Pinto the Ford Pinto Scandal

Pinto The Ford Pinto scandal was one of the most significant issues in corporate ethics. Ford had rushed the Pinto to market quickly, because it was facing intense competition from Volkswagen in the small car market. The company's engineers knew that rear-end collisions would cause the fuel tank to rupture, but the company had already tooled its production system. It was deemed cheaper to pay out damages to victims than to deal with the problem.

The company even lobbied government to prevent rule changes that would have forced Ford to modify its Pinto design. The company had conducted an internal cost-benefit analysis that placed value on human lives, and decided that fixing the problem cost more than dealing with the death tolls. Over five hundred people would ultimately die as the result of the Pinto issues (Dowie, 1977). Ford engaged in this unethical behavior over the course of eight years.

Its designers knew about the flaw and the risk it posed to human life in the pre-production testing process. Ford actively conducted the cost-benefit analysis, and the company actively fought the legislation that would have forced them to redesign the fuel tank. Thus, the unethical activity would not passive, but active, and it occurred over the course of eight years. In terms of social responsibility, Ford clearly took the Friedman (1970) that the only social responsibility of business is to earn profits.

Even Friedman, however, noted in his essay that corporations should "conform to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in the law and those embodied in ethical custom." This implies that if Ford violated common ethical custom, its pursuit of profit over social responsibility was unethical and not in line with Friedman's philosophy. Cheeseman (2010) points out that there a number of competing ethical theories that can help to resolve ethical dilemmas.

Ethical fundamentalism holds that an individual should look to an outside source for ethical rules and commands (Lako, 2011). In this instance, either Friedman's view of corporate social responsibility or the general ethics of society would be a good guidepost. Ford violated both of these by failing to account for the unique value that human life has to members of our society.

Rawls addresses this issue perhaps more clearly when he seeks to define the morally correct behavior in terms of what the actions of free and equal citizens would undertake in fair conditions. This view would find that if there is consensus about social justice in this case, that consensus would fall on the side of the preservation of human life. Nor does ethical relativism let Ford off the hook. Corporations may have a somewhat unique set of ethics, but Ford violated even the most basic ethical code for corporations.

Additionally, as Dowie (1977) points out, corporations are comprised of human beings, and human beings do not under any social contract have the ability to engage in willful actions that result in the deaths of others, at least outside of times of war, and certainly not in the engagement of basic commercial activity. Utilitarianism is another doctrine, one that prescribes that the moral action is the one that delivers the greatest good for the greatest number. Ford's actions could be seen as a form of utilitarianism.

In weighing the value of human life, Ford put a price on that life, and then weighed that price against the costs to other stakeholders, in particular Ford management and the shareholders of the company. Kantian ethics would take the opposite view, that the actions of Ford were morally unjust, because Ford's actions resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, deaths that the company could have prevented. On this issue, I feel that the best philosophical approach is the Kantian.

While all approaches would yield the same conclusions about Ford's actions, Kant's categorical imperative is the most reasonable when the subject is human life. Where other ethical theories can provide some wiggle room with respect to actions -- Ford's attempt at a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis, for example -- human life has a special place in ethics, precisely because it cannot be replaced or repaired once taken. This categorical imperative supersedes all other philosophies because of the special status of human life.

Clearly, all reasonable codes of ethics were violated in this case. In terms of the five schools of social responsibility, Ford sought to maximize profits. It did not consider a moral minimum, as it violated even the most minimal of corporate ethics codes. Stakeholders other than shareholders do not appear to have been given much consideration in Ford's decision making process, and clearly there was no demonstration of corporate citizenship for if any citizen were to choose to kill hundreds of people one would presume that act to be criminal.

For whatever reason, the executives at Ford thought it reasonable to focus on maximizing profit as the only objective, ignoring all other perspectives, as they would have led to a different conclusion. Ford was taken to court in a reckless homicide trial. In 1980, the company and its executives were found "not guilty" in the case, which involved three teenaged girls who were killed when their Pinto was struck from behind. The trial was held in Indiana, in a state court.

The reckless homicide charge was a relatively new one, having been added to the state's book in July, 1978 (Dole, 1980). At the trial, Ford brought a substantial defense team. Ford used expert testimony from an accident reconstructionist who defended the Pinto by using tests run on a variety of automobiles. The prosecution relied on attacking the credibility of Ford management and on the design of the Pinto, which it had to prove was the major contributing factor to the deaths of the girls.

The court demanded a high standard of evidence, and would not accept a hung jury. As a result, the jury was compelled into a verdict and returned a verdict of not guilty. This effectively ended legal action against Ford, whereas.