Offering your Best Ethical Advice In 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency di

Question

Offering your Best Ethical Advice In 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency discovered the car manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) had purposely installed sophisticated software on over 500,000 US vehicles to cheat on emissions testing. Imagine you are hired as a consultant to explain to the board of directors why this type of deceit is wrong. Also explain what ethical practices you would advise to ensure a more ethical workplace. Lastly, what kind of marketing campaign would you suggest to rebuild credibility and honesty among VW's customer base?

Explanation / Answer

ans..Being a consultant it is necessary to make the members of board understand about the consequences of the ethical violation that VW has conducted. This decideit is majorly wrong because of the consequences that it uphold. The following are the few of them -

1. Not only the shareholders or memebrs of board are the stakeholders of the firm but customers, general public and environment are also important stakehholders of the company. This activity that has led to the deceit has only focussed on short term goals that is to earn profit but has ignored the long term consequences not only on the planet but also on the company's image, its capability to secure resources, its customers and envioronment in general/

2. Financial sustainbality also gets affected with this act. Making the depleted resources explited in such manners has also affected the future long term cost of acquiring these resources which could be multiple times more.

3. The harm that it has caused to global reputaation of the company is not only difficult to measure but also very difficult to repair. This act went agianst its earlier drives like 'clean deisell'.

4. Obviously the health impact is the most crucial and worriesome result of it. A VW vehicle emit 35-40 times more harmful NOx emission polluting the enviornment.

5. There should be integrity first and profit next. Integrity implying mutual trust has been hindered with this act.

The following could be done to ensure a more ethical workplace :

1. Induction training should encompass training on ethical code of conduct in business and profession.

2. Integrating the company's vision with ethical objective and promoting it at every platform, be it small like a billboard or large like in meetings, at workplace to make it aspect of organizational culture.

3. Securiing the whistleblowers. There should be a policy that should protect the rights of a whistleblower.

4. A board/team should be there to ensure that the business conduct ethical practices and manages such affiars.

5. A mindset should be developed and promoted that ensure intolerance towards breaches of rules.

The following elements of marketing campaign may repair the image of the company -

1. At first strategies like scapegoating should not be used at such matters. IF the failure has occured at the company's part then it should be admitted at first before public and other stakeholders.

2. Secondly the immediate action should be to remove the system from the market and making various strategies such as return back schemes to make it best possible to have the ssytem insisted vehicles removed from the roads.

3. Ensuring is utmost important that the firm will take care of this issue in future. One step in this could be making all the future emissions tests to be evaluated from external and independent parties. Real life test could also help further to ensure that the system is not corrupted anymore.

4. Suspensions of the managers may also help rebuilding the trust of customers and public.

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