Formosa Plastics Group Research Articles

Environmental justice and the politics of pollution: The case of the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel pollution incident in Vietnam

Research on environmental justice in authoritarian regimes, and in particular on how transnational networks support problem framing and claims-making in the absence of state-led democratic participation instances, is limited. This article uses the case of untreated wastewater from a steel mill owned by Taiwanese conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group, which caused mass fish deaths along coastal provinces in Vietnam in 2016, to explore how civic groups and local communities problematize official accounts of events and engage with transnational networks to make claims to environmental injustice. The paper highlights local narratives about the adverse impacts of the disaster on residents’ livelihoods and wellbeing, controversies over the causes of and responsibility for the disaster, and the role of transnational alliances with Taiwan in sustaining and magnifying claims to injustice. We argue that viewing issues such as the Formosa steel incident through a transnational environmental justice lens illuminates the effect of global and national processes of economic reform in shaping uneven environmental and social impacts from new infrastructure developments. We also argue that thinking in terms of transnational networks can make sense of the spaces which can emerge for claims-making in authoritarian contexts, where democratic participation instances and access to knowledge may be restricted.

Why are the Performances of Business Groups Different? A Case Study of Formosa Plastics Group and Far Eastern Group

This study examines the difference in performances of two business groups, Formosa Plastics Group and Far Eastern Group, under the impact of financial tsunami (2007.10.29~2017.8.10). The aim of this study is to help investors understand the operating model of business groups and use the herding effect to enhance the trading performance in financial markets. The empirical evidence shows that for the Formosa Plastics Group, the news impact curve (based on EGARCH model) including the leading company is flatter when the news impact is less than zero (that is, negative news impact) than the news impact curve excluding the leading company. In contrast, the news impact curve of the Far Eastern Group is steeper when the leading company is included. Moreover, when the leading company is included as an endogeneous variable in the model as a filter for the program trading simulation, results show that investors can profit from the Formosa Plastics Group.

Key success factors in enterprises practicing social marketing

Enterprises could create multi-service values of customer satisfaction, enterprise profit, and social benefit through Social Marketing. Constructing a positive Social Service Value Chain to achieve mind management in marketing would reinforce the core competitive advantages of an enterprise, enhance high-quality services, and lead the enterprise to sustainable management. With the Delphi Method, a questionnaire is applied to assess the key success factors in enterprises practicing Social Marketing. The superiors and the employees in Formosa Plastics Group were selected as the research participants for 200 questionnaires. A total of 133 valid copies are retrieved, with a retrieval rate of 67%. According to the overall weights of the key success factors in enterprises practicing Social Marketing, the following summary is concluded. 1. The evaluation criteria in Organizational Characteristics are ordered in the following way: Intrinsic Structure, Internal Environment, Cost Effectiveness, Organizational Advantage, Organizational Weakness, and Inspiration. 2. The evaluation criteria in the External Environment are ordered this way: Information Resources, Environmental Opportunities, and Environmental Threats. 3. The order of the evaluation criteria in Marketing Strategy is Appropriate Media, Targeted Objects, Market Selection, Market Response, and Behavioral Change. 4. The evaluation criteria in Process Orientation are ordered in the following way: Tracking Adjustment, Feedback Systems, Operation Performance, and Operation Processes.

Formosa Fails To Learn

THERE’S AN OLD SAYING that goes, “If you think that safety is expensive, try having an accident.” It’s a saying that originated in the airline industry, but it also applies to the chemical industry. For some reason, Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Group has so far failed to heed the adage’s advice. In the 12 months leading up to July 2011, no fewer than seven major fires broke out at Formosa’s main chemical complex, in Mailiao, Taiwan. The latest two accidents, in July, took place four days apart. The cost of the accidents to Formosa keeps on rising. Taiwan’s government has ordered the company to inspect all of the pipe work in the vast complex and to conduct repairs where necessary. The effort will cost $400 million, Formosa estimates, and will entail the temporary closure of several facilities. It will be a complicated and distracting undertaking that will include having to locate and hire many skilled welders ...

