Planning skills

Cautionary tale: Ignorance is Costly
In 2014, an automobile company, General Motors, had to pay over $35 million in fines to the federal government as a consequence of failing to report defects that were potentially deadly in some of their automobiles. The vehicles had faulty ignition switches, and it affected the deployment of the airbags especially when the ignition is bumped out of position. For years, the company’s executives, engineers, and investigators were aware of the defective cars, but they chose to ignore. On top of the fines, the company had to recall over 2.6 million defective vehicles which further adversely affected the company financially and tainted its name and brand.
The ignorance of the company did not only affect the business, but it also affected the public. Some of the faulty vehicles were involved in accidents which led to loss of lives. In North America, 42 deaths and 13 deaths have been directly linked to the defects. Despite several complaints to the company over the years and earlier evidence, the GM did not take any action. In fact, the company told its employees not to use words like “problem,” “defect” and “dangerous” when describing any concern that rose with the company products.
Podcast script
In the incident above, the government authorities pointed out that there was a problem with the company’s values since even the executives ignored the problem instead of taking action as the top management. This is true but it can be seen clearly that it was the ignorance of the company’s management that led to the misfortunes.

Company culture and values play an important role in reducing cases of misconducts and compromise standards at the workplaces. However, the development and the implementation of ethics programs by companies have led to positive impacts on the workplaces. Organizations with effective ethics programs have low incidences of observed misconduct and compromise standards at workplace compared to other companies (Webley, Simon and Werner 408).
Even after an occurrence of an unethical incident, it is important that a company continues to grow its ethics programs by focusing on its response to the event. Disregarding the incident may lead to recurrence of similar incidences, and that will have negative impacts on the company and its employees. A company should learn from any ethical lapse, big or small and should focus on coming out as a better company. Several ethical lapses occur daily in various workplaces, and most of these incidences may not affect the organization as a whole, but it might adversely affect the employees. For example, one worker may hoard office supplies causing shortage to others. This might seem small, but it demoralizes the employees as they cannot perform their duties without these supplies. If this is ignored, some workers may seek revenge, and they too will start picking more supplies than they need. In the long run, this will affect the productivity within the organization.
The management plays a key role in preventing such issues or solving them in case of any occurring, and ensuring that the employees and the company move beyond retribution (Treviño, Klebe, and Weaver 652). Managers should educate the employees on the effects of the ethical lapses on the company as well as on individuals. If the top management on the GM incident had told its employees the negative impacts of the misconducts, the engineers, and other employees would not have neglected the defects on the vehicles. That could have saved the company from the misfortunes went through. Moreover, the management should promote a conducive environment to nurture good worker to worker and employee-employer relationships and to reduce pressure on the employees (Bannon, Shele, Ford and Meltzer 56). This will reduce incidences of ethical lapses at the workplace that would otherwise be costly.
Ignorance is costly. If GM had acted differently, the company would have avoided lawsuits, fines and other misfortunes including the loss of lives due to the ignored defects.

Works cited
Bannon, Shele, Kelly Ford, and Linda Meltzer. “How to instill a strong ethical culture.” The CPA Journal 80.7 (2010): 56.
Webley, Simon, and Andrea Werner. “Corporate codes of ethics: Necessary but not sufficient.” Business Ethics: A European Review 17.4 (2008): 405-415.
Treviño, Linda Klebe, and Gary R. Weaver. “Organizational justice and ethics program “follow-through”: Influences on employees’ harmful and helpful behavior.” Business Ethics Quarterly 11.4 (2001): 651-671.