Ethics Responsibility for Volkswagen -myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about theEthics Professional Responsibility for Volkswagen. Answer: Introduction Business ethics is one of the extremely important attribute related to operations in the contemporary business world. Ethics could be considered as the moral judgment of right or wrong by an individual but in terms of business moral judgment clearly stands to be an important. Even though moral judgment is a part of ethics in business but it is not all and ethics is seen in a broader sense especially in the operations of a business. The decisions taken within an organisation has to be ethical in other words it should be suitable for all the stakeholders of the organisation. It is important to note that ethics plays a huge role in the effective operations of the organisation especially when it comes to performing the social responsibilities efficiently (Ogunyemi, 2017). In the history of business there are number of instances when ethics took the backseat and the personal interest got the upper hand and this is when scandals are created. It is important for the business organisations t o keep in mind the aspect of ethics which would help the organisation to make sure it has effective corporate relationship with all the stakeholders. In the last few years there have been number of unethical incidents but the one which has perfectly managed to shake the corporate world is the emission scandal by Volkswagen. The Emission scandal of VW in the years 2015 has revolutionised the automobile industry as governments and environmental agencies did not spare a single chance to rebuke the company that owns brands like Audi, Bentley, Bugatti Porsche and some other exclusive brands (Bowie, 2017). Hence the present report will be based on the discussion of the 2015 emission scandal by VW. Analysis of the VW Emission Scandal The Volkswagen Emission Scandal is a perfect example of how organisations rather to say influential organisations like Volkswagen can shape the ethical and political environment of business. For a long period of time VW aspired to become the leading automaker in the world and it has been able to achieve that. The organisation has now become the leading automotive organisation in terms of sales and revenue as well as in terms of production and hence it clearly shows the organisational capability as well as the customer loyalty. Many have disparaged this for VWs overambitious attitude towards business and have concluded this incident as the ultimate result of this (Medeiros et al., 2017). VW is a German Automobile firm which has owned number of top brands in the world and have equally done well with all the brands it sells but sometimes the complete elimination of ethics from the organisational operation creates self made trap that could ruin the overall stature of a business in a very short time. It could be said that most of the organisations working in the automobile industry have found a reason to constantly look down upon the organisation and compete highlighting the debacle in the international market. Even though the organisation has lost the edge after the emission scandal it still stands to be one of the key organisations in the global automobile industry. It is important to understand the emission scandal and the aspect of ethics related to it (Lindebaum, Geddes and Gabriel, 2017). The organisation Volkswagen had a long term vision of becoming world number one in terms of sales and revenue by 2018 and in order to do that the organisation did the unethical sort of deeds. The action forcing event to this whole story started in 2015 when a group of scientists at West Virginia University were testing diesel engine cars on the road. The international Council of Clean Transportation an NGO tried to fund the research and it hired scientists to test cars and do emission testing on certain cars (Sison, 2015). The organisation VW had been promoting their diesel cars for a fair amount of time back in 2015 and emphasised on the fact that diesel cars are much environment friendly and efficient but researcher scientists saw a dramatically different result when the team tested the diesel engines of VW, and this is where the entire issue started. The team repeated the study and to confirm their findings and this clearly showed that the promotional words of the company largely differ with the real test results and the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) suspected that the organisation VW has fitted a defeat device which is tampering the results to a large extent while being on road and during the tests (Clemente and Gabbioneta, 2017). The ICCT took information from 15 different vehicles which gave the same results and this clearly indicated that the organisation might have done it deliberately to increase sales and revenue. The information went to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which declared that the organisation VW has violated the Clean Air Act by illegally fitting in defeat device which is a kind of software that helps to give different results by detecting the mode of the car in different situations. In multiple countries the organisation became the subject to investigations and series of cars of VW were banned in different countries especially in US, UK, Canada and in Asian countries like India, China et cetera. These governments started running strong investigations against the organisation which revealed more about heinous conspiracy. Even some of the newspapers labeled this incident as the costliest act of stupidity in the history of automobile industry. It is important to note that the organisation definitely thought a lot about this deed before they executed which clearly shows the unethical