory dormitories at Foxconn’s Shenzhen sites caught the attention of the world media. The company’s response was to install safety netting between buildings. Company management and the trade union offered counselling to employees, without fully acknowledging its management responsibilities or addressing the profound anxiety faced by a young cohort in a highly unequal Chinese society marked by a deep rural–urban divide.
One anonymous employee remarked: ‘The use of death is simply to testify that we were ever alive at all […] and that while we lived, we had only despair,’ (Chan et al., 2020). Across other Foxconn factories, riots and violent altercations have broken out between workers, state police and company security personnel. In Foxconn, the image of people management is literally that of fire-fighting.
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Which, if any, of the five competing perspectives to HRM is a better approach to study the way people are managed at Foxconn?
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