The Ford Pinto Case

Business Case (The Ford Pinto)
There was strong competition for Ford in the American small-car market from Volkswagen and several Japanese companies in the 1960’s. To fight the competition, Ford rushed its newest car the Pinto into production in much less time than is usually required to develop a car. The regular time to produce an automobile is 43 months but Ford took 25 months only (Satchi, L., 2005). Although Ford had access to a new design which would decrease the possibility of the Ford Pinto from exploding, the company chose not to implement the design, which would have cost $11 per car, even though it had done an analysis showing that the new design would result in 180 less deaths. The company defended itself on the grounds that it used the accepted risk-benefit analysis to determine if the monetary costs of making the change were greater than the societal benefit. Based on the numbers Ford used, the cost would have been $137 million versus the $49.5 million price tag put on the deaths, injuries, and car damages, and thus Ford felt justified not implementing the design change (Legget, C., 1999). This was a ground breaking decision because it failed to use the common standard of whether a harm was a result of an action on trespass or harm as a result of an action on the case (Ferguson, A., 2005).

From reading this case, we realize the company did not apply the managing ethics competency in building its goals and structure. Managing ethics competency involves the o...