I worked on this project with Jack Magiera and Lucinda Krahl; we created a podcast related to whistleblowing and the Volkswagen scandal. The project can be found at the following: https://drive.google.com/a/nd.edu/file/d/0B4hjKAOQuqvZWGluaVJka1J1eTA/view?usp=sharing
Volkswagen, a giant in the world of car manufacturing, faced a precarious situation this past year. It was revealed in September that it had been purposefully evading U.S. emissions laws, falsely giving the impression that certain Volkswagen vehicles were up to Clean Air Act standards. “The VW scandal came to light when researchers from the International Council on Clean Transportation and West Virginia University performed all kinds of tests on VW vehicles, discovering that when the vehicles were on the road, they polluted substantially more than when they were being tested for pollution emissions” (VW says rogue engineers..).
I believe that a significant cause of VW’s unethical behavior was the financial potential in the distribution and use of diesel in the United States. This is due to the fact that “diesel fuel contains more energy than an equivalent volume of gasoline, which translates to more miles per gallon. This comes at a cost, though: while gasoline engines emit more carbon dioxide, diesel engines emit far more nitrogen oxides (NOx) than their gas-sipping counterparts” (EPA Accuses Volkswagen). Thus, for the consumer that is not personally invested in protecting the environment, he/she benefits greatly from the increase in energy per gallon of fuel purchased. The diesel issue began in 2005 when VW decided to “start a major diesel campaign in the United States” to sell cars that were already quite popular in Europe (Volkswagen details..). Thus a significant cause of such a large corporation acting so illegally was logically money-driven and influenced by the potential of the market in the U.S. to sell diesel cars.
If I was one of the engineers on the Volkswagen team, I would be furious at the management for pointing fingers at the so-called “rogue engineers” rather than admitting the real motivations of the scandal. I would take whistleblowing protections of documenting evidence of violations from the very root causes as I became aware of them and also making agreements with the management at the very beginning of my employment.
So, who should be held responsible? Currently, fingers are being pointed at “rogue engineers” who somehow manipulated the software to implement defeat devices. Recently, Volkswagen’s U.S. CEO, Michael Horn, testified to a congressional panel that the decision to use emissions cheating software was not made at the corporate level. Instead, it was “software engineers who put this in for whatever reason,” (VW says rogue engineers..). What’s fishy is the ambiguity of whether or not the then-CEO of the company, Martin Winterkorn, actually read an email that may or may not have outlined the violations of the environmental regulations. “Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) told Horn later in the proceeding: ‘I categorically reject everything VW is saying about a couple of rogue engineers. It goes way, way higher than that'”(VW says rogue engineers..). I believe that, ultimately & especially given the ambiguity of the source of the issue, the management of VW is to blame. Their role and responsibility is to manage and oversee the process of the manufacturing and testing of vehicles. Given even the slightest indication of a violation of environmental regulations, the management has the ultimate decision to approve or reject the product to be used by the consumer.
Ethics & Professional Issues 