Volkswagen Utilitarian Ethics

“Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God” (Romans 13:1). This verse provides the spiritual rule, that when followed, prevents many negative incidents and their consequences. However, the engineers broke this command and made conscious decisions to design, develop, and produce vehicles that violated established law. In fact, the emissions produced were, “…as much as 40 times what is allowed by the U.S. standard defined by the Clean Air Act” (Mercuri & Neumann, 2016, p. 24).

This case study analyzes the experiences of Courtland Kelley at General Motors (GM). Courtland Kelley a third generation GM worker put his job on the line by pushing the GM managers and executives to fully respond to the safety issues found while working as a safety inspector at the company. Kelley along with his supervisor Bill McAleer first discovered the issues while auditing GM cars at rail yards across the country, a spot check of vehicles before the cars were cleared to be delivered to the dealers. McAleer was taken off the audit as a result, who subsequently sued the company seeking whistle-blower protection. The case was eventually dismissed by a judge in favor of GM. The judgement only increased Kelley’s

Rule utilitarianism is a branch of utilitarianism that suggests an action is ethical if it follows the rule of greatest good. It is a moral rule that most people follow due to its greater benefits. It is a rule to judges people based on their actions, which follow the universal moral principles to result in greatest happiness.

On September 9, 2016, a veteran engineer of Volkswagen AG by the name of James Robert Liang pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud the government, committing wire fraud, and violating the U.S. Clean Air Act. While working in Germany in 2006, Liang was part of a team charged with producing a new fuel-efficient diesel engine that satisfied new U.S. regulations on vehicle emissions. He and his team eventually came to the conclusion that their engine could not satisfy these new regulations while maintaining consumer expectations of engine performance. Their solution to this dilemma was to implement illegal software (known as a “defeat device”) into newly produced vehicles sold in the U.S. The purpose of this software was to detect any emissions test being performed on a vehicle and alter the results to show cleaner emissions on the onboard computer. Nearly 500,000 vehicles with this defeat device were sold in the U.S.; by 2008, consumers began to experience issues in their vehicles (not knowing it was due to the emission test software), and Liang worked to refine the device even further. The entirety of the scandal eventually came into the public spotlight in 2015 (Guess, 2016, p.1). The subsequent paragraphs of this essay will first discuss Kantian duty ethics and rule utilitarianism, and focus on analyzing the moral implications of Liang’s actions in reference to these moral theories.

2015 was not a banner year for the car manufacturer, Volkswagen. In September, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many VW cars being sold in America had a “defeat device”- or software-in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested, changing the performance accordingly to improve results (Hotten 1). It was found that the defeat device altered the emissions of the Volkswagen’s diesel engine; the defeat device software had the capability of sensing if it was in a testing situation or driven normally. In the test environment the software would function properly to provide the expected test results and then revert back to unsafe emissions levels. As a result, the EPA issued notice of violation to Volkswagen on September 18, accusing the company of installing a defeat device that caused NOx emissions at 40 times the standard limit (Alter 4). At the time that the EPA violation was levied it was believed that at least 480,000 cars in the United States would be affected by the defeat device.

In 1978 a tragic automobile accident occurred on U.S. Highway 33 in Elkhart county, Indiana involving a 1973 Ford Pinto that killed three teenagers. The Pinto they were driving was hit from behind by a van which ruptured the vehicle’s gas tank engulfing the car in flames. This provoked the Elkhart County prosecutor to push for a criminal homicide charge against Ford Motor Company. This trial was big and would affect many American businesses in concerns of corporate responsibility and product liability.

However, some arguments against the rule utilitarianism are mentioned, such as they may do the more good with violate the rule than obey it who are irrationally supporting the rule-based actions which criticized by act utilitarian, and they think this like a form of “rule worship”, non rational respect to rules that has no utilitarian

Rule Utilitarianism is a form of normative ethics (Scarre, 1996). Descriptive ethics describes values and moral beliefs that exist in the world, helping us understand what people do in real life or believe about moral norms. It is how things currently are. Rule utilitarianism is normative, which involves creating moral standards and attempting to figure out what people should do. It is how things should be (Collier & Haliburton, 2011).

