Introduction
This Case Study will look into the Volkswagen emission scandal and they key corporate issues that underline it. A case Study is a process or record of research into the development of a particular group over a period of time. I am writing this Case Study for the purpose of researching and analyzing how a company like Volkswagen, which was named no. 8 on Forbes fortune 500 list in 2014, could be involved in one of the biggest scandals in this decade.
Volkswagen group sells passenger cars under Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Audi, Porsche, Seat, Škoda and of course Volkswagen itself and is one of the biggest car manufacturers in the World. Unfortunately in 2015 it emerged that Volkswagen was involved in unlawful practice regarding their diesel cars not meeting emission standards and how they tried to rectify this problem in an unlawful manner. My paper will be divided into two key parts: The Case Study and The Case Analysis. In the case study I will give an overview of what happened in the Volkswagen emissions scandal, which is still ongoing, I will give a background and context to all the key parties involved and then depict the key events that shape this scandal. Secondly, I will do the Case Study Analysis where I will identify all the corporate governance issues and then critically evaluate if VW
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Now due to poor corporate governance, a lot of people will be affected and as Howard Sherman, head of corporate governance business development at MSCI [Member Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment] stated VW’s corporate governance score at MSCI has been falling since 2014 due to “management and board turmoil”. So therefore there is a problem that needs to be rectified and fix in order for VW to progress in the future. This case study will analyze the corporate governance issues and examine exactly where Volkswagen is
Longevity swap is a derivative contract that hedges the longevity risk of pension funds or insurers by entering into an agreement with a reinsurer or investment bank promising the exchange of fixed payments based on expected mortality of a reference population with floating payments based on the actual mortality experience of the same population set. Several insurers are now offering longevity swaps for pension schemes which allow longevity risk to be hedged. There also exists the option of combining these contracts with interest rate and inflation risks swaps. These would increase the complexity and cost of the swap in return for a wider reduction in the risk undertaken.
Phenomenal growth of interest in corporate governance has emerged in recent years. The body of literature on the subject has grown markedly in response to successive waves of large corporate failures. Furthermore, there have been numerous attempts to define what constitutes ‘good corporate governance’ and to provide guidelines in order to enhance the quality of corporate governance.
A case study is “a method of analysis and a specific research design for examining a problem” (University of Southern California, 2010). It can be used to analyze a person, place, event, or other subjects in order to help discover mitigating issues, misconceptions, failures, trends, or recommendations (USC, 2010). Case studies will be used to gain a better understanding of situations and topics to help others make better policies, procedures, and decisions (USC, 2010).
Homer's book, The Odyssey, has two main female characters who demonstrate very opposite characteristics. Penelope and Calypso both love Odysseus, but in very different ways. Penelope is Odysseus’ soft-hearted, faithful, human wife who has earned her husband’s true love and devotion. She loves her husband and refuses to believe that he has died. In stark contrast, Calypso is a “powerful and beautiful” nymph who is selfish, immortal, and holds on to the things that she wants.
On September 9, 2016, a veteran engineer of Volkswagen AG by the name of James Robert Liang pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud the government, committing wire fraud, and violating the U.S. Clean Air Act. While working in Germany in 2006, Liang was part of a team charged with producing a new fuel-efficient diesel engine that satisfied new U.S. regulations on vehicle emissions. He and his team eventually came to the conclusion that their engine could not satisfy these new regulations while maintaining consumer expectations of engine performance. Their solution to this dilemma was to implement illegal software (known as a “defeat device”) into newly produced vehicles sold in the U.S. The purpose of this software was to detect any emissions test being performed on a vehicle and alter the results to show cleaner emissions on the onboard computer. Nearly 500,000 vehicles with this defeat device were sold in the U.S.; by 2008, consumers began to experience issues in their vehicles (not knowing it was due to the emission test software), and Liang worked to refine the device even further. The entirety of the scandal eventually came into the public spotlight in 2015 (Guess, 2016, p.1). The subsequent paragraphs of this essay will first discuss Kantian duty ethics and rule utilitarianism, and focus on analyzing the moral implications of Liang’s actions in reference to these moral theories.
