Ford Motor Company, Case Study Example

Question One: The case creates four options to choose from. Discuss at least three criteria the company should use to decide which of the four listed options is best and the reasons why each criterion should be used

Most businesses will always put a kill they’ll make in profits before considering the ethics involved in the making and outcome of their goods and/or services. The cost benefit analysis that was conducted on the Pinto case whereby the cost of including the baffle (which was in fact only considered by the Ford engineers after the Pinto failed the standard safety procedure for rear end impact that was supposedly meant to be tested before it was even produced but wasn’t because it was produced in such a haste), found it otherwise meaningful for the advancement of their profits not to include the baffle because of the resulting cases of law suits from the accidental deaths and injuries in an estimated cost sense would be well within reach for the company rather than including the baffle. In this case, the profits were measured vis a vis the resulting accidental deaths and injuries and the profits won. This in some businessmen’s view has nothing wrong done and is justifiably correct but is ethically wrong considering that lives, and precious ones at that, were at stake.

Question 2: In light of the possibility that market conditions can and do change, discuss at least three examples of how the company should build-in flexibility to back-up its decision-making process

Most businesses hardly consider business ethics an important tool in making crucial decisions especially when it is in contention with the profits or hard competition.

Let us consider the ‘kyondo’ case. Well, around the same time when the Pinto was having lawsuits, one of the Japanese’s neighbours brought hard competition to some business initialised in Africa. Some African women who had been making ‘kyondo’, a small, beautiful hand made handbag, for decades decided to employ more women with the experience and export their products to the world market. Originally in an estimated sense, a thousand women would make at most three thousand ‘kyondos’ in a day. It was a brilliant idea as it immediately hit with the ‘outside market’. The market abroad loved the ‘kyondos’ and the women started raking in the profits, but not for long.

Question 3: Discuss how an effective action plan can be created and how progress can be monitored

The Asian country, bewildered by the profit margins, took the idea and made machines that would mass produce similar handbags of same quality at little cost.

What would be made by a thousand women in the African suburbs would be made by just a couple of machines ingenuously made by the Asian country within the same time frame. The Asian ‘kyondo’ was obviously much cheaper than the African one and this resulted in most of the African made ‘kyondos’ to lose market. Most of the African ‘kyondo-making’ women folk had to close down business. In light of this, the Asian community had not, in their own sense, violated any business ethic rule  having raked in the profits at the expense of the African women who did not take this lightly but let it just slip away.

Question 4: List at least three steps that make-up a workable plan and explain why each is important

The idea for producing the Pinto was brilliant but how it was done wasn’t pleasant. After making the pinto, they should have made a massive marketing campaign to counter competition as Ford was after all a local company. Just by judging from how the units sold when they were auctioned in the Oregon State, we can confidently speculate that the Pinto would have sold well.

Having known the full repercussions of producing the substandard car, the Ford was wholly to blame not leaving out the cost benefit group that almost solely delivered the verdict on whether the car should be produced. Instead, extensive market research should have been done before going on mass production. This decision is based on the fact that market research largely determines how or which direction a particular business is going to move.

Question 5: Discuss the option or combination of options you selected as the best course of action for Ford Motor Company and detail your reasons for selecting that option or combination of options

In comparison to the Pinto case, the ‘kyondo’ was all about competition and at least no lives were expected to be at stake even though some women lost big due to their prior investments. The Hollywood movie industry is also one interesting case to consider. After making and releasing chart topping movies, all some company, outside of Hollywood,  would do is mass produce the same movie at a much cheaper cost and much lesser quality and release it to the unsuspecting movie fanatics at a throw away price. This is what is called piracy at its best. Interestingly, the movies and to some extent music too, is produced in such haste and will at times come out at the same time as the movie releases. This has cost the Hollywood business quite some revenue and the ones doing are not just about to stop due to the profits involved. This act is ethically wrong baring the fact that the products are of low standard and not original but still claiming they are.

Having done a study and positively identified that if a baffle costing an average of $9 would save a whole lot of possible accidents due to rear end impacts and be comparable to other cars of its cadre and the Ford engineers still going ahead producing the Pinto for eight years without the safety of the baffles was outright wrong. As adverse as it would seem to produce the pinto then still urge the customers to purchase the baffle, it would have saved its profits and face.

Human life is important and should not at any time be compared to the profits of some company. The Ford group was actually scared that their profits would go up in smoke due to hard competition from the East, but the not so accurate report by the cost benefit group which led to numerous law suits which led them into paying over $29 million plus bad publicity over the same issue, did not help much. The Ford should have taken Harley Copp’s criticism into consideration and maybe taken a second and third cost benefit opinion and maybe they wouldn’t have run the myriad of problems they had.