As a multinational corporation, the implication of the scandal determines the fate of numerous stakeholders both internal and external. Internal stakeholders comprise of the board, managers and employees while external stakeholders subsume shareholders, customers and suppliers. The economic, political and social impacts of the dishonest practices would shape the fate of Volkswagen and affect the future prospects of the automotive industry. Common shareholders whilst not involved in the day to day running of the business placed faith and belief in the firm by providing capital had suffered severe economic loss as share prices (get something for stat). Despite the callous deception in advertising the defeat device displayed no signs of disturbing vehicle performance, however, customers of Volkswagen and its subsidiary vehicles suffer from lower resale value. In addition, even though the scandal was global, European consumers were the most affected with diesel cars accounting for 41% of all European cars (Fontaras, 2016). This high percentage in respect to other nations is a result of incentives provided by the European Union for the purchase of diesel vehicles such as subsidies towards the production process resulting in lower premiums compared to petrol counterparts (Vidal, 2015) In additional with sales falling suppliers of Volkswagen would likely lose future contracts or have current contracts downgraded as less parts are required. Thus, this loss of future

Volkswagen is one of the largest automakers in the world and it has a global reputation as a high-quality German auto brand. Social responsibility is included in VW’s corporate culture and it seems that Volkswagen made some advances in Corporate Social Responsibility because the corporation was ranked 11th 2015 in the Global CSR Rep Track 100, which listed companies by reputation (Reputation Institute, 2015).However, the company has been threatened by an emission scandal which broke in September 2015, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) disclosed that Volkswagen had installed defeat devices on diesel cars which were sold in the US. These devices equipped on VW cars cheated regulators in such a way that it could detect

I do not purport to condone the recall of Volkswagen Passenger Cars; what they did was wrong; and objectively they deserve a swift and severe punishment. However, the media’s response to ‘dieselgate’ is an excessive overreaction. First of all, we cannot go around adding the gate suffix haphazardly to every transgression and gaucherie. Bob Bernstein and Carl Woodward worked for over a year trying to piece together the Watergate controversy. They risked everything for it: jobs, reputation and even their lives. There should be perspective on this controversy, diesel Volkswagen Passenger Cars having devices designed to cheat emissions tests did not and will not ever result in (arguably) the most powerful person in the world resigning.

Rule utilitarianism creates rules that would lead to the general overall happiness of individuals involved and an act is said to be moral when it conforms to those rule. This would mean that an act can be moral in accordance with rule utilitarianism even if the action does not bring about overall happiness, but just because it conformed to a rule that, if the circumstances were different, would have brought about overall happiness.

This incident would serve as the initial event that jumpstarted the public’s concern for exactly what was going on with many Toyota models. In this paper, we will explore the ethical issue that was present in this case, whether or not Toyota acted ethically in its handling of the unintended acceleration of its vehicles. In order to do this, we will examine the situation in the light of the six-step Hosmer’s moral reasoning process. This will include, among other aspects, an examination of the event in consideration of shareholder, stakeholder, and virtue theory. In addition to that, the authors will apply the Total Integrity Management model to Toyota’s actions in order to examine the moral integrity of the company as it pertains to trust. To conclude the paper, the authors will provide a normative statement regarding the actions of Toyota. To

The rule utilitarianism looks at the rules of actions which are potential and looks at what would happen if a certain

Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens simply renamed to Volkswagenwerk, or “The People’s Car Company” is a German founded car company originally developed by Hitler. Volkswagen states that their morals include being responsible for people, the economy, society and the environment. These morals are quite contradicting due to the 2015 emission scandal where they have abandoned their values by hindering the economy, society, their consumers and the environment. Volkswagen used a software called defeat device on millions of diesel run cars. The software is able to determine when a car is going through an emissions test, making the vehicle appear more environmentally friendly. Volkswagen was caught when the EPA issued a notice