Current Event- Foxconn Essay Example for Free

Current Event- Foxconn Essay Having a business in the electronic industry is difficult because this industry is very competitive. To stay at the same level as other competitors or rise above, companies have to be more innovative and efficient. Companies are often under pressure to find the lowest-cost providers, and typically are free to look globally. This is where outsourcing and offshoring comes into effect, along with the difficulty in finding balance in the corporation when dealing with different societies and their culture. In order to stay at the same level as other companies or rise above, Apple Inc. outsourced and offshored its jobs to many countries. This article shows that Apple, being a multination corporation (MNC), has a blend of polycentric and regio-centric predisposition management strategies, dealing with human rights and labor practices. Apple at first made management decisions that were tailored to suit the culture, in this case, China; however, over the years, Apple has been scrutinized for their human rights and labor practices due to offshoring and outsourcing of jobs. In 2010 there were numerous amounts of suicides that occurred within the factories that Apple outsourced its jobs to. These suicides were due to bad working and living conditions, which stemmed from 60 hour work weeks, low pay, abuse on the job and countless other reasons. Since Apple subcontracted their business to other companies, in this case Foxconn in China, Foxconn can manage their facility the way they want to, to a certain extent. There are many reasons as to why there have been many suicides at these overseas factories. However, one major contributing factor to the numerous suicides is the abuse that workers deal with. It has been reported that managers of Foxconn have been known to abuse workers for mistakes or missing deadlines. According to Trompeanaars’ cultural dimensions, this abuse could be due to China being a particularistic culture, in which conflicts can arise when doing business with another country which has a universalistic culture. And this is where the obligations of Apple being a MNC comes into play. Does Apple adopt the regulations of the U.S. or those in China? It seems to me that Apple decides to do some of both. Since Apple has many suppliers in different countries, it is only fitting to believe that Apple is changing its’ management decisions, concentrating on human rights and labor practices, towards region-centric strategies for profitability and public acceptance. Some of the more difficult to understand or solve ethical problems occur as corporations do business in other societies where ethical standards differ from those at home. This article also ties into corporate social responsibility (CSR). As a response to the many suicides in 2010, Apple created the Supplier Responsibility Progress Report to help drive the change that needed to occur in the ethical aspect of the company. This report consisted of: driving change, empowering employees, protecting foreign contract workers, preventing underage labor, monitoring compliance (through audits), responding to suicides, holding suppliers accountable, and moving forward. To further enhance the company’s CSR, in March, Apple and its Foxconn supplier reached an agreement to increase wages from 16 to 25 percent, and to improve working conditions for the 1.2 million workers assembling Apple products. Since Apple Inc has outsourced and offshored the business to other companies, it continues to deal with ethical issues the most. Although Apple has created and implemented policies to bring more balance between the different societies and cultures, there will still be issues because there is no universally adopted standard for what is acceptable behavior. However, since Apple is considered a top leader in the electronic industry, implementation of improved labor practices and human rights can help other western companies to bring about change; as well as how they do business in not only China, but other countries where there are difficulties in dealing with different societies and cultures.

