The Volkswagen Group broke the trust of its customers and damaged its long-standing brand through high tech unethical practices. “The modern car is nothing more than a mobile computer that combines processors, sensors, backbones, and data links” (Grier, 2015). In a push to sell more diesel vehicles in the United States and exploit their technological engineering, Volkswagen Group created and outfitted vehicles with a computer software device that would know when a vehicle was being tested for emissions and would then manipulate test results to show lower emission. While the Volkswagen Diesel Scandal first came to light in September 2015 after the Environmental Protection Agency found the nefarious software during vehicle testing, the Volkswagen Group has once again come under scrutiny for utilizing humans and monkeys in diesel fume testing as of January 2018. Through legal, ethical and biblical perspectives, the Volkswagen Group’s business practices will be analyzed.
Legal Perspective Managers and employees from both the legal and engineering department could have prevented the emissions fraud incident when it became clear that Volkswagen’s diesel engine technology could not meet the standards of the Clean Air Act of 1970. When confronted with the real-time data that showed Volkswagen Group could not produce a new and low emissions engine, executives, lawyers and engineers should have taken this information and been upfront with their shareholders, costumers and the