MGNT 4510

CHINA BUSINESS

• Spring 2019
• Dr. Wendong Li
• March 20/21, 2019
 Final Project Presentation
April 17/18
– 10 mins presentation +2 min Q & A for each group
– Due day for the project paper: April 10/11, online, black board

The order of the presentation

– Teams 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1

Project awards:
– Best team project award:
– People’s Choice Award: chosen by you!
A multinational manufacturing company
– Their products: Ipad, Iphone, Ipod, Kindle, Wii U
– The world's largest electronics contract manufacturer
– Headquartered in Taiwan, have factories in Mainland China
Involved in several controversies
– String of suicides from 2009 to 2012
Case analyses
– 1. What is Foxconn’s business model?
– 2. What is Foxconn’s competitive advantage?
– 3. How its founder, Terry Guo’s personality affects Foxconn’s
culture and management?
– 4. Why many Foxconn’s employees committed suicides? How did
this affect Foxconn and Apple?
– 5. What is your assessment of Foxconn’s triple bottom line of
economic, social, and environmental performance?
– 6. What did Foxconn and Apple do to deal with the situation of
string of suicides?
– 7. Given the challenges facing China’s manufacturing industry,
what suggestions would you provide for Foxconn’s future
development?

– Preparation: 15 mins, put down your answers and names, 2

points
Job Design
 Scientific Management
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915)
– Born in Philly, wanted to become a lawyer
– Mechanical engineer, studying productivity
– Had his own consulting firm
– Became a professor at Dartmouth
– won the inaugural US National tennis doubles
championship in 1881 (together with Clarence Clark)
Principles of Scientific Management
1. Analyze jobs and specify the optimal way
2. Select employees based on characteristics
related to job performance
3. Train employees to do their job better
4. Reward employees for their productivity
 Question

What industry in the manufacturing

sector has mostly been affected by
scientific management?
 Henry Ford
Application of scientific management
– Developed the first assembly line, mass production
– the Model T automobile, middle class could afford
Increased employee wages
– 5 dollars per day (1920s)
– Employees could afford to buy their own cars

1908 Ford Model T 1925 Ford "New Model" T

Tudor Sedan
 Question

Is there any dark side of

scientific management?
Criticisms of Scientific Management
By Henry Mintzberg
– “an obsession with efficiency allows measureable benefits to
overshadow less quantifiable social benefits completely”
Other management scholars
– Scientific management makes work monotonous and skill-reducing
– Transfers control over production from workers to management
– Neglects the social aspect of work and organization
 Hawthorne Effect
Background
– Hawthorne Plant of Western Electric in Chicago
– Study how illumination affects productivity
Results
– Group 1: productivity increased as illumination increased
– Group 2: productivity increased as illumination decreased
Reason
– Observer effects: when people realize they are studied, they work
harder or perform better
Placebo effect
– Placebo: like sugar pill, look like treatment, but have no physical
effect
– Occurs because of patients expectation, might breed psychological
or physiological effects
 Job Characteristics Model

• One of the handful management theories that

have both scientific validity and practical
implications

Greg Oldham, Tulane Richard Hackman, Harvard

Job Characteristics Model

8-14
How to Redesign Jobs?

8-15
What are the factors that contributed to the
string of suicide in Foxconn?

What could have been done to prevent it from

happening?

Discuss with your project team members

 An Example
The fundraiser job
– Call university alumni to solicit donations for students
– Repetitive calls
– Standardized script
– Frequent rejections
– High turnover rate (350%)

What interventions can you use?

Source: Grant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational
mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 108-124.
 Motivating the Fundraisers
Pay for performance
Promotions
Relaxing the scripts
Competitions
Breaks

Any insight?
 The Experiment
Callers divided into two groups
– No exposure (control group)
– Contact with scholarship student

Track changes in
– Persistence: time on phone, # calls
– Performance: $$ raised
 Persistence: Weekly Phone
Minutes
300
Minutes on phone per week

Scholarship
Student

200

No Exposure

100

2 weeks 1 month
pre-intervention post-intervention

Source: Grant et al., 2007, OBHDP

 Persistence: Calls Per Hour
7
Scholarship
6 Student
Calls Per Hour

No Exposure
3

1 week 1 month
pre-intervention post-intervention

Source: Grant, 2008, IPMJ

 Performance: $$ Raised
$500 Scholarship
Donation $$ per week

Student

$350

No exposure

$200

2 weeks 1 month
pre-intervention post-intervention

Source: Grant et al., 2007, OBHDP

 Mechanisms

• Perceived social impact: awareness of how

one’s actions have made a difference
• Affective commitment to beneficiaries:
emotional attachment to recipients

Grant & Gino, 2010 JPSP;

Grant et al., 2007, OBHDP; Grant, 2008, JAP
What is Missing?
 Where is the PERSON?
• Are jobs or work only affected by your organization
and your boss?
 Job Crafting
Marketing coordinator
– I take on as much event planning as I can, even
though it wasn’t originally part of my job. I do it
because I enjoy it, and I’m good at it. I have become
the go-to person for event planning, and I like my
job much more because of it.

– Change of tasks
 Job Crafting
Hospital cleaners
– While the passive cleaners did not seek additional
interaction, the proactive group engaged patients
and visitors… to brighten someone's day (e.g.,
talking to patients, showing visitors around). The
proactive group of cleaners also interacted more
often with the nurses on their units, resulting in a
work unit that functioned more smoothly.

– Change of relationships at work

 Job Crafting
Restaurant cooks
– Crafted their jobs to treat cooking as an art…
utilized food by making it their artistic medium,
kitchen appliances by using them to create artwork,
and customers by viewing them as beneficiaries of
their artwork.
– Cognitively change the job by altering
perceptions of work (e.g., purpose, meaning):
career, job, calling
 Work Orientation

Motivation Work as… Expectation Looking

forward to
JOB Paycheck Chore / None Friday /
necessity vacation
CAREER Money and Race Prestige and Next
advancement power promotion
CALLING Thing in itself / Mission / Better world / More work
self-concordant vocation / fulfillment
goals passion /
privilege
Job Crafting in HK: Kindergarten Chef
 Why Craft Your Job?

Person-job fit

Interpersonal development

Unanswered callings

Potential dark side?

Dark Side of Job Crafting?
Suggestions for Successful Job Crafting
in China
Win support from your supervisors/organizations

Seek coworkers’ thoughts and know their territories

Direct efforts toward the people who are most

likely to accommodate you

Adapt first
 Job Automation
• What automation brings us (benefits and threats)?
• What types of jobs tend to be replaced by robots?
• What factors predict the possibility that a job will be
replaced?
• What can we do to prepare for it?

• 15 mins, put down your thoughts and names

• Presentation: 5 mins for each team
• 1 extra point
Carl Frey, Oxford Michael Osborne, Oxford
 Suggestions
• Business leaders
– opportunities to improve performance and enter new
markets, but rework their processes and organizations
• Policy makers
– an embrace of automation could be accompanied by
measures to raise skills and promote job creation, and by
rethinking incomes and social safety nets
– Fluid labor markets, mobility
• Workers
– work more closely with technology, freeing up more time to
focus on intrinsically human capabilities that machines
cannot yet match
– Skill upgrade