Pinto Decisions
Richard J Fry
Financial Accounting

Pinto Decisions
Section 1: Introduction and situational analysis: Although safety seems to be much more at the forefront for automobile consumers, during the time of the article (1977) this was not the case. The main agreement against implementing safety features throughout the article was the cost-to-benefit analysis with the chance of catastrophic company failure if manufacturing costs increased. On the other side of the coin is the human toll; is life truly valued low enough to be able to justify its loss verses the loss of profits?
It seems in the case of Ford during the timeframe within the article, the answer is yes. If profits could be maintained with legal settlements, than continue mission. Fortunately this business practice seems less acceptable today. Although I am a fan of consumerism and the free-market, legal regulations have increase the safety standards and more importantly, in my opinion, consumer knowledge. Perhaps if the average consumer was better informed on the lack of safety and hostile (at least towards safety) environment of Ford, less Pintos would have been sold.
Section 2: Stakeholder analysis: According to Ford’s corporate website, their stakeholders consist of six categories: employees, customers, dealers, suppliers, investors, and the community. For the purpose of the Pinto scenario I will focus on two of their claimed stakeholders: employees and customers. If Ford was in increase the safety equipment for the Pinto, potentially employee’s wages would have taken a hit and decreased their consuming potential or the customer would have paid via increased sticker price. The more likely solution based on “the limits of 2000” would indicate Mr. Iacocca favoring the reduction in pay to employees as he would have assumed customers would not pay the increase.
Section 3: Analysis based ethical theories: To analyze this dilemma from one prospective would be a disservice; thus this section is broken down in to analysis based on cultural relativism, teleology, and deontology.
While I was born in 1978, to say I completely understand the cultural norms of the day is untrue. I can assume, however, that people viewed tragedy in much the same way we do today (perhaps a little less sensitive to gore now). Additionally, people tend to have a self-preservation in terms of income and the potential reduction. With that being said I believe it is safe to assume that the negative impacts relating to both consumers and employees are fairly obvious. Customers do not wish to burn to death nor do they want to see others do the same and employees do not want to have a reduction in their wages.
Had Ford decided to increase auto safety in the Pinto, the consumer would have been potentially more satisfied, by not burning to death or fearing it. Unfortunately as stated above, the employee would most likely suffer a decrease in pay. But this may not be the case, as we see in today’s society, safety features are often a selling point of vehicles and the increase may have driven sale higher and have negligible impact on the employees take home pay.
From the prospective of the greater good, this dilemma clearly states the bad within itself. Lack of safety features directly resulted in the death and injuries of many costing not only the victims, but the community (consumers and employees via tax dollars) in emergency response and aide. On the flip side, one could argue based on the amount of vehicles sold vs those bursting into flames, the greater good benefited through reduced sales costs and steady pay for employees.
Finally, the duties and principles of people living in the area of the Pinto fires, do not differ than most of those today. So we can easily argue either for or against