mindset and behavior of the organisation. However the biggest tragedy of the entire scandal is the enormous amount of nitrogen oxide that was released in the atmosphere (Wood, 2017). Amidst such strong environmental campaign to let people know Climate change is real this incident acted as a thorn which definitely hurt the globe to a large extent there are number of people who felt VW ne eds to be banned from making more cars after this incident but it is important to understand that self interest often gets better of collective interest if its seen from the philosophical perspective. As per the report released by the EPA around 40% of the NOx emission happen from the cars and in-spite of knowing such fact the organisation did something like this that clearly showed ethics in the contemporary business environment just exist as a term and nothing else. There have been number of debates over this act of one of the leading automakers in the world but it cannot be denied that VW acted extremely unethically which needs to be compensated but this still remains a questions whether mere monetary compensation could suffice the needs of the environment or not (Ewing, 2017). VW in order to salvage their face as a brand announced to set aside 6.5 billion euro in order to bring back the faulty pieces and revamp the cars to comply with the pollution standards but did not unequivocally take the responsibility or accepted the outcomes of the incident. The organisation thought it as a conspiracy that came within the organisation may be to taint its pride which can be the fact but what one sees believes and hence theres no point looking for clues when the entire incident is displayed in a salver. The organisation faced steep fall in its share price within the day of release of the scandal and started facing the wrath of the market. In the US the organisation is already facing huge financial penalty per car. The sales of the company has fallen by a significant share which shows the awareness of the consumers and their resolute mindset to eliminate anything that impacts the environment. It could be said from the present incident that the organisation definitely d idnt understand the aftereffect of the issue if it somehow gets revealed and hence acted in an utterly unprofessional manner but with deep environmental impact (Latif, 2017). VW Scandal and Ethics As stated earlier ethics should form the very base of the organisation and it should be working in the organisation as the rudimentary policy which a company should follow. In this case of VW ethics was not there or else the organisation wouldnt have fitted 11million cars with the defeat device. It is important to note that the organisation should have thought prudently before implementing something that goes against the environment but it did not do that and rather worked in a very selfish manner. The company should have thought about the collective good of the community but attaching the defeat device was mainly done to deceive people and foil their lies regarding the emission in the diesel cars (Ruiz-Alba and Lpez-Toro, 2017). The organisation said upright lies about low emission and acted unprofessionally which clearly had implications on its business. The organisation did not act as per the theory of ethics companies like VW should have followed utilitarianism as the ethical mainstay but the organisation acted in a selfish manner clearly not willing to focus on collective good. From the broader perspective the wrong reporting of CO2 is definitely not good for the organisation since it lost the customer loyalty as well as the sales and revenue of the organisation (Schwartz, 2017). The VW scandal is a great example of how companies could react against cases and get themselves stuck in the ditch. It is also a great example of bad corporate ethics as the organisation did not completely accept this fault and stated that it is a technical error which would be fixed right away unfortunately this did not happen and hence it could be said that the VWs scandal is a egregious breach of faith and loyalty of the cons umers which the organisation paid back through loss of customers, sales and plenty of financial lawsuits from different parts of the world (Gates et al., 2017). From the ethical point of view the organisation should have focused on understanding the situation and taking steps accordingly rather than completely denying the fact and trying to avoid the situation. As a leading brand the organisation should have understood ethics in a better way and exhibited that effectively to make sure things dont go bad for the organisation which clearly did not happen and situations worsened with the organisation denying this fault (The Independent, 2017). VW wouldnt certainly be the last company trying to deceive governments and it is not the first as well but VW clearly made the Governments to become more prudent about the way they provide relaxation to companies like these and will tend to be stronger with the testing and examinations but to say it could be said that from the ethical point of view the organisation was clearly not right as it acted upon its own interest, did not thing about collective good that involves the environment too and also clearl y worked unprofessionally denying the issue that also puts a red cross on their ethics check box (Schwartz, 2017). Conclusion From the present discussion it could be said that ethics plays a huge role in the development of an organisation as a brand in the market. A brand should act ethically and think about collective good of the community through its products rather being focused on self interest and having negative effects on the environment and on the faith of the organisation. 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