Reading the Ford Pinto case sparked the following thoughts in me:
- I agree, as a society, we do have to allow some degrees of risk. We cannot possibly have all cars build like tanks or all of our crosswalks elevated, etc. But the key issue here is this risk to return or benefits on investment needs to be decided by the society and not Ford! The costs and benefits in this case will not be perceived by society in the same way as Ford. and since these costs really are borne by society, it is only fair that they get to decide.
- I know it sounds rather offensive to view a human life in dollar terms but in Ford’s defense. we do that all the time in society….the government does it too! But the part where Ford faltered was they could not quantify the cost of the consequences (law suits, product/company image, etc.) and they did not execute corporate social responsibilities in informing their consumers of the deficiency.
- If I were the recall coordinator, everything in me would tell me to “blow the whistle”. Profit at any cost is definitely a thing of the past and the ROI on good ethics sustains returns much longer (provided it is does not take away a huge chunk of consumer surplus) as this following research experiment proves:
