Ford Pinto and Corporate Crime

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes the Ford Pinto case, one of the landmark cases in corporate criminology. The first part of the paper examines the facts of the Ford Pinto case from the supposed decision to "rush" the production of the unsafe car to the effects of the 1980 criminal trial of the Ford Motor Company for reckless homicide. It then uses the framework of research on white-collar crime and studies on organizational culture and structure to examine the lack of safety and recall regulations that may have contributed to as much as 500 deaths. It concludes that, in addition to the drive for profit, the institutional norms embedded in the organizational structure of the Ford Company, as well as within the NHTSA at the time, contributed significantly to the lack of both internal and external regulations. The lack of these regulations, in turn, resulted in unsafe cars that caused many of their occupants to lose their lives.

Outline
Review of Literature
Background of Ford Case
Ford's Organizational Structure
Administrative Evil and the Lack of Regulation
Corporate Crime and Administrative Evil

From the Paper:

"Much of the literature on the Ford Pinto case focuses on how consumer safety was willingly sacrificed in the face of "corporate greed." Dowie (1977) wrote the first and definitive account in his Pulitzer Prize winning "Pinto Madness." In this expose, Dowie unearthed documents proving that the engineers and managers Ford Company knew of the Pinto's safety problems for at least seven years, but refused to make the necessary safety changes. This decision, Dowie charged, was based on the concept of profit maximization."

More papers on Ford Pinto and Corporate Crime:

• Term Paper # 101285 : "Moral and Ethical Obligations of Corporations"
• Essay # 73120 : "Ford Pinto"
• Analytical Essay # 130938 : "Corporate Crime and Conflict Theory"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: