Business Ethics Paper

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Business Ethics Paper

Introduction

Involution is a state in which individuals in a given industry do the same work for a long time and prevail at a certain level without any changes from within or outside the business establishment, leading to excessive competition and mutual self-consumption among internal workers (Hamaker et al., 2018). Involution can occur in a social setting also in economic settings. China, for instance, experienced involution in the academic and technology sectors of the economy. Liu (2021) argues that the Chinese used social media to perpetuate involution among the university and college students across the country and the world. The circulation of students riding bikes and other reading from their laptops on social media in China led to anxiety, stress, and overwork among university and university learners. The memes overcrowding social media platforms send the wrong message to the students that the only they make it in life and become essential persons is through studying hard to achieve good grades and secure well-paying jobs. They believe that an individual can acquire a better life with an excellent job because he can afford an apartment and find a similarly high-achieving spouse. Students spent long times reading and studying to secure good grades remaining with little time left for them to rest. The memes undermined creativity in the academic sector because students invested heavily into obtaining good grades and overlooked the talents they might have, which in most cases pay better than employment. As a result, the level of competition for employment in the job market shop up as all graduates strive to secure a job in the existing company rather than being innovative to start new companies and create employment opportunities for themselves and others. On a similar note, technology companies in China perpetuate involution by forcing employees to work for long hours without a rest. Employees remained engaged from 9 am to 9 pm every day from Monday to Saturday. As a result, workers spend much of their time at work with very little time left for recreation and rest.

Involution Case Study: Technology companies

Chinese technology companies and start-up business entities have deployed to counter production costs inherent in the technology industry. According to Ani 2021, the technology business establishments turned the Chinese economy into involution by embracing the employee victimizing strategy of overworking employees. The firms in the sector encouraged workers to work from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week, toxic 996-work culture. Employees are forced to work for long hours a day without a rest. They are only allowed one day of rest and off duty, only on Sunday. Although the country's labor laws prohibit overworking employees across the country, organizations in the technology industry are perpetuating it formally and informally. China Labor laws (2018) maintain that Chinese legislation requires employees to work for 8 hours a day at most and 44 hours per week during regular working hours. Upon consultation with trade unions, labor laws allow employers to exceed regular working hours by one to three hours a day based on agreement. Employers should pay their servants more during overtime per hour than the standard pay rate. However, Chinese technology companies surpassed the legal working hours by far. Instead of working for 8 hours, the business entities coerced their workforce to work for at least two hours a day for 6 days every week.

Although the companies purposed to enhance their productivity and minimize the operation costs, the outcome was the opposite of their expectations. The employees’ productivity dropped significantly due to excessive fatigue emanating from working for long hours a day without rest. Employees' pleasantness in the workplace declined, and they reduced the efforts they dedicated to working for the companies (Sun et al., 2022). Generally, the suicide rate significantly decreased in China, but the number of information technology employees killing themselves went up in 2019. Many employees leave jobs in the industry due to the stress they experience from the many hours they are assigned to execute tasks throughout the day without a break. Also, others feel so stressed with the work that they commit suicide. Some leave their job in the industry and look for other employment opportunities. "Li Chuang left, a 31-year-old stressed with the toxic work culture, left his job in central China two years ago to be a monk at the Wudang Mountain. However, he was too frightened to return...