If only They Had Listened - Article Review

Case Overview

As pointed out in the Bloomberg BusinessWeek article “If Only They Had Listened”, Kelley, who used to work with General Motors as a Quality Manager and GM nationwide inspection program had to make the difficult decision to report his company to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) due to their failure to conduct proper vehicle quality control.

After several attempts to report the issue to his supervisors and following failure by them to take steps to recall vehicles that were unsafe, Kelley decided on Jan. 9, 2003 to file suit against his company, GM with the hope that it will help to change the situation. Kelley also believed that by taking his company to court this would help other co-workers to speak up against GM failure to recall unsafe vehicles. However, the outcome was totally different as expected by Kelley. As a result of filing the lawsuit, Kelley was assigned to a position incompatible with his previous position and this led to a total panic on the part of his colleagues because most of them who intended to speak in support to Kelley’s assertion became afraid that they might also be affected (Higgins & Summers, 2014).

The ethical dilemma faced by Kelley will be examined while taking into account Ferrell’s and Gresham’s Contingency Framework and paying more attention on the three variables influencing ethical decision-making known as follows: organizational factors, individual factors and the opportunity variable.

Organizational Factors

When it comes to ethics, organizational factors mostly deal with the influence a supervisor or manager can have on his/her subordinates (Ferrell & Gresham, 1985).

Since Kelley’s supervisors had control over his career, they saw his action as being unethical because it caused damage to the company reputation, significantly reduced its sales because many customers started questioning the cars in question and it could also cost a lot of money to the company if cars already sold had to be recalled. That was a key factor leading to the assignment of Kelley to a department that had nothing to do with inspection.

Individual Factors

They are more concerned with various philosophy views dealing with socialization like social groups and families, education, and people culture (Ferrell & Gresham, 1985). As such, being a father and husband, Kelley usually used to seek his wife’s opinion regarding the way the issue could be resolved. His ethical behavior was also impacted by the discussions he had with his wife during dinnertime. Also, thanks to his morale, he strongly believed that being a customer meant being aware of possible defects that your car might be having. GM’s leadership team actions are influenced by their capacity to honor performance goals. The company considered it more beneficial to them to spend money on damages instead of having to redo the car design and have the cost of it split on its customers.