Citation

Lin TH, Tseng WL, Lin YL. Travailler 2014; 31(1): 119-149.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014)

DOI

10.3917/trav.031.0119

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In this article we describe some special characteristics of the world's greatest factory - in terms of the number of employees - belonging to the Taiwanese enterprise, Foxconn group in Shenzhen, China. We argue that the factory regime has been shaped by three key elements: (1) internal globalization; (2) organizational fragmentation: the vertical fraction of business groups (BGs) and the horizontal segmentation of employees belonging to different nationalities and, (3) workplace despotism. According to the three elements, we name the factory regime as a "global fragmented despotism." The organizational structure of world factory may be helpful for explaining Foxconn's poor labor conditions and workers' suicides happened in 2010.

Language: fr

Keywords

Suicides; China; Foxconn; Global commodity chain; Labor process; World factory