PRINCIPLES OF RESPONSIBLE COMMERCE (COMM 101) TUTORIAL PREPARATION WEEK 3 NAME: Chang Yee How UOW NUMBER: 4387296 Case Study: Ford Pinto 1. What moral issues does the Pinto case raise? The Pinto case brought up issue of abusing human rights and behaved unethically in business. Ford had the design to reduce the possibility of Ford Pinto from exploding. However, the company refused to implement it, although it can prevent 180 deaths from happening at a cost of $11 per car according to the cost-benefit analysis.
Utilitarian Analysis of the Ford Pinto Case In the case of the Ford Pinto, there has been great debate on how Ford handled this problem and whether it was ethical. There are countless ways to look at the situation and how to handle it. Over the years, many have questioned Ford’s decision-making and why they focused on cost-analysis rather than ethics. “They thought of it as purely a business decision rather than an ethical one,” suggests Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel in Harvard Business Review. In the 70’s ethics was not on the forefront of business executives minds, especially when making decisions that could deeply affect the company.
The first analyzed that there was no direct feedback from the customers. How is Ford creating a desirable product for customers when they have no feedback from them? Instead, they are creating vehicles that they are pushing out onto their customer base. Second, Ford is managing a huge supplier network. Having such a large network has made them more vulnerable to the bullwhip effect.
Google wants to establish itself as a media giant yet most of products that are branded with the Google name are software driven. Furthermore, Google does not participate in a campaign that enhances the brand. eBay, Amazon, Apple and even Bing utilize brand advertising to reach out to a specific target audience. John Battelle (2012) answered a question from a report on brand advertising by suggesting that Google doesn’t need to do brand advertising, because Google’s service *is* the brand builder. But today, my answer is quite different: Google isn’t doing brand advertising because Google doesn’t know what its brand means (Battelle, 2012).
Although there were several highly educated team players that held PhDs, there was one major weakness: launch experience. Ford needed someone with experience to bring the hybrid to completion without prioritizing perfection, but having the capability and the drive to actually finish the vehicle. The person needed to complete this task could not be concerned with hours worked and must be able to meet deadlines. The Ford Hybrid Escape needed a person with project planning and management skills. That person would be Mary Ann Wright – part spark plug, part disciplinarian, and all Ford.
The Tire Tread Separation Tragedy [pic] VS [pic] 1) Facts and Assumptions. What are the central facts of the case and the assumption you are making on the basis of these facts? The central fact of the case is that in 1998 Ford Explorer SUV had begun to experience a significant amount of accident in which the vehicles overturned. As part of the accident investigation, it was determined that the Firestone ATX tires had experienced tread separation. These roll over accidents resulted in the deaths of at least 174 and injures to more than 700 people.
For example, one corporate employee claims that Facebook can give employers a picture of a candidate’s character. Because of the possibility of being monitored, school officials advise students to be careful, but this is still no evidence. The third fallacy is ad pabulum fallacy. Although Cole states “Employers Can learn race, gender, religion.” In the essay Cole does not support anything with race, gender, religion. In that essay talks about is the fact that employees do not want their employers to see them in an unprofessional state.
Gioria had the opportunity to view firsthand a burned Pinto. This image made him realize the severity of the issue, and he brought the case to the members of the recall unit. Again, the Pinto did not fall into the “scripted” criteria so recall members, including Gioria, opted not to issue the recall. Ford knew during the testing phase the fuel tank design was faulty. They tested and discovered possible solutions for the problem.
There was not a written agreement between United Thermostatic Control and the customers, so therefore, the shipments should not have been sent. Campbell had been reassured by Lorenzo, Executive Vice President of sales and marketing, that there is nothing wrong with recording the revenues in 2010, however, this was still a concern for the CPA, Tony Cupertino. The legality of the events was within the laws of federal, state and local government. Reporting the revenue properly after sending out the shipments would not have violated the FOB shipping point. Although the shipments were sent before they were scheduled to, Cupertino was uncertain whether to pursue this issue any further.
The problem with government databases is not with the federal government’s integration of “watch lists,” but with any integration at the state and local levels of law enforcement. Real-time information sharing may take place among federal agencies, but it is not going to get to the larger law enforcement community in real-time. Some of this is due to federal bias or suspicion against local law enforcement, and another problem is that some state and municipal police departments are as far behind as five years in such basic things as updating parking ticket records. When federal agencies allow state and local law enforcement access their databases, the actual names of terrorists and terrorist groups are hidden, so the law enforcement analyst only gets to work on the risk or profile characteristics. Similar practices go on in the “data mining” community to safeguard too much information from falling into the hands of lower-level agency employees (O'Connor,