A Student from China Writes on Foxxconn

I chair our School’s admissions committee. 

I read many applications.

I am sharing observations from an accomplished undergraduate student in China who is studying business and human resource management. 

This excerpt is from his personal statement.

My reason? 

He is reflecting on a company that is getting massive tax breaks from Wisconsin ($4.8 billion) to build an immense manufacturing plant near Kenosha, Wisconsin.

This young man is unwittingly telling taxpayers in Wisconsin and President Trump that we are being duped. He is right.

“Foxconn had had a spate of suicides at their China factories due to low pay and harsh working conditions. In 2010, there were 18 attempted suicides by Foxconn employees resulting in 14 deaths. From the perspective of Supply Chain Management, I believed that automation and digitalization would increase Foxconn’s production efficiency and improve the ‘level of harmonization’ by replacing people with robots and computers. 

However, it would also require much investment and probably lead to large-scale unemployment. As a result, Foxconn was essentially facing a contradiction between its business and its social values. Meanwhile, how would the company elevate the skill levels of the remaining workers after the internal reforms, and where would the unemployed go? 

Such difficult questions were worthy of thorough consideration for both HR researchers and practitioners. That being the case, Human Resource Management had to take some major responsibility toward ‘reconciling the contradiction.’”