Ethics Essay
1) A Code of Ethics is important because it reinforces the moral principles and defines behavior for members that are acceptable. A Code of Ethics is also a set of good guidelines to just live life by in general.
2) When I am faced against an ethical situation, I make my decision based on how I feel it should be handled. For example, at work, when a customer brings a computer in that has had liquid damage, I will not order parts under warranty because it would not be ethical to mistreat a non-accidental warranty like that.
3) My group discussed the case study over the Ford Pinto. We agreed that the most ethical decision by the engineers would have been to redesign the aspects that caused the car to fail the crash tests. Even though, from a company’s perspective, the option to just pay for the lawsuit is cheaper than issuing a fix for the issue, we felt that saving money did not make it right compared to what the victims and their families lost. Personally, I don’t think that it is right to put a price on a person’s death compared to issuing an $11 fix that would have prevented the majority of those victims and crashes.
4) Integrity - Following the ethical choice rather than running the risk of injuring or killing many of their customer’s is a prime example of integrity. Integrity would also fall into the area of inconsistency such as when a company builds up an image of itself, then being inconsistent and producing a car that they knew did not pass the crash test standards.
Honesty - Ford knew about the issue and even pushed the project to production after it failed crash tests, but did not inform the public of it and decided to just pay the lawsuit fees rather than improving the safety of the vehicle for the customer.
Responsibility - Taking responsibility of an issue and correcting it in a timely manner is very important rather than just using money to pay off for all of the deaths and injuries that were incurred because of this decision.
I feel like quality is another ethical virtue that was not in the Virtue of Ethics. Quality is very important because creating a quality product is essential to being successful as a company rather than releasing something to production when it is clearly not ready, that is not holding true to a quality product.
2) When I am faced against an ethical situation, I make my decision based on how I feel it should be handled. For example, at work, when a customer brings a computer in that has had liquid damage, I will not order parts under warranty because it would not be ethical to mistreat a non-accidental warranty like that.
3) My group discussed the case study over the Ford Pinto. We agreed that the most ethical decision by the engineers would have been to redesign the aspects that caused the car to fail the crash tests. Even though, from a company’s perspective, the option to just pay for the lawsuit is cheaper than issuing a fix for the issue, we felt that saving money did not make it right compared to what the victims and their families lost. Personally, I don’t think that it is right to put a price on a person’s death compared to issuing an $11 fix that would have prevented the majority of those victims and crashes.
4) Integrity - Following the ethical choice rather than running the risk of injuring or killing many of their customer’s is a prime example of integrity. Integrity would also fall into the area of inconsistency such as when a company builds up an image of itself, then being inconsistent and producing a car that they knew did not pass the crash test standards.
Honesty - Ford knew about the issue and even pushed the project to production after it failed crash tests, but did not inform the public of it and decided to just pay the lawsuit fees rather than improving the safety of the vehicle for the customer.
Responsibility - Taking responsibility of an issue and correcting it in a timely manner is very important rather than just using money to pay off for all of the deaths and injuries that were incurred because of this decision.
I feel like quality is another ethical virtue that was not in the Virtue of Ethics. Quality is very important because creating a quality product is essential to being successful as a company rather than releasing something to production when it is clearly not ready, that is not holding true to a quality product.