Toyota Motor Corporation is one of the world’s largest vehicle makers. It is the current leader in terms of sales in the world. The corporation is generally referred to as Toyota, whose head office is in Toyota city, Tokyo, Japan. Toyota was incorporated in 1937 from Toyota industries. Today Toyota has diversified from automobiles activities to financial services, robot manufacturing to biotechnology ventures. The global financial problems have affected the performance of the group since it recorded a loss in 2009.
Toyota is currently having an issue with its code of ethics. Its code of conduct is a commitment to conducting its business in a fair and transparent manner. This code of conduct means that Toyota has to be honest, reliable while making proper judgments during decision making (Whitelaw, 2010). The code of ethics requires its managers, employees, dealers, and representatives to conduct themselves with humility, honesty, and integrity.
Toyota found out that some of its brands had a problem with the gas pedal. The pedals could be entrapped to the floor mats and posed a potential acceleration problem in the highways. Out of this, an ethical issue has come up, Toyota now has massive management reputation problems and credibility crises. The conflict that brought about the ethical issue came from the fact that the United States government put pressure and asked Toyota to make the recall the faulty vehicles (Osono, Shimizu & Takeuchi, 2008).
There were ethical systems that were in place before the recall. One guiding principle is Toyota’s dedication to avail clean and safe products while enhancing the quality of life for their product users. The recall plan by Toyota has had some effects on both employees ad the management. The executive management has been particularly involved in protecting the corporation’s tinted image by first apologizing to the customers for the discomfort caused (Whitelaw, 2010). They have also been on a high campaign sensitizing their customers’ that the said parts will be exchanged through an in-service that rectifies the problem.
There is the likelihood of differences in the behavioral reaction between the management and the employees. The managers are likely to react positively by making pleas to customers and taking care of public matters of the company in such a way that Toyota’s reputation may not be greatly affected. On the other hand, employees may feel threatened by a number of factors. The recall has lead to the shutting down of further production of the said brands of faulty vehicles; this could lead to a drop in the employee’s earning (Osono et al, 2008). The employees may also feel insecure and will have a lot of uncertainty over how secure their jobs are, since the recall may bring down the sales volume in the future, Toyota may start laying off some of them. Employees who are paid on a commission basis will also react negatively as there will be a potential loss of income as the vehicles intended for sale will have to be rectified the fault.
The middle management and the executive management have a great role in resolving the issue. They are both going to persuade the potential and existing customers to stick to their line of products. The two will also ensure that the in-service program runs out successfully. Both levels of management played part in causing the problem, they ought to have devised ways that detected the anomalies with the new alleged computer system.
The executive and top management should be leading in rolling out programs that are will protect Toyota’s reputation through prescriptive and psychological approaches (Anderson, 2010). The prescriptive approach is through the implementation of the in-service while the psychological approach will be aimed to assure the customers all is well regardless of the slight error. The new plan involves supplying the new part to all dealers in order to rectify the problem. Further, plans are underway to ensure that the process is fast by making sure the dealers operate all round the clock.
Communication of the new standards has been intensively done; Toyota’s management resulted in holding press conferences and interviews in newsrooms. The public relations efforts are geared towards reassuring the customers that Toyota has found a solution and is working on the problem. Toyota has taken short-term measures of shutting down new production in order to ensure that parts exchange takes place. In order to ensure long-term compliance the computer system error has been identified and rectified thereby eliminating future possible faults.
References
Anderson S. (2010). Toyota: There Are Always Limits to Growth. Web.
Osono, E., Shimizu, N. & Takeuchi, H, (2008). Extreme Toyota: radical contradictions that drive success at the world’s best manufacturer. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Whitelaw & Kevin (2010). Saving Face: Toyota’s Sticky Problem. Web.