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 in Taiwan. Foxconn continues to grow as they began to expand to telecommunication market and look to use more robots in their manufacturing in 2014.
Since the founding of the company, they have expanded scope on electronic business. The Foxconn has recognized to become significant in this field. So far, the Foxconn is the world’s largest electronic contract manufacturer, has around 1.23 million of employees and recorded annual sales of over 100 billion US dollars. The result is that they have worked with many companies with to produce their product, naming the notable ones, Blackberry, Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and the highlight of this report Apple. They also claim that they look to start producing their own line of consumer products with their own brand.

3.0 Summary of the Issues
Despite the success of Foxconn has, being one of the largest contract manufacturer that many big technology companies partners with, they have been hit with series of issues over the recent years. There have been reports since the last decade on Foxconn’s practice but it has caught more attention from 2010 due to their connection to the big names, starting with suicide reports. Since then, Foxconn has been put under investigation pulling along their partner, most notably Apple Inc. (Perlin, 2013)
The issue about the Foxconn is on the working condition they provided to their workers, especially in China. It is reported that many of the employees has been living in overcrowded dormitories. Some are in need of more overtime working where it exceeds the regulation set by the policy makers as how much they get paid is not enough for their basic needs. (Facing Finance, 2014). Not only overtimes are forced and people are underpaid, the working environment is not ideal also. The managers are abusive, workers getting punished at slight mistakes or not meeting productions goals. The punishment ranges from losing breaks and skipping meals, even humiliation. During the course of 2010, 14 workers have died jumping from tall part of building. The workers are constantly exposed to harmful chemicals and air due to lack of protection that they have been provided. On May of 2011, 4 workers have been killed with nearly 20 injured due to explosion that has been linked to the chemicals, dusts, and air. These issues on labour and human ethics have caught lots of attention over the last few years. Despite this attention, this kind of labour actually practice applies to many companies. (Duhig & Barboza, 2012)
The second issue to discuss is on the policy on labour practices for companies such as Foxconn. Reports on their practices have been reported for years. There are over million people still working for the company working in these conditions. This raises a question on what is being done about this. Being reported for many years, the company doesn’t seem to do much about it. This is where policy and regulation should be coming to play. However, there seems to be a lack of enforcement on this. (Caufield, 2012)

4.0 Solutions – What Foxconn has done?
For a year being concerned, in January 2012, the company finally have made the promises about providing the better working conditions to the labours. In same time, because of the impact of public pressure, Apple have joined the FLA – Fair Labor Association in order to raise awareness of labor rights and standards among workers in its supply chain. (FLA, 2012) As a manufacturing partner of Apple, Foxconn had to receive the investigation from FLA. After a year, the result of the investigation showed that Apple and Foxconn have managed to keep their promise as some improvements concerning on safety and health issues, and a slight reduction of working hours have been made. However, the further result also showed that Apple and Foxconn did not really fulfill their promises in some conditions such as working hours, wages, unpaid over work, etc. (Good Electronics, 2013)
In the wake of a spate of suicides at Foxconn factories last summer of 2010, the company has installed preventative netting to stop people from jumping to their deaths; and the workers were asked to sign a statement promising not to kill themselves and pledging to "treasure their lives" as they had to make a promise that if they did, their families would only seek the legal minimum in damages. However, the problem has not ended. It has planned a new method for curbing the suicide attempts which is that replacing the human workers by robots. The goal was that in three years, the manufacturer planned to deploy at least one million robots to improve efficiency and cut rising labor costs. The robots will be used to do routine and simple work: welding, spraying, and assembling. So far, there are 20,000 robot arms and robotic tools which are in use at the company’s factories. If the company success in this plan, it will be a big step of innovation. (Jackson, 2011)
Furthermore, in order to meet their production demand and explore the Asian market, the company have invested to build the new factories in some countries in which have lower labour costs. The company has recently invested a billion US dollars to build the new factories in Indonesia, a country with significantly lower labor costs than the U.S. and China. (Kan, 2014)

5.0 Changes in the PESTLE factors
Foxconn is as famous as it is infamous. Their iPhone assembly made headline news for years, and in every story, from Wired to The New York Times, Foxconn was made to look like a dollar-a-day sweat shop. From 2010, nearly 20 workers have jumped to their deaths at Foxconn factories because of poor working conditions. As a result of the negativity, the working conditions are changing, and in 2011, Foxconn planned on installing up to one million robots in its factories. Here we will use PELSTE analysis to explain this changing.

