Ford Pinto Case

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Brian Crowe MGMT 368 Utilitarian Paper The Ford Pinto Case The best way to describe this case using the utilitarian principles and ethical business practice would be to consider the good and bad consequences for everyone that this action would affect. Unfortunately when it comes to business it is very hard for executives to make a good ethical business practice base on utilitarian principles and act morally because business seek to make a profit. Business will use a cost-benefit analysis in order to help them weigh the bad and the good consequences of performing a certain action as it relates to itself. On the other hand a utilitarian analysis, as an ethical point of view, weight the good and bad consequences on everyone affected (DeGeorge). In 1970 Ford Motor Company launched their new line of automobile called the Ford Pinto; they used a cost-benefit analysis based strictly on how the consequences will affect themselves as a business and not as an ethical analysis. The Pinto compact car was extremely popular in the United States market because of its design and affordability. However a controversy issue regarding the safety of the design of the car gas tank emerged causing deadly fires, explosions and claiming the lives of many people, even though managers and engineers of the company knew about this problem. The argument has been for many years that Ford Motor Company abandoned and abused the utilitarian principles to suit their needs, even though they stayed within the laws of the time, they still behaved unethically by making the decision not to upgrade the fuel system of their product. The model of the Ford Pinto was approved by Lee Iacocca, Executive Vice-president of Northern American Automotive Products for Ford. The car was designed to compete with foreign cars like Toyota and to keep up with the market demand. The production of the Pinto was one of

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