The Hidden Agenda of the News Media Essay -- TV Television Newspapers

The Hidden Agenda of the News Media People use many different sources in order to gain knowledge about current events. In America, historically, mass media and television have been the most dominant sources for information. Over the last decade, internet-based news sites and talk-radio shows have emerged as viable alternatives to the traditional media. While, obviously, the latest forms of news media are very different from their â€Å"elder† counterparts regarding the conveyance of the information, they share some of the same issues regarding the reporting of the news. News coverage can be, and usually is, influenced by many factors including, but not limited to: personal political ideology, religion, culture, and economics. The â€Å"inner† influences of political ideology, cultural values, and religion are not limited to the writer or reporter of a story. Editors, managers, and owners are also subjected to these pressures, in addition to the need to turn a profit, and, therefore, also influe nce the reporting of the news. Because of these influences, the final product is rarely an objective reporting of the facts. News sources convey their subjectivity, sometimes subtly, other times blatantly, through many methods. Listeners, readers, and viewers of all media should consume all information with a grain of salt. The goal of this paper is to take one single news topic, somehow related to the United States, and see how it is treated, or â€Å"spun†, by two different foreign news sources. Although I could have chosen a topic related to the American presence in the Middle East, I chose instead to look for a topic that might be treated with subtle subjectivity: the cancellation of three of pop star Madonna’s concerts in Israe... ...ans. On the other hand, the Arutz SHEVA story is blatantly subjective, almost to the point of becoming propaganda. Freund’s attempt to link the Palestinian Authority to terrorist threats is very apparent, and considering the information found on the Opinion page, it is obvious why. Arutz SHEVA appears to be written by religious conservatives and nationalists, and intended for an audience of the same mindset. Both, the Arutz SHEVA article and, to a lesser extent, the AP story, are examples of how terms, phrases, and emphasis can be used to â€Å"spin† a news topic to convey your message. My analysis of these two stories supports the argument for consumers to take all information with a grain of salt. Works Cited The Straits Times, http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/storyprintfriendly/0,1887,252771-230000,00.html? Arutz SHEVA, http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=62927

Discuss the Status of Foreign Claims Essay

1. Discuss the status of foreign claims and possessions in the trans-Mississippi West from 1811 to 1840. Trace the development of American interests in the region during this era. Between the years 1811 to 1840, Americans had migrated into the trans-Mississippi West in order to obtain defined boundaries with Canada and Mexico; moreover, they went westward to acquire the western edge of the continent. Commercial goals fueled early interest as traders firs sought beaver skins in Oregon territory as early as 1811 and then bison robes prepared by the Plains tribes in the area around the upper Missouri River and its tributaries. Many of the men in the fur business married Indian women, thereby making valuable connections with Indian tribes involved in trapping. In the Southwest, the collapse of the Spanish Empire gave American traders an opportunity they had long sought. Their economic activity prepared the way for military conquest. To the south, land for cotton rather than trade or missionary fervor attracted settlers and squatters in the 1820s at the very time that the Tejano population of 2,000 was adjusting to Mexican independence. On the Pacific, a few New England traders carrying sea otter skins to China anchored in the harbors of Spanish California in the early nineteenth century. By the 1830s, as the near extermination of the animals ruined this trade, a commerce based on California cowhides and tallow developed. New England ships brought clothes, boots, hardware, and furniture manufactured in the East to exchange for hides collected from local ranchers. Among the earliest easterners to settle in the trans-Mississippi West were tribes from the South and the Old Northwest whom the American government forcibly relocated in the present-day Oklahoma and Kansas. 2. Justify American westward expansion in the 1840s. American expansion was due to the rapid population growth, advances in transportation, communication, and the bolstering idea of national superiority, known as Manifest Destiny. This sense of uniqueness and mission was a legacy of early Puritan utopianism and Revolutionary republicanism. By the 1840s, the successful absorption of the Louisiana Territory also contributed to the American expansion towards the best. Publicists of Manifest Destiny proclaimed that the nation not only could but must absorb new territories. This Manifest Destiny, the slogan in which they used to justify this expansion, was begun by John L. O’Sullivan. He expressed the conviction that the country’s superior institutions and culture gave Americans a God-given right, even an obligation, to spread their civilization across the entire continent. 3. From 1823 to 1845, Texas grew from a sparsely settled region of northern Mexico to an independent republic to a state in the American Union. Discuss the reasons for and the major events of this transformation. Texas was able to separate from Mexico into the American Union by yearning for their own independence, winning the battle at San Jacinto, and their new republic they were able to create. It began in 1823, when the Mexican government resolved to strengthen border areas by increasing population. To attract settlers, it offered land in return for token payments and pledges to become Roman Catholics and Mexican citizens. In 1829, the Mexican government altered its Texas policy. Determined to curb American influence, the government abolished slavery in Texas in 1830 and forbade further emigration from the United States. Officials began to collect customs duties on goods crossing the Louisiana border; hoowever, little changed in Texas. American slave owners freed their slaves and then forced them to sign life indenture contracts. Emigrants still crossed the border and outnumbered Mexicans. With the victory at San Jacinto, Texas gained its independence. The new republic started off shakily, financially unstable, and unrecognized by its enemies. For the next few years, the Lone Star Republic led a precarious existence. 4. Analyze President Polk’s actions in handling the Oregon question. Was Polk luck or smart in achieving a peaceful compromise with Britain? Polk was not willing to go to war with Great Britain for Oregon, so he withdrawed his suggestion, while he created more difficulties and complicated the resolution, and achieved a peaceful compromise by sheer luck. Polk began by setting out the American position that settlement carried the presumption of possession. Polk recognized the reality that Americans has not hesitated to settle the disputed territories. His flamboyant posture and expansive American claims complicated the conflict’s resolution. He offered a compromise to Great Britain, but in a tone that antagonized the British. Discussions about Oregon occupied Congress for month. Debate gradually revealed deep divisions about Oregon and the possibility of war with Great Britain. Polk took the unorthodox step of forwarding this proposal to the Senate for a preliminary response. Escaping some of the responsibility for retreating from slogans by sharing it with the Senate, Polk ended the crisis just a few weeks before the declaration of war with Mexico. 5. What led so many Americans to sell most of their possession and embark on an unknown future thousands of miles away in Oregon or California during the 1840s? The lands east of the Mississippi began to fill up, and American automatically called on familiar ideas to justify expansion; they moved west for more lands to settle and more opportunity. Americans lost little time in moving into the new territories. During the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, thousands of Americans left their homes for the West. By 1860, California alone had 3800,000 settlers. At the same time, thousands of Chinese headed south and east to destinations like North and South America to escape the opium wars in the 1840s with Great Britain, internal unrest, and poor economic conditions. Most who came to California called it the â€Å"Gold Mountain. † Most of the emigrants who headed for the Far West, where slavery was prohibited, were white and American-born. They came from the Midwest and Upper South. They had very different routes to arriving West, but they all had the same intention, to reach the riches and the better opportunities to live. 6. Contrast the different lives and tasks face by pioneers on the agricultural, mining, and urban frontiers in the West of the 1840s and 1850s. In contrast to the agricultural settlements, where early residents were isolated and the community expanded gradually, the discovery of gold or silver spurred rapid, if usually short-lived, growth. Mining camps, ramshackle and often hastily constructed, soon housed hundreds or even thousands of miners and people serving them. Merchants, saloon keepers, cooks, druggists, gamblers, and prostitutes hurried into boom areas as fast as prospectors. Usually, about half the residents of any mining camp were there to prospect the miners rather than the mines. Given the motivation, character, and ethnic diversity of those flocking to boom towns and the feeble attempts to set up local government in what were perceived as temporary communities, it was hardly surprising that mining life was often disorderly. If mining life was usually not this violent, it tolerated behavior unacceptable farther east. Miners were not trying to re-create eastern communities but to get rich. 7. Emigrants passing through Utah encountered a Mormon society that seemed â€Å"familiar and orderly, yet foreign and shocking. † Explain The visitors were able to relate and admire the attractively laid of town with irrigation and tidy houses, but as they noted the decorous nature of everyday life, they gossiped about polygamy and searched for signs of rebellion in the faces of Mormon women. Emigrants who opposed slavery were fond of comparing the Mormon wife to the black slave. They were amazed that so few Mormon women seemed interested in escaping from the bonds of plural marriage. Non-Mormon emigrants passing through Utah found much that was recognizable. The government had familiar characteristics. Most Mormons were farmers; many of them came originally from New England and the Midwest and shared mainstream customs and attitudes. But outsiders also perceived profound differences, for the heart of Mormon society was not the individual farmer on his own homestead but the cooperative village. 8. Describe the culture and political organization of the Plains Indians. Discuss how and why their relationship with white Americans changed from the 1840s to 1851. White American first came in contact with this Plains tribes, and witnessed that their culture differed from that of all the other Indian tribes. This ordinary encounter on the overland trail points to the social and cultural differences separating white Americans moving west and the native peoples with whom they came in contact. Confident of their values and rights, emigrants had little regard for those who had lived in the West for centuries and no compunction in seizing their lands. The Plains tribes were similar in other tribes because the had adopted a nomadic way of life after the introduction of Spanish horses in the sixteenth century. Mobility also increased tribal contact and conflict. And war played a central part in the lives of the Plains tribes. This pattern of conflict on the Plains discouraged political unity. But they had signed no treaties with the United States and had few friendly feelings toward whites. Their contact with white society had brought gains through trade in skins, but the trade had also introduced alcohol and destructive epidemics of smallpox and scarlet fever. 9. Write a brief overview of American westward expansion from 1820 to 1860 from the Mexican point of view. For working-class Hispanic Americans, who became laborers for Anglo farmers or mining or railroad companies, we earned less and did more unpleasant jobs than Anglo workers. By 1870, the average Hispanic-American worker’s property was worth only about one-third of what its value had been 20 years earlier. Some of us resisted American expansion into the Southwest. Other Hispanics adopted different tactics. In New Mexico, members of Las Gorras Blancas ripped up railroad ties and cut the barbed-wires fences of Anglo ranchers and farmers. The religiously oriented Penitentes tried to work through the ballot box. Ordinary men, women, and children resisted efforts to convert them to Protestantism and clung to familiar customs and beliefs even as they learned some of the skills needed to survive in a changing culture. This movement seemed to benefit everyone, except for us. We were treated like dirt and was not able to obtain the full potential opportunity everyone else had. We had to struggle to make a living. This American westward expansion was tough on us Mexicans.

