At this year’s conference of the Strategic Management
Society, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting a former professor from
mainland China. We soon engaged in a lively discussion about the various
purposes of value creation for a firm. It turned out that she was a very
adamant advocate of the view that a firm’s value creation should bring
wellbeing to all individuals engaged in this value creation process. Indeed,
she confirmed that this is a lack for many employees in China. Foxconn seems to
be just the most famous example of innumerable unknown companies treating their
employees in a similar fashion –or worse (for
more information on this case, see also our book “Sustainable Success with
Stakeholders – The Untapped Potential”, Chapter 7, P. 14.).
It is a biting irony that this tendency of employee
exploitation is exacerbated by the Chinese government’s policy objective of
creating employment for the Chinese population. The quantitative measure of
raising the employability rate clearly matters more to the Chinese government
than the quality of the conditions under which these employees will have to
work under.
Taken by this outspoken critique of the celebrated
success story that China is known for, I asked her if I could get some of her
papers about specific cases of worker exploitation.
The answer was no.
She explained that she was not allowed to reveal her
sources, because her interview partners are afraid of reprisals. Regrettably,
however, without transparency of sources and methods, no paper will be accepted
by a peer-reviewed journal. Therefore she refrained from writing a paper.
In stakeholder management we call stakeholders such as
these employees “silent voices”. Let’s give these people a voice – also without
a source!
Sybille Sachs
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