{"id":656,"date":"2015-10-01T11:29:48","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T10:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/?p=656"},"modified":"2015-10-01T11:33:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T10:33:55","slug":"volkswagen-the-value-of-ethics-and-integrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/2015\/10\/01\/volkswagen-the-value-of-ethics-and-integrity\/","title":{"rendered":"Volkswagen: The Value of Ethics and Integrity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><\/b><b>Ethics must be based on principles and integrity must be aligned with these principles<\/b>. Hence something has failed at <b>Volkswagen<\/b>&#8230; <b>I have been always been impressed by Volkswagen&#8217;s ads <\/b>for their &#8220;intelligent humor.&#8221; <b>Unfortunately, the engineers of the German automotive group have not learned anything from their colleagues in marketing<\/b>. I don&#8217;t know if they had an overdose of humor or not enough intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>For those who thought roguish behavior came from the southern European countries, it is surely a laughable sight to <b>see how VW &#8220;engineered&#8221; a way to bypass laws<\/b>. <b>Designing software that detects when the car is being inspected<\/b> and reduces the emission of gases <b>is a formidable act of ingenuity<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, as human beings we often use inventiveness for evil purposes. <a class=\"inline-twitter-link inline-tweet-click\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"inline_tweet_sharer_open_win('https:\\\/\\\/twitter.com\\\/intent\\\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.iese.edu%2Fethics%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F656%2F&text=Can+you+imagine+what+the+world+would+be+like+if+we+used+our+creativity+to+do+good%3F+');\" title=\"Tweet This!\">Can you imagine what the world would be like if we used our creativity to do good? <span class=\"non-dashicons\"> <\/span><\/a>\n<p>How can intelligent people, who are surely dedicated to their jobs and seek what is best for their company, act that way?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In some cases it is because <b>they choose the most convenient path<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li>Sometimes, it is a well-intentioned goal of <b>improving efficiency and cutting costs<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li>Other times, it is the <b>pressure to achieve certain objectives<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li>And there is always some degree of <b>autosuggestion to convince oneself that &#8220;we won&#8217;t get caught.&#8221;\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, what happened? Because in the end\u2014almost by chance\u2014someone smells a rat, the problem blows up, the situation gets out of hand, and the negative consequences snowball: <b>multimillion dollar fines, reputation crisis, possible criminal charges<\/b> against executives, the <b>stock price plummets <\/b>35% in two days.<\/p>\n<p>And <b>those involved will think: \u201cIf we&#8217;d known it would turn out like this, we never would have done it!\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Measuring an <strong>ethical attitude<\/strong> according to what might happen almost always leads to regretful actions. For this reason, <b>ethics must be based on principles, not consequences<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>An upright attitude starts with having clear principles of conduct. But that is not enough. In addition,<b> integrity requires being aligned with these principles<\/b>. <a class=\"inline-twitter-link inline-tweet-click\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"inline_tweet_sharer_open_win('https:\\\/\\\/twitter.com\\\/intent\\\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.iese.edu%2Fethics%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F656%2F&text=It+is+crucial+to+create+environments+that+foster+ethical+conduct+');\" title=\"Tweet This!\">It is crucial to create environments that foster ethical conduct <span class=\"non-dashicons\"> <\/span><\/a><b>\u00a0and can detect improper conduct before it is too late. If not, senior management will be responsible by omission<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ethics must be based on principles and integrity must be aligned with these principles. Hence something has failed at Volkswagen&#8230; I have been always been impressed by Volkswagen&#8217;s ads for their &#8220;intelligent humor.&#8221; Unfortunately, the engineers of the German automotive group have not learned anything from their colleagues in marketing. I don&#8217;t know if they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":867,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,362,76071],"tags":[89093,91591,89091,55162],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-practices","category-business-ethics","category-ethics-for-executives","tag-envinment","tag-ethics","tag-volswagen","tag-vw","megacategoria-mc-business-ethics-and-corporate-social-responsibility"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/867"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}