TAIWAN Fires at petrochemical complex force a shutdown by Formosa Plastics

Taiwan’s government has ordered Formosa Plastics Group to shut down much of its Mailiao petrochemical complex in phases and to conduct thorough safety inspections. The order follows the latest of seven fires that have plagued the facility over the past year. Taking responsibility for all the accidents, three senior executives of Formosa Petrochemical, including its chairman and its president, have resigned. A core company in the Formosa group, Formosa Petrochemical is the largest operator of facilities at the giant Mailiao site. Worth more than $10 billion, Mailiao came on-line in 1998 after Formosa fought the government and nearby residents for 13 years over environmental concerns. Relations between the Formosa group and residents living near its facilities have historically been poor. After the most recent fire, local residents of Yunlin County, where Mailiao is located, demanded a complete halt to operations at the complex. Formosa says it does not know what caused the most recent fire, ...

Formosa Plastics Set To Build Complex In China

Taiwan's Formosa Plastics Group has confirmed that, during a visit to China last month, company Chairman Wang Yungching signed at least one letter of intent to invest in petrochemical plants in China. There are few details concerning the content of the letter of intent. Only he knows what was signed, a Formosa Plastics spokesman says. In an interview with Taipei's Economic Daily News , Wang said he signed two letters of intent. One letter was signed with the government of Fujian province and concerns possible investment at the Haicang petrochemical district, an industrial area under development near the city of Xiamen. The other letter of intent was signed with the municipal government of Ningbo, Zhejiang province, and concerns possible investments in the Meishan Island areas. Formosa officials have confirmed that investments in a polyvinyl chloride plant in the Ningbo area are likely to proceed first. Taiwan's Chinese-language business press has been running stories since July about ...

FORMOSA OFFERS SELF-SUFFICIENCY

The new Formosa Plastics Group petrochemical complex in Mailiao on the central west coast of Taiwan is nearing completion. The first of two crackers will go onstream Oct. 10, the date that will be considered the official launch of the complex. As they become operational over the next two years, the new facilities are expected to double the sales of Formosa Group to about $20 billion per year. About as large as Singapore's entire chemical industry, the complex will make Taiwan self-sufficient in a whole range of industrial chemicals. The new facilities will begin production just when most industrial chemicals are in oversupply in Asia. Although this is not what Formosa originally had hoped for, it will allow its employees to experience firsthand a maxim coined by Wang Yung-ching, the 81-year-old chairman and founder of the group: If you enter the ice cream business, you're better to start up during the winter. Just as success ...

THE LAOBAN‐LED DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISES IN TAIWAN: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHINESE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

HIS article focuses on laoban or “bosses” who own and manage small and medium-scale enterprises and analyzes their attitudes and behavioral patterns. This article also attempts to examine the structural features of the Taiwan society that underlay and sustained the entrepreneurial activities by laoban, and thereby elucidate the social context in which private business developed in Taiwan. The reason for focusing on laoban is twofold. First, Taiwan’s economic development, especially export-oriented industrialization, is driven by tens of thousands of small and medium-scale shops and firms. Second, it is tens of thousands of laoban who founded those petty enterprises, expanded them to medium-sized operations, and sometimes developed them into large-scale business groups called guanxiqiye. For instance, Wang Yongqing, the founding father of Formosa Plastics Group which is one of the largest industrial guanxiqiye in Taiwan, started as the laoban of a tiny lumber shop (Numazaki 1992, pp. 131–37). Laoban are the driving force of Taiwan’s economic development. What type of entrepreneurs are laoban? Why did the Taiwan society produced so many laoban? In order to answer these questions, I shall describe the basic characteristics of laoban and analyze the structural and historical features of the Taiwan society that fostered and sustained the laoban-led development of business enterprises in Taiwan. But before doing so, I shall briefly outline the political and economic conditions to which laoban had to adapt. The Developing Economies, XXXV-4 (December 1997): 440–57

Formosa Plastics Eyes Expansion

Formosa Plastics has expansion on its corporate mind. In an interview with CE he is one of only three executive vice presidents in the Formosa Plastics Group, Formosa Plastics Group is a conglomerate that had total 1995 sales of $10.8 billion. Profit before tax was a strong 12% of sales, or $1.3 billion. Although diminishing rapidly in relative importance, the group's core business remains the integrated production of polyvinyl chloride—from the basic raw materials through the processing of finished products. The main companies in the group are Formosa Plastics Corp., Nan Ya Plastics Corp., and Formosa Chemicals & Fibers. Other smaller subsidiaries, however, account for more than 40% of group sales. Despite the exodus to other countries by Taiwanese ...