Working conditions in a Chinese Factory 1. It is quite complex to determine the reasons how the owners of the Metai factory were able to get away with such awful working conditions. I will distinguish between two categories of causes presented in our material: First, on a micro level, there are internal reasons including personal ethics, decision-making processes, organization culture, unrealistic performance expectations and leadership; second，on a macro level, there are external reasons including the societal culture and the legal system. The Friedman Doctrine states that the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits as long as it stays within the rules of law. In my opinion, it describes as well an important motivation of the business — profits maximization. Obviously, the main goal of the Metai factory’s owners is to maximize their profits. Meanwhile, they don’t respect the law of the country. They are not only unethical but also illegal under Chinese employment law according to which workers shall not work more than 8 h/day and shall not work more than 40 h/week; workers have at least one day off per week. In front of the economic interest, the factory’s owners with a weak sense of personal ethics cannot really have an ethical behavior in a business setting. When the production demanded increases fast even exceeds the real production capacity of factory, the only thing that the factory chose to do is to exploit its workforce without asking themselves if this action is ethical. The longer the employees work, the less the cost is for the factory without paying any additional salaries. Meanwhile, the ethical office neither the ethical code exists inside of the factory. When it comes to the macro level, we should consider the Chinese societal culture. As far as I know, Metai is not the only Chinese factory with such harsh working conditions despite of the enacament of employment law in China since 1995. The enforcement of law needs to be improved. Furthermore, because of the social and economic inequality, numbers of Chinese workers who come from the rural area still earn more in the factory than in the country even though their actual salary is very low. Some sweatshops are aware of this thought then take advantage from them. Lack of legal consciousness, the workers are not able to protect themselves in a legal way. All above reasons promote the phenomena and enable the Metai’s owners to get away with such a terrible working conditions. 2. Not only regional subcontractors should be held responsible for poor working condition, international companies and particularly the global manufacturing industry also bear responsibility. Their goal of profit maximization implies a necessity of labor cost minimization in regards to both wages and working conditions. The ignorance of poor working condition contributes to the success of companies such as Metai. Low labor cost as a result of unethical behavior gets promoted by rewarding new contracts. The widespread ignorance of such issues can be supported by the fact, that companies do only address labor issues when the media reveals a new scandal which might threaten their reputation in the long run.