1968 Pinto Dilemma

Every day we are faced to make decisions that not only affect you but also may have an impact on others. These decisions may benefit you or your business but could have the opposite affect towards the public. Decisions have the ability to make or break an organization and often take weeks or month to evaluate all possible alternatives. This paper will discuss the Ford Motor Company’s dilemma regarding the 1968 Pinto.
Decision making is the process of making choices based on the values, preferences and alternatives of information gathered. In 1968 Ford Motor Company redesigned the Ford Pinto in that they changed the location of the gas tank to the rear of the vehicle. The problem with this designed was that it created an explosion upon rear-end collision. Ford Senior management had two alternatives to the poorly engineered design: create a modification for the Pinto or to leave the car as is. The modification would replace the fuel tank in 11 million vehicles at $11 per car which would equal out to $121 million. If Ford would neglect the problem the
If you were to calculate a human you would have to take into consideration different factors such as: job, net worth, family, etc. These are just an example of what we value a person in today’s society. No one can predict what the future holds for a specific individual making it impossible to value a person’s life. Even knowing the factors and what value they hold it would still make it impossible to estimate the cost Ford Motor Company would incurred without the fuel tank modification. If there was a method to calculate human life the Ford Motor Company would probably elect to make the modification. Even with a method to calculate a life you still wouldn’t know what type of person that would be involved in an accident. With any decision there are calculated risks associated with every option that help determine the best solution for the