Utilitarianism and The Ford Pinto Case

Introduction

Business is concerned primarily with profit. To earn a profit, a business produces goods or provides services and engages in buying and selling. According to the myth, however, businesses and people in business are not explicitly concerned with ethics. They are not unethical or immoral; rather, they are amoral insofar as they feel that ethical considerations are inappropriate in business. After all, business is business. They are opposed to moralizing. They dislike being preached to by moralists, and they are very reluctant to throw stones at the glass houses of even their fiercest competitors. Ethical language, the myth continues, is simply not the language of business.

Discussion and Analysis

In 1970s and before that, the CEO of Ford motor company wanted to have an immediate boom in the industry of automobile through introducing the erotic models. Therefore, they produced Pinto as a reasonable car for people who want to enjoy luxury at the same time with reasonable price. However, there was an engineering default in the car which resulted in a fire blast due to a collision even on a reasonable speed. It killed many people in accidents. At that time, company was sued, and there were cases filed against it. Though, the company also wanted to reduce the life losses, but, it could not do much for it. Since they had to less their profits in terms of redesigning of the fuel tanks, it cost them 11 dollars per car. They did cost and benefit analysis, which showed them that they would be in eventual loss due to this step. They became least bothered of the human lives and were more concerned to the company's wellbeing.

At that time, their mission and vision was to achieve the higher returns in terms of profit. Their values were left behind the company's success. The recall coordinator of the company was also involved in the concerns of the company benefits rather than people lives. However, he was an activist when he was a student, and he thought that he has the strongest ethical values, and he would never go against his values. Instead, being a recall coordinator, he became more concerned and loyal towards the company and forgot his values. He did not forget his values, but he did not realize that it was the matter of ethical values. He was considering it only as a job and not as values.

After ...