BUSINESS ETHICS

Business Ethics

Business Ethics

There are many problematic terms that need examining within this discourse of visual culture, most notably, the terms 'visual' and 'culture'. The visual is what we see, the physical aspects of the world around us that we see everyday. However, the visual is much more than this. It is a process of vision and perception. Culture is a little trickier to define.

During the early 1970's, Ford was hastily preparing to jump into the popular compact car market.  In order to compete with similar products from other manufacturers, Ford completed the Pinto in record time.  There was a dangerous compromise for this hastiness, however, and the car buying public paid the price.  Ford engineers and executives released the vehicle knowing that it had an extremely high potential to explode upon low-speed rear impact collisions.  A weak gas tank that was too close to the vehicle's hind bumper was the cause for this problem.  Ford had the chance to prevent this situation, but the company figured that the cost for retooling the assembly line would be greater than the lawsuits that would stem from potential accidents.  It turns out that Ford's worst nightmare came true and the Pinto caused more deaths and injuries than ever imagined.  Ford persisted, however, and succeeded in covering up the matter for eight years.  Eventually though Ford was exposed and lost more money by way of legal issues than they ever would have if they had produced a safe automobile.

So how did Ford ever decide to commit such a seemingly obvious moral wrong?  Ford used a strict cost-benefit analysis in order to determine how and when to release the Pinto.  The numerical balancing act that the company performed is strictly Utilitarian in theory.  According to data provided in W. Michael Hoffman's article on the subject, Ford figured that 180 burn deaths, 180 serious injuries, and 2,100 burned vehicles would result from the Pinto.  Each of these elements would cost the company $200,000, $67,000, and $700 respectively.  The sum of these numbers was then compared to the amount it would cost to fix the Pinto's faulty gas tank (approximately $11 per vehicle).  In the end, human life and welfare totaled $49.5 million.  The total cost for installing the gas tank fix on all of the Pinto's was $137 million.  Thus because of this application of the Utilitarian Calculus, Ford chose to release a faulty vehicle.  Supposedly this was because the amount of pain that was to be inflicted upon the general public seemed to be significantly less than the amount of pleasure bestowed amongst Ford and its multitudes of stakeholders.  As mentioned before, depending on this seemingly arbitrary calculation ended up being morally and financially devastating.  How did Ford generate a price for a human life anyways?  That statistic was actually provided by the federal government.  This value was based upon an average human's financial contribution to society.  This too is typical to Utilitarianism, for such a statistic serves to treat human beings as means ...