Political Factors
The political trends are mainly the government influences, legislations and administrative aspects. Since 2008, China has increased the minimum wage rate of full-time employment. Workers’ wages in China are rising, Foxconn have over 1 million workers. The rising worker salaries are threatening to reduce company profits. On the other hand, through years of development, China has established a human resources development legal system with the Constitution as the essential basis, the Labour Law and the Civil Servant Law as the fundation, the Labour Contract Law, the Employment Promotion Law, and the Law on Mediation and Arbitration of Labor Disputes as the main contents. (China's Human Resources, 2010)
Economic Factors
The economic trends are the economic indicators affects industry. The Foxconn mainly affected by the taxation and exports. Due to the exchange rate in China on the rise in recent years, the inflation is not only influence the cost of all kinds of materials and service, but the taxation was continued to rise as following. This situation was threatening to reduce company profits. In addition, the increasing exchange rate will reduce the export volume. This may be a great challenge for Foxconn to face since maintain the lowest cost and substantial exports are the way of survive in the manufacturing industry.
Social Factors
In May 2011, three workers were killed and 15 were injured in an explosion in the workshop of a factory in Chengdu. (Gregg Keizer 2012) This is not the first time the accident happened at Foxconn. This caused widespread concern and dissatisfaction of society. Charles Duhigg and Steven Greenhouse wrote in the New York Times: This is not the first time that independent monitors have criticized conditions at Foxconn. Mr. van Heerden of the Fair Labor Association said he believed this time the promised changes would occur because his organization would continue monitoring Foxconn and because worldwide attention was focused on the issue more sharply than ever.
Technological Factors
Technological trend is the technological revolutions. These factors not only changes the end products of the manufacturer but also influence the R&D, products and other procedures which many greatly change the way that Foxconn operations. The inventions, innovations and diffusions on technological and the continuous improvement on robot technology in recent years provided the possible to popularize the robot in Foxconn's factories.
Legal Factors
The legal trends mainly behaviors in the development of the legal system. The legislation may also effect the organization, such as establishment of the regulations, and laws. The Foxconn is now facing the legal aspects such as the lowest salaries and labor protections and so on. With reinforce of all kinds of laws and regulation in China, Foxconn has to face and adapt this change by all means which may increase the cost, such as increasing the wages and pay the health care for the workers. The legal trends mainly behaviors in the development of the legal system.
Environment Factors
The Foxconn have a great demand for the resources they need for operation and also they have to face the problems such as the environmental problems. With both the people and government pays more and more attention to the Green Economy, how an organization operates and develops in a green way has raise concern from either the manufacturers or the customers and governments.

6.0 Recommendations
According to the issues and changes of Foxconn management approach in recent years, the situation is getting better, however, there are some states need to prove in the future.
First of all, the respect of employee benefits should be better. It is not just about welfare and salary, but also including living, leisure time, working hours and meals. For example, Haidilao hot pot is a Chinese hot pot restaurant, and it is famous for services and the method of managing staffs. The company provides clean, new and convenient apartment for staffs, what’s more, it is free and cleaned regularly. Then, they have the strict working hours which is no more than 8 hours per day. As a result, every employee works in a relaxing and joyful atmosphere. Foxconn should provide a pleasant work environment to labours to achieve a greater target.
Furthermore, Foxconn need to create ways to reduce stress and revitalize tired workers. Caused by the suicides, employees may think it is a way to be fully emancipated under the high pressure. The company can provide some activities after working hours as well as psychological counselling to reduce pressure of workers.
Finally, Foxconn can build more manufactory and farm and employ more staffs to decrease the workload to every staffs. If Foxconn wants to get larger target of capacity and does not add more work load, the best way to achieve that is creating more workspace that make the area not crowded and employ more staffs that relax employee. Nonetheless, this approach is the toughest method, but also the radical cure of the situation of Foxconn so far.

7.0 Conclusion
In summary, this report introduces the history of Foxconn and the suicide issues which happened from 2011 to 2014, then it is analyzed by PESTLE theory, which includes political, economic, social, technological, legal and environment factors to explain and resolve issues. After that, it also provides some changes of foxconn management methods in recent years. Finally, the report provides some recommendations for foxconn. Overall, although there are no more suicide cases happening this year, it does not mean the mode of management has been changed and will not happen again. In fact, if the government, society and industry want to solve the problems exhaustively, they have to make as if they are one of workers and endeavor to strive for employee’s conditions.
8.0 References
Greene, J. (2012). Riots suicides, and other issues in Foxconn’s iPhone factories, Cnet.com, viewed 18 October 2014,
<http://www.cnet.com/news/riots-suicides-and-other-issues-in-foxconns-iphone-factories/>.

Duhigg, C, Barboza, D, (2012). In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an Ipad, New York Times, viewed 18 October 2014, <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&>.

Facing Finance. (2014). Foxconn: Workign Conditions in Chinese Factories, Facing Finance, viewed 18 October 2014,
<http://www.facing-finance.org/en/database/cases/working-conditions-in-foxconn-factories-in-china/>.

Perlin, R, (2013). Chinese Workers Foxconned, Dissent Magazines, viewed 18 October 2014, <http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/chinese-workers-foxconned>.

Caufiled, B, (2012). Apple-Foxconn Investigation Finds ‘Serious’ Violations of Chinese Labor Laws, Forbes, viewed 18 October 2014, <http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/03/29/apple-foxconn-investigation-finds-sense-of-unsafe-working-conditions-among-workers/>.

Jackson, N, (2011). Foxconn Will Replace Workers with 1 Million Robots in 3 Years, The Atlantic. Viewed 18 October 2014, <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/foxconn-will-replace-workers-with-1-million-robots-in-3-years/242810/>.

FLA, (2012). Apple Joins FLA, Fair Labor Association, viewed 18 October 2014, <http://www.fairlabor.org/blog/entry/apple-joins-fla>.

Good Electronics, (2013). FLA’s Final Report on Apple and Foxconn Obscure Poor Working Condition in China, Good Electronics. Viewed 18 October 2014. <http://goodelectronics.org/news-en/fla2019s-final-report-on-apple-and-foxconn-obscures-poor-working-conditions-in-china>.

Kan, M, (2014). Foxconn investing $1B in Indonesia to build factories, PC World. Viewed 18 October 2014. <http://www.pcworld.com/article/2096020/foxconn-investing-1b-in-indonesia-to-build-factories.html>.
Foxconn, (2014). Group Profile, Foxconn. Viewed October 2014,
<http://www.foxconn.com/GroupProfile_En/GroupProfile.html>.

State Council of the People's Republic of China, (2010). China's Human Resources, SCC, China.

Gregg, K., (2012). 'Apple confirms aluminium dust caused Chinese factory explosions', Computerworld. Viewed 28 Oct. <http://www.computerworld.com/article/2501382/apple-mac/apple-confirms-aluminum-dust-caused-chinese-factory-explosions.html>