ISSN: 2222-6990
Open access
The Volkswagen ‘Diesel Dupe scandal’ is no stranger in the automobile industry and the entire business community. This scandal is a fruitful reminder on the extent to which corporations can blatantly flout regulations and distort business ethics and morality. Many writers have written on this crisis and of course from various perspectives. Some approached the crisis from a technical standpoint, reviewing the ‘marvel’ of Volkswagen’s technological manipulation. Others approached the scandal from the standpoint of moral philosophy, demarcating the firm’s inherent immorality that has detracted the ethical values of the company. Journalists conversely have promulgated the scandal as a sensational headline in many reports. Of course, these writings are often detached with some paying overload responses to philosophies, others on strategic woes and a handful addressing the scandal from a techy perspective. This writing differs from previous works and attempts to fuse and associate the philosophical and strategic issues of the scandal to produce a remarkable analysis. Firstly, by improvising Andy Grove’s ‘strategic dissonance’ theory, this work attempts to plot the precise point in which Volkswagen’s diesel crisis relent a tsunamic moral repercussion. An improvised version of Grove’s model contributes to understanding the philosophical intricacies of this scandal capable of understanding the phenomenological moral repercussions in Volkswagen. Secondly, by using this phenomenological understanding, the current authors were able to accurately charter the precise impacts of the scandal and of course lastly to instill a distinctive evaluation on the effectiveness of Volkswagen’s crisis response strategies. The main contribution of this paper expounds beyond merely theoretical implications, but more importantly, the ability to connect and associate the philosophies of ethics with strategic implications.
Andreas, C. (2017), Culture change at VW may take time, HR chief says [Online]. Available at: URL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-culture/culture-change-at-vw-may-take-time-hr-chief-says-idUSKBN1712D8
Puffer. (1998), Global executive: Intel's Andrew Grove on competitiveness. Academy of Management Perspectives, 13(1), 15-24. Puffer, S. M. (1999). Global executive: Intel's Andrew Grove on competitiveness. Academy of Management Perspectives, 13(1), 15-24.
CSRBaidu.com. (2016), Baidu Corporate Social Responsibility Report, 2014-2016 [Online] Available at : http://csr.baidu.com/Uploads/File/2018/04/17/u5ad59c6cb6f67.pdf
Bojan Georgeevski and Anas AlQudah. (2016), The Effect of the Volkswagen Scandal (A Comparative Case Study). Research Journal of Finance and Accounting www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1697 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2847, Vol.7, No.2, pp. 54-57. Georgievski, B., & Al Qudah, A. (2016). The effect of the Volkswagen scandal (a comparative case study). Research Journal of Finance and Accounting, 7(2).
Burgelman and Grove. (1996), Strategic dissonance. California management review, 38(2), pp.8-28. Burgelman, R. A., & Grove, A. S. (1996). Strategic dissonance. California management review, 38(2), 8-28.
Business Insider. (2016), 7 Companies That Changed Names To Save Their Brand. [Online] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/7-companies-that-changed-names-2013-2?IR=T.
Cavico and Mujtaba. (2016), Volkswagen emissions scandal: a global case study of legal, ethical, and practical consequences and recommendations for sustainable management. Global Journal of Research in Business & Management, 4(2), pp.303-311. Cavico, F. J., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2016). Volkswagen emissions scandal: a global case study of legal, ethical, and practical consequences and recommendations for sustainable management. Global Journal of Research in Business and Management, 4(2), 411.
Cho, E. (2015), Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha: Well Known but Poorly Understood. [online]ResearchGate.Availableat:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276408309_Cronbach's_Coefficient_Alpha_Well_Known_but_Poorly_Understood.
Chloe West. (2019), 6 standout social media marketing examples for 2019. [Online] Available at: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-examples/.
Coombs, W. T. (2007), Protecting Organization Reputations during a Crisis: The Development and Application of Situational Crisis Communication Theory. Corp. Reput. Rev. 10, 163–176. doi:10.1057/ palgrave.crr.1550049.
Coombs, W. T. (2002), Assessing online issue threats: issue contagions and their effect on issue prioritisation. J. Public Aff. 2, 215–229. doi:10.1002/pa.115.
