Ford Pinto Fire Case Study

“Ford Pinto Fires Case” is a case study written by Dennis A. Gioia. Dennis was one of the Ford’s vehicle recall coordinator during the time when Pinto fire problem occurred. Pinto is a one of the subcompact car of Ford which came into the market during 1970’s. This paper focuses on why “Ford Pinto Fire Accident” which took lives of three people occurred.

Background

The Ford Pinto Fire Case took place in Goshen, Indiana on August 10, 1978. It was 1973 Ford Pinto model. Three teenagers were driving that car when they were hit from behind by a van. Due to that, the fuel tank of the car erupted and the car blowup in flames. Out of three, two passengers were burned to death on the spot while the driver died miserably hours later in the hospital. In this paper, we will be discussing the eight steps process to analyze this Ford Pinto Fires Case. According to Trevino, the eight steps process advocates a liner decision-making process that is necessarily inaccurate because

Depending on the person and situation, it can become either positive or negative. In this case, knowing the defect in the fuel tank design, if the company had try to solve it in the beginning, the consequences might not have been these bad, and people would not have lost their lives. In order to do so, the company might have faced some problems like the financial problems or not to be able to provide the product time which would have affected the company in a negative way. In this case, the consequences of secrecy approach fits well. The company knew about the problem before the product came out into the market. However, they did not make it public. Of course, it would have been hard to say that this car might get on fire while you are driving because of the some design problem. Therefore, the company kept it secret from the public. As a result, it was too late when the problem found out and some people have already lost their