In: Operations Management
Unethical business practices often result in tarnishing a brand’s image. Identify an International Brand (brand in this instance may be the company or a product line) that you consider is guilty of unethical business practices. Describe the unethical business practices and identify circumstances and/or factors that may have pushed the company to resort to such practices? What remedial actions would you suggest to undo the damage to the brand image? Your commendations should include social responsibility of the brand and the company.
Company- Toyota
In 2010 Toyota made an unethical business practice, when they betrayed their promise as a car manufacturing company by ignoring safety concerns of the people and delaying recall investigation. One of the most important concerns of any car company is safety. In that cars there were faulty brakes and sticking pedals.
Despite being ordered to appear before court and give an explanation for their unethical behavior of handling the situation, Toyota did not seem to think it was such a big deal. Its management said sorry for delaying recalls in board meeting. But it seems that they only say sorry because they were caught. After almost 2 years Toyota got called out on this unethical practice. They also even accused of hiding evidences in hundreds of rollover and death cases.
They did this unethical practice just to save a little money and they thought they never got caught.
Remedial actions to undo damage to the brand image are-
1. Never commit these unethical practices again
2. Develop strategies to win customer’s trust again
3. Do not compromise on the core values in future
4. Re-brand the product by doing some modifications and ensure safety features
5. Communicate with customers to know what they want from the company
6. Provide compensation to the affected families
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