The century prior to The War of the Two Kings weakened Catholic’s position in society significantly. They lost their power, rights, and freedom to the newer English and Scottish settlers who were Protestant. However, when James II acceded the throne in 1685 after the death of his brother, a significant problem arose for Irish Protestants. As James II was a late convert to Roman Catholicism, he desired to fulfill God’s mission granted to him; the conversion of England from Protestantism to Catholicism. James II believed this would occur organically if people’s religion was based on their own morals by revoking legal blockades. However, when James II permitted religious tolerance and prohibited many laws that went against Catholicism, panic
In the "Call Of The Wild" By jack London expresses a theme of suffering to show how life was like for buck and the other it also tell how buck and the other sled dog that did not trust humans because they were abused by their owners. First buck was take from all he knew and was sol as a sled dog to a team. Then buck faced starvation, and his natural instinct to become leader. Final he show how buck natural instinct has taken over but is still friend with some humans.
“Case studies are stories. It presents a realistic, complex, and contextually rich situations and often involve a dilemma, conflict, or problem that one or more of the characters in the case must negotiate”,
A case study is a puzzle that has to be solved. The first thing to remember about writing a case study is that the case should have a problem for the readers to solve. The case should have enough information in it that readers can understand what the problem is and, after thinking about it and analyzing the information; the readers should be able to come up with a proposed solution. Writing an interesting case study is a bit like writing a detective story. You want to keep your readers very interested in the situation.
The mistrust between the Volkswagen Company and their customers developed after the scandal associated with the incorrect emission of data and cheating of the system unfolded. The scandal occurred on the eighteenth of September 2015 when it was found that the company had made a car with a turbo that released emission directly into the real word atmosphere. The allegations were genuine and were proved by the Environment Protection Agency in the United States (EPA) (Hotten, 2016).The chief
Volkswagen a parent company of Skoda is Europe’s largest carmaker producing cars, trucks and vans. It
Volkswagen has lost its reputation due to the recent emissions scandal. Volkswagen needs to recover its brand reputation and rebuild the relationships within its value chain, while pursuing its strategic goals (improving fuel economy with lesser emissions), in order to remain competitive in the automotive industry. To prevent future scandals, effective corporate governance needs to be implemented at Volkswagen.
As a multinational corporation, the implication of the scandal determines the fate of numerous stakeholders both internal and external. Internal stakeholders comprise of the board, managers and employees while external stakeholders subsume shareholders, customers and suppliers. The economic, political and social impacts of the dishonest practices would shape the fate of Volkswagen and affect the future prospects of the automotive industry. Common shareholders whilst not involved in the day to day running of the business placed faith and belief in the firm by providing capital had suffered severe economic loss as share prices (get something for stat). Despite the callous deception in advertising the defeat device displayed no signs of disturbing vehicle performance, however, customers of Volkswagen and its subsidiary vehicles suffer from lower resale value. In addition, even though the scandal was global, European consumers were the most affected with diesel cars accounting for 41% of all European cars (Fontaras, 2016). This high percentage in respect to other nations is a result of incentives provided by the European Union for the purchase of diesel vehicles such as subsidies towards the production process resulting in lower premiums compared to petrol counterparts (Vidal, 2015) In additional with sales falling suppliers of Volkswagen would likely lose future contracts or have current contracts downgraded as less parts are required. Thus, this loss of future
Volkswagen is one of the largest automakers in the world and it has a global reputation as a high-quality German auto brand. Social responsibility is included in VW’s corporate culture and it seems that Volkswagen made some advances in Corporate Social Responsibility because the corporation was ranked 11th 2015 in the Global CSR Rep Track 100, which listed companies by reputation (Reputation Institute, 2015).However, the company has been threatened by an emission scandal which broke in September 2015, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) disclosed that Volkswagen had installed defeat devices on diesel cars which were sold in the US. These devices equipped on VW cars cheated regulators in such a way that it could detect
The invention of automobiles had been dated long back in history. From that day till now, it had not only made our lives easier but also simpler. From times back then till now many big automobile companies had came into existence, some of them were successful and some were not, thus going out of market and competition. Among them, Porsche and Volkswagen Group(VW) have emerged as one of the world leaders in automobile industry. Through years of hardwork and sheer use of technology and engineering developments, both of these companies have carved a name for themselves in their respective markets. But sometimes, bad management and several areas of conflict arise between two companies that can lead to its downfall. In this case too the CEO of Porsche, just wanted to administer each and everything according to his own ways and rules, but on the other hand the CEO of Volkswagen, even after facing huge loses wanted to continue on with his strategy because he was quite confident about his strategy and clearly had a broader outlook of the scenario. Therefore, due to having different mindsets, there was a conflict between the ideas of two which led to the decline of one of them. These conflicts can be summed up in the following couple of questions: