Individual Reflective Report

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MBA 522:International Business 

Briefing Paper

Professor: Dr. Bonita Russell 

Section: S14N71

Written by: Yinan Wang (Nancy)

Student number: 568355705

 “I have read the student Academic Code of Conduct and this assignment complies with the Code”

24 June 2014

1. Improving Work Conditions in a Global Supply Chain

The article” Improving Work Conditions in a Global Supply Chain” shows that developing countries urgent need to promote working conditions in the spread and expansion of globalization. Developing countries are producers of global branded products, but their factories exists many problems, such as child labor, low salaries, overtime working hours and dangerous working environment. However, developing nations’ government is unable to execute labor laws because of insufficient capacity. Also, suppliers and monitoring mechanisms only perform “code of conduct” of multinational companies.

Nowadays, one kind of private, voluntary codes of conduct model are used in improving labor standards gradually. The article cited two cases in two Mexico factories of Nike Company, Plant A and Plant B. The private and voluntary regulation are conducted in Plant A , paid higher salaries, perform voluntary and within restricted overtime for workers, while Plant B, conduct a  more traditional and hierarchical work system, paid low wages, mandatory and overtime working hours for workers. The results indicate that Plant A gain remarkable effects in promoting labor working conditions.

Through the article, I agree that the private, voluntary code of conduct model is more appropriate for improving poor working environment. Through comparison and contrast, Plant A and Plant B got different findings in wages, employee satisfaction, work hours and worker join production planning. In the wages, except basic fixed weekly wages, workers of Plant A can also earn productivity bonuses through their production team’s cooperation, while Plant B’s workers gain productivity bonus only by individual efforts rather than group cooperation. Therefore, workers of Plant A can earn higher wages than of Plant B. In the employee satisfaction, Plant A’s workers are more contented with their jobs than workers of Plant B. Plant A’s workers focus on team cooperation; learn new skills to flexible conduct diverse production approach. In Plant B, workers only perform a fixed individual production method, and they haven’t opportunity to learn new production technology. Overtime is a voluntary behavior for workers of factory A, while overtime is a mandatory requirement for workers at factory B. In the worker participation in production planning, Plant A’s workers are given more autonomy and they can join key decisions in production goals, orders, scheduling and operation methods. Moreover, in factory A, the relationship between managers and workers are more collaborative and interactive. Managers and workers can work together to negotiate and reach consensus to solve problems of the production process. According to the owners of Plant A, “We want people here to feel important.” Nevertheless, Plant B tend to control and monitor their workers, workers haven’t right to participate in decisions of factory. Factory emphasize reduce cost of labor and increase output as much as possible. A worker of Plant B said, “We cannot change or advice different methods to produce a garment and we can only obey what managers tell us.”

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