Animal Testing Should Be Outlawed Essay - 1158 Words

Throughout the world, right under the human nose, millions of innocent and helpless, animals are being tortured and murdered. They are used for product testing as well as to put into products without consumer knowledge. These defenseless animals are deprived of respect and are victimized to an extent where it becomes unbearable to watch. There are many organizations that are trying to fight for animal rights. However, these organizations struggle with is because there is no legislation in the United States to combat animal testing. Even though it is not against United States regulations, animal testing should be outlawed because of its harmful and cruel effects. If people were to see how these animals are really treated, everyone’s†¦show more content†¦These people will test on any animal that they think will help them get to a closer reaction as of a human would receive. These people are very callous to any animal that comes their way. All these animals are coerced into these terrible factories were they are bred and used until they die. So why is animal testing used if it is in fact so harmful to the animals? Animal testing is used by scientists in order to test certain products. It is often used by cosmetic companies, pharmaceutical companies and other research institutions. Researchers often test new medicines to see if they can be used on humans. They check to see if animals will have reactions to certain medicines or beauty products. For example, they test to see if there are any serious side effects from a medicine that can cause serious harm on a human. Animal testing is used to see what is potentially beneficial for a human or what is potentially harmful. But if they aren’t safe on humans, then they definitely are not safe on animals. There are millions of companies and research institutions that use animal testing. They believe that the research and information gained from animal testing outweighs the harmful effects. Scientists believe that they are making an impact on the world and that they are providing good outcomes. One possible positive outcome of animal testing is that it is almost guaranteed that humans will have no serious side effects and that the products are safe for use. However, toShow MoreRelatedAnimal Testing Should Be Outlawed1752 Words   |  7 PagesAnimal testing is abusive, ineffective, and should be outlawed. The use of animals in life sciences has been in laboratories for over a century. The American Medical Society endorses allowing testing of all animals to create new medicine or treatments for humans. Ever since animal testing has been put into action, many people have expressed their ethical and scientific unease about the experiments. Not only does the procedure cause the creature ph ysical pain and psychological distress, but also itRead MoreShould Animal Testing Be Outlawed?903 Words   |  4 PagesGrade English Mrs. King April 26, 2016 Should Animal Testing Be Outlawed? Everyone has probably worn or has owned something animal tested, whether they’ve known it or not. Animal testing has been around since the early ADs but was most commonly known for starting about 150 years ago with the rise of physiology as a science. As â€Å"Companies That Still Use Animal Testing† says, these testings have gone down a lot with new developments for these kind of testing but there are still many major companiesRead MoreEssay about Animal Testing Should Be Outlawed1110 Words   |  5 Pagesto Biology Online, animal experimentation is defined as the use of animals in experiments and development projects usually to determine toxicity, dosing and efficacy of test drugs before proceeding to human clinical trials. 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