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Why Is The Ford Pinto Unethical

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The Ford Pinto Xing Liu Jul-9-2015 When putting top priority on the pursuit of interest, people are inclined to make unethical decisions and take unethical actions, because they treat other people merely as a means to their goals by dehumanizing other people. They choose to ignore the fact that all human beings have names, families, soul (they are not property) and independent thinking as we do, deprive innocent people of freedom and well-being that these people deserve as human beings, and attach price tags to them for cost-benefit analysis. In Pinto case, Ford was accused of “callous indifference to human life” for not to spend on adding safety improvements to correct the faults they made in the competition with German and …show more content…

Iacocca’s ultimate goal was to maximize profit with dominance in the compact car market. However, as Semon Knudsen, then-president of Ford, proposed that Ford “could concentrate on the more profitable medium and large models,” the ambition to win in the compact car market is completely unnecessary. It is reasonable to believe that Iacocca’s previous success in the participation in the design of several successful Ford automobiles, including most notably the Mustang, the Lincoln Continental Mark III, and several other models in the 1960s, and the quickly moving up through the ranks have fostered his ambitions, arrogance and overconfidence, leading to his lack of system 2 thinking, which could have helped him regulate emotions and impulses so that deeper thinking and ethical reasoning drives his judgment instead of the other way …show more content…

After the infamous cost/benefit analysis, they decided to sacrifice other’s well-being to maximize profits. But there were several miscalculations. Ford not only underestimated the death toll and injuries, but also overestimated the costs of adding safety improvements by including all Ford vehicles. In fact, the number of deaths the Pinto was responsible for is closer to 500, according to its critics, rather than 23, at which Ford put. The court cases nationwide have also increased the costs to Ford. If Ford added the safety shield in the production page, the only loss would be a portion of the expected profits. It is possible for Ford to dominate the compact car market and customers get what they want. However, with the cost/benefit analysis, Ford set them into the worst scenario that no one benefits from the action of not modifying the duel tank: Ford suffered from both financial and reputational loss, with the increased costs on installing the safety shields and lawsuits against the company, potential loss of future sales, and the decreased shareholder’s value; customers who involved in the accidents suffered both physically and emotionally with the loss of life and property; other customers decreased trust in the brand; Iacocca was fired by Henry Ford

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