Coombs, W. T., Holladay, J. S. (2012), The paracrisis: The challenges created by publicly managing crisis prevention. Public Relat. Rev. Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, J. S. (2012). The paracrisis: The challenges created by publicly managing crisis prevention. Public Relations Review, 38(3), 408-415.
Ewing, J. (2019), Volkswagen Moves to Rapidly Increase Production of Electric Cars. [Online] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/volkswagen-electric-cars.html. changed
Kant Immanuel. (1785), Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (ed.). Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (10 ed.). Project Gutenberg. p. 39. Kant, I. (1785). Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, ed. Fundamental principles of the metaphysic of morals. Project Gutenberg.
Mourkogiannis, N. (2014), Purpose: The starting point of great companies. St. Martin's Press. Mourkogiannis, N. (2014). Purpose: The starting point of great companies. St. Martin's Press.
Murugesan, S., and Gangadharan, G. (2012), Harnessing green IT. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: IEEE ComputerSociety / IEEE / Wiley. Murugesan, S., & Bojanova, I. (Eds.). (2016). Encyclopedia of cloud computing (pp. 208-219). John Wiley & Sons.
Nazanin, M. (2016), A Case Study of Volkswagen Unethical Practice in Diesel Emission Test., Vol 5, Issue 4. SSN-2319-7560. Mansouri, N. (2016). A case study of Volkswagen unethical practice in diesel emission test. International Journal of Science and Engineering Applications, 5(4), 211-216.
NDR. (2016), Die VW-Abgas-Affäre: Eine Chronologie [Online]. Available at: www.ndr.de/nachrichten/ niedersachsen/braunschweig_harz_goettingen/DieVW-Abgas-Affaere-eineChronologie,VW892.html.
Porter, M. E. (2015), Share Value Initiative. [Online] Available at: https://www.sharedvalue.org/partners/thought-leaders/michael-e-porter. Porter, ME, & Kramer, MR (2015). Shared Value – The bridge from corporate social responsibility to corporate strategy. In Corporate Social Responsibility (pp. 145-160). Springer Gabler, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Rhodes, C. (2016), Democratic business ethics: Volkswagen’s emissions scandal and the disruption of corporate sovereignty. Organization Studies, 37(10), pp.1501-1518.
Seymur. (2014), Carroll’s Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility. [Online] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140905115337-70750023-carroll-s-pyramid-of-corporate-social-responsibility. Delete reference
Financial Times. (2016), VW emissions scandal, Financial Times, [online] Available at: https://www.ft.com/vw-emissions-scandal. Delete Red
Volkswagenag.com. (2017), Volkswagen Annual Report 2017. [Online] Available at: https://annualreport2017.volkswagenag.com/ Arora, J. (2017). Corporate governance: a farce at Volkswagen?. The CASE Journal.
WRC. (2016), VW PULLS OUT OF WRCURL: [online] Available at: http://www.wrc.com/en/wrc/news/october-2016/ vw-withdraws/page/4046--12-12-.html. Delete reference
Zhang, B., Veijalainen, J., Kotkov, D. (2016), VW Emission Crisis – Managing Stakeholder Relations on the Web: SCITEPRESS - Science and and Technology Publications, pp. 176–187. doi:10.5220/ 0005892401760187. Zhang, B., Veijalainen, J., & Kotkov, D. (2016). Volkswagen emission crisis: Managing stakeholder relations on the Web. In WEBIST 2016: Proceedings of the 12th International conference on web information systems and technologies. Volume 1, ISBN 978-989-758-186-1. SCITEPRESS.
Zhang, B., Veijalainen, J., Kotkov, D. (2017), Samsung and Volkswagen Crisis Communication in Facebook and Twitter - A Comparative Study., pp. 312-323. DOI: 10.5220/0006301403120323. ISBN: 978-989-758-246-2. Zhang, B., Veijalainen, J., & Kotkov, D. (2017). Samsung and Volkswagen Crisis Communication in Facebook and Twitter.
In-Text Citation: (Wai et al., 2021)
To Cite this Article: Wai, C. K., Teck, T. S., Junkai, M., Lu, H., Hoo, W. C., Ng, A. H. H., & Sam, T. H. (2021). Mapping the Volkswagen Diesel Dupe Crisis, its Implications and Sustainability of their Responses. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 11(5), 211–226.
Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s)
Published by HRMARS (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode