Volkswagen Ethical Issues

Much will depend on the quality of the products or services. How we deal with customer enquiries or complaints can be just as important.

Firstly, from the view of company, Volkswagen scandal is result from the misuse of CSR that the company regarded it as a marketing tool. Although Volkswagen promised to persuade CSR as their corporation culture, the reality turns out to be opposite. Volkswagen equipped defeat devices on cars deliberately to pass environmental tasks and actually the defeat device emitted nitrogen oxide approximately 40 times of standard (Dans, 2015). This behaviour can be explained as "green-washing", which means the real performance is different from the test results (Eric, 2015). The motivation of deception largely depends on corporation’s aggressive goal called “Strategy 2018” , which aim to increase annual sales to ten million cars by 2018 (Volkswagen, 2014). Therefore, Volkswagen needs to lower the price to be competitive to its competitors and one task is to reduce cost of production. Volkswagen used CSR concept to cover unethical actions. It demonstrates that Volkswagen focused on persuading the short-term target rather than its customers, long-term reputation and environment (Bansal, King & Seijts,

Currently the company is the leading car manufacturer in Europe, but their goal is to impact an international market.

In present world, there is high level of competition in the market. Hence, customer is treated as king and he choose/purchase the products/ services which he perceives good and will not purchase the products/ services which he perceives good and will not purchase the products / services which he

Kantian ethics and rule utilitarianism disagree on the morality of creating a “defeat device.” This device determined when its engine was undergoing emissions testing then switched from its normal operating mode into a lower emission mode. The normal emission mode was 40 times the limit dictated by the Clean Air Act [1]. By creating a dirty engine, Liang contributed towards the destruction of the atmosphere. This will negatively impact the quality of life for many future generations of people. Because damaging the environment negatively impacts millions of people, rule utilitarianism declares it to be morally wrong. The prosecution of six executives of Volkswagen, including the head of engine development, indicate that Liang’s superiors were involved in this conspiracy from the beginning [2]. The most applicable maxim to this situation is “I shall fulfill

Firstly, they needed to create a high performance team that would guide VWB to become the industry leader as the case states. Secondly, they needed to re-brand VWB into a company with employees that liked working there and were motivated. Their workers also needed to introduce new, innovative cars and light vehicles. Thirdly, they wanted to change the culture into one where employees were pro-actively solving problems. They also wanted to reduce the health and safety incidents even if this costed money and decreased short-run production output. Lastly, they wanted to change the bureaucratic culture and slow company culture. Therefore they needed to create new relationships with key stakeholders: employees, suppliers, and

consumers and deals with the issue of fairness. In CPE chapter 9, the authors differentiate

Volkswagen wants to become a global and environmental leader in the automotive world and has developed the “Strategy 2018”. The “Strategy 2018” is stated in their latest annual report in the goals and strategies section as follows:

It was found that a ‘defeat device’ or some sort of computer software was installed in order to deceive emission tests. However, we are working alongside the EPA in rectifying the issue and have thus recalled all vehicles fitted with the ‘defeat device’ in order to remove the device and maintain a performance standard within regulations. We are confident that this won’t happen again and we are doing everything in our power to rebuild the trust our relevant stakeholders initially stored with us.

In the beginning of all of the investigations, they had only found four models that had the defeat devices in them. On November 2, 2015, the EPA comes out with the finding of the illegal defeat devices in two more of the Volkswagens engines. That makes the violations to a total of six Volkswagen cars (Mays, 2015b). Of course, this does not help their situation at all. This made the entire situation about one hundred times worse because out of nowhere law suits started to happen and Volkswagen could not control it.

In 2013, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) began conducting ?on-road emission tests for cars?. The investigation on Volkswagen identified the emission levels were nearly 40% higher than the defined limits (Jung & Park, 2017). Ultimately in 2015, Volkswagen publicized a recall of more than 450,000 diesel cars resulting from an inability to operate within the required legal parameters. Specifically, the vehicles were designed to ?cheat on emissions testing? and ultimately produced ?air pollutants well above the legal limit? (Reitze,

It is not hard to see that the scandal would cause a horrid blow to VW’s image. Until the incident, VW had, like many other German companies, the reputation of “German engineering” (Robertson, 2013). However, instead of using that innovation to develop diesel-fueled cars compliant with U.S. standards, it decided to try to scam its way in the market. Not only did the company admit to having 11 million cars with software intended to cheat tests (Gates, Ewing, Russell & Watkins, 2017), it also plead guilty to “destroying evidence in an elaborate cover-up” (VW Admits Emissions Cheating and Cover-up, 2017); building further distrust among its consumers.

Volkswagen a parent company of Skoda is Europe’s largest carmaker producing cars, trucks and vans. It

With VW 's enthusiastic eagerness for innovation cooperative energies where fitting over the Group, engine mastery and potentially some equipment could be relied upon to be shared amongst Porsche

On the other hand, the Volkswagen Company adopted and applied the partnership approach as its internationalization strategic approach. In this regard, the approach involves the process of developing a feasibility study in which key and potential partners in the foreign markets are evaluated and prioritized base on the development of a cost benefit analysis. As such, the most preferred partnerships for the venture are those with immense benefits in the long term period at reduced production costs. In this context, through alliances with other motor vehicle manufacturers, the organization as of 2011 consisted of over 342 group companies both in Europe and beyond. As