As opposed to offering opinions without having all of the background and knowledge, I thought it might be more helpful to start a discussion about the questions:
Many people have written that Toyota’s problem was that it sacrificed a core value of safety for profit. To frame the issue this generally is to miss the point of the real challenge Toyota was facing: not trading one value for the other, but how to effectively balance the two.
No company can sustain profits if it builds unsafe cars. So Toyota cannot jettison safety for profit. Similarly, there is always inherent risk in any product. Even the public assumes some degree of risk. Toyota, as well as any car manufacturer is not expected to make their product 100% safe. So how do they decide what is “safe enough”?
Now we can look at an ethics issue. The ethical dilemma is in how Toyota grappled with that decision. Who had information but didn’t report it up to senior leadership? Why not? Which stakeholders, internal and external, were not included in the decision-making process?
The public on both sides of the Pacific does not begrudge Toyota making a profit. But building complicated machinery that is sold to millions of people demands inclusion of many voices in multiple decision processes. If there is a lesson to be learned, it’s the role that transparency can play in making the tough decision.
Carter McNamara of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, provides organizational development, consultant training and Action Learning services, and is developer of the Free Management Library.
Someone once said “If we don’t take care of the customer, somebody else will.” Need I say more?
In business, the bottom line is often considered to be money. Many leaders follow the stockholder approach, rather than the stakeholder approach (which emphasizes the needs of stockholders and others, such as employees, customers, suppliers, the government, the community, and the environment).
We know that business decisions often concern complicated situations which are neither totally ethical nor totally unethical. Therefore, it is often difficult to do the right thing, contrary to what many case studies would have you believe! Moral values such as respect, honesty, fairness and responsibility are supposed to dictate our (ethical) behaviour, but are often ignored in times of stress and confusion, when one must stand by one’s principles.
Leaders often have to deal with potential conflicts of interest, wrongful use of resources, mismanagement of contracts, false promises and exaggerated demands on resources which include personnel. Is it the seller’s duty to disclose all material facts regarding the product or service in question or is it the buyer’s responsibility to conduct due diligence? Should the seller answer each question exactly as it was asked, and ignore some pertinent information or should he address the spirit of the question? This is a gray area.
For free abridged books on leadership, ethics, teamwork, women in the workforce, sexual harassment and bullying, trade unions, etc. send an e-mail request to crespin79@primus.ca.
Maxwell Pinto, Business Consultant and Author
http://www.strategicbookpublishing.com/Management-TidbitsForTheNewMillenium.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p34hB50lv-8