Takata Airbag Recall

Running head: Takata Airbag

The Takata Airbag Recall

Vynessa Robinson

Southern New Hampshire University

Abstract

I have selected the Takata airbags as the product that had to deal with a corporate ethical decision. I will describe the company and the ethical decision that the marketing managers faced. How the company unethically responded to the crisis will be revealed. A description of what I would have done differently if I were the marketing manager with profit and loss responsibility will be given.

The Takata Airbag Recall

The ethical issue that befell the marketing managers at Takata involved defective inflator and propellant devices that may deploy improperly in the event of a crash, shooting metal fragments into vehicle occupants. The marketing managers were notified that approximately 34 million vehicles were potentially affected in the United States, and another 7 million have been recalled worldwide.

Takata the Company

In 1933 Takezo Takada established Takata Company, a textile manufacturer in Shiga Prefecture. The firm used its weaving technology to manufacture lifelines. By 1952 Takata was stimulated by American research on equipping cars with seat belts. Takata begins researching and developing seat belts using parachute technology (About Takata, 2016).

The Takata way:

・To communicate openly and effectively.

・To adhere to Sangen-shugi*.

・To be committed in everything we do.

Sangen-shugi means "3 reals" in Japanese: real place, real part and real facts (About Takata, 2016).

Ethical Issue – Product Recall

The ethical issue that befell the marketing managers at Takata involved defective inflator and propellant devices that may deploy improperly in the event of a crash, shooting metal fragments into vehicle occupants. Approximately 34 million vehicles are potentially affected in the United States, and another 7 million have been recalled worldwide.

Initially, only six makes were involved when Takata announced the fault in April 2013, but a Toyota recall in June this year—along with new admissions from Takata that it had little clue as to which cars used its defective inflators, or even what the root cause was—prompted more automakers to issue identical recalls. In July, NHTSA forced additional regional recalls in high-humidity areas including Florida, Hawaii, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to gather removed parts and send them to Takata for review (Atiyeh & Blackwell, 2016).

Marketing managers at Toyota stated there had been no related injuries or deaths involving its vehicles, however, a New York Times report in September found a total of at least 139 reported injuries across all automakers. Also reported was that there had been at least two deaths and 30 injuries in Honda vehicles. According to the New York Times, Honda and Takata’s senior executives and marketing managers knew about the faulty inflators since 2004 but failed to notify NHTSA in previous recall filings (which began in 2008) that the affected airbags had actually ruptured or were linked to injuries and deaths (Atiyeh & Blackwell, 2016).