Ethics Leadership & Decision Making Value: 45% Due date: 06-Oct-2017 Return date: 27-Oct-2017 Length: 3000 words Submission method options Alternative submission method Task Write a 3000 word essay in...

Running Head: Ethical dilemma of Volkswagen            
1
Running Head: Ethical dilemma of Volkswagen            
12
Ethical dilemma of Volkswagen
Student’s Name
University Name
Introduction
The business environment all over globe has become highly competitive which ultimately forces multinational enterprises to gain competitive advantage through various means. Companies are just focusing over their goals of earning maximum gains by using any mean even if it involves unethical practices. It is not necessary that actions and beliefs of all the organizations are revealed on the scale of unethical circumstances. Expansion of businesses affects the decision of the business units because they might be going out of the way on the basis of strategic actions and technological adaptability. It enables company to enhance its abilities to conduct business more profitability under ethical standards prescribed for smooth functioning in the long run. Working according to the ethical procedures is vital for the success of any organization as all the connecting dots of the growth and development of the company are highly dependent over the policy matters implementation and monitoring of the values, beliefs, and ethics of the company.
Volkswagen
Ethical dilemma in the Volkwagen Emission Scandal was related to the bad decision making skill power of the higher authorities created problems in autocratic leadership. The reputation of the company was at stake due to sterling due to ethical standards mismatch between the two. It had happened mainly due to lack of control over the production unit functions and quality checking issues. The goal of the company was completely in line with the ambitious and targeting the simple autonomy in the automaker industry. The planning of the CEO Martin Winterkorn of the Volkswagen was to completely transform the company to make it largest automaker by raising its sale of the cars to over 10 million per year. Its aim was to backseat Toyota is number of sales of cars. However, due to the global financial crisis of 2008, the marketing strategy of the company was highly affected with rise in export level of the cars. As a result, the company needs to acquire and capture the U.S market as it was the ignored market so that market goals can easily be meet. The engineers of the company to make a power and fuel-efficient engine of the car which can even meet out the minimum test requirements of the stringent regulations of pollution detection (Loh, 2015).
It was found in the case study analysis that the company violated the regulatory laws provided under the corporate social responsibility. The car manufacturing has been done by utilizing the software that used to show the false readings of emissions from the car in the form of pollution. The ethical dilemma which was faced by the company was to pass the pollution emissions test on the basis of EPA minimum standards by the cars and automobiles of the company. It was a negative impact over the valuation of the company which reduced its share value because of loss of confidence of the equity investors in the company. The trust factor got reduced and the reliability was lost over the actions of the company. The name of the software that was being used in cars was called as “cheating software” having the characteristics of showing the improvements in the pollution emission on the basis of sensing instrument that has been installed for measuring the pressure, speed and operations of the car. The minimum standards were not met before the launching of the car as the performance of the car was good on the basis of attractive features for the customers but not satisfactory for the EPA standards. It was found that the car or any automobile of Volkswagen was emitting the nitrogen oxide pollutant by 40 times greater amount. Being a reputed company, it was never expected from it as the image of the
and got destroyed completely when the reality was revealed in the public. It had negative impact over the prices of the products of the company and the share market showed a steep fall in the valuation (Mansouri, 2016).
The prime reason for such unethical actions of the company was due to the autocratic leadership of Winterkorn as well as that of Fredinand Piech who were always reluctant to discuss their decisions with that of other board of management. They used to keep the company’s action policies under their sole tight control. They moved towards setting up of the aggressive goals to be achieved within short period of time. The executives of senior designations are part of minor decisions and they don’t let others to take minor decisions related to manufacturing and marketing strategies. It makes the monopoly of only higher executives to participate in all the decisions affecting entire company right from the lower to the upper level. The leaders of the company bullied lot of their employees and they had developed the environment of workplace where subordinates always had a fear of accepting their mistakes in front of superiors. Engineers were te
ified and in few cases they were even fired by their superiors at contradictory viewpoints. As Winterkorn never wanted to hear the bad news, nobody goes to him directly to give him any negative news about the company. Once an idea was tossed by him with that of Daimler is a competitor and was using the neutralizing substance of nitrogen oxide called as urea to reduce the pollutant emissions in the car. Consequently, the pressurized engineers were forced to meet the goals of the deadline who had to fulfill the demands of their superiors. The cars which were exported to the U.S were installed with a cheating or defeat software so that daunting challenge could be solved. However, the installed software got recognized because of the change in the behavior of the vehicle as only two out of four wheels of the car were...