Ethical Challenges Posed by Cost-Cutting
DuPont Automotive released a survey at the 1998 society of Automotive Engineers ( SAE) International Congress and Expo indcating that the number one concern of automotive engineers is staying within budget targets while meeting consumer demand for technological improvement. At the SAE meeting , an interior trim design engineer said that at at his company when thy are given a target price . and "we meet the target or else ," another engineer in in an automotive quality department, said that many engineers put list of quality and cost goals on their office walls. "We ask, ' What's the minimum we can spend on a car that people will want to buy?'"
What special ethical challenges does having to keep costs within tight budget targets pose for automotive engineers?