Was Gioia wrong to follow the corporate script? Does he bear responsibility for “just following
orders”?
Engineers are often in the position to make life-changing decisions. It is often a case of ethics vs
profit for those that work under big corporate institutions. It is easy during the aftermath of an
engineering disaster to think engineers allowed it to happen. The assumption is often they were
negligent or not ethical enough to resist management decisions to override safety issues for
example. Corporate institutions have strong leaders who are usually insisting and vocal. In the
case of Gioia, there was Lee Iacocca. The narrative surrounding Lee and the Ford Pinto suggests
a very insisting leader who did everything possible to ignore any engineering suggestions on
safety. One may think he would even fire anyone who got in his way. Many engineers in Denny
Gioia’s position would have made the same decision. Either because of the fear of loss of job,
fear of the power of the corporate leaders or simply under pressure. A very similar case is with
the NASA Space Challenger Explosion in 1986, where Bob Lund who was the VP of Engineering
folded under pressure and voted to launch the rocket despite knowing the catastrophic
consequences. The famous quote as recounted was “take your engineer hat off and put your
management hat on”. Bob did exactly that. Of course, there were other engineers like Roger
Boisjoly there who tried to resist. Unfortunately, in most of these instances, management
power is much greater. Just like Boisjoly, Gioia came out to bear full responsibility. Now, he is
teaching in universities and using his experience to make upcoming engineers understand the
need to speak up.
The harm has already been done. Many lives have been lost. People are different and often we
can only assume what we will do when in fact we don’t exactly know. The current corporate
system makes it very difficult for engineers to do the right thing. How often do we hear of
engineers who have done the right thing vs those who haven’t? The question remains, what is
the reward of integrity?
Response 1
Hi Joseph,
I really enjoyed your point of view in this discussion. You mentioned that we cannot blame an individual
for what the institution taught him. That is a great point, and this affects not just engineers, but
politicians, teachers and essentially people in all professions. This I why a course like this is very
important. It teaches us the need to be ethically grounded. Dennis Gioia could have done more. If given
the chance to go back, he probably will but the damage caused is irreparable. Now he is doing his bit by
using his experience as a teaching tool. Credit to him for accepting his mistake. Having said that, it is
very difficult in the real world. In my piece, I had talked asked about what the reward for integrity is? In
a society where bad is more rewarded than good, it will take a more collective effort for ethics to uproot
the highly corrupt corporate system.
Response 2
Good one Marco. Marco indeed did not do the job for which he was hired. Yet, Ford was completely fin
with that as long as he towed their line. Perhaps by government regulations they needed a field recall
coordinator, so they hired one. The corporate system has a lot of bureaucracy. If you can recount our
earlier discussion on the NASA Space Shuttle crash in 1986. A year earlier, one of the engineers Bob
Ebeling had actually written a “Help!” memo. That was ignored. Even the president pushed for the
launch to go through knowing full well the danger involved. The launch went through and we know the
consequence of that decision. Were those in management held accountable? We as engineer should
understand that although we are behind the scene during most of the time, when there is any line of
fire, we will be the first to face it. We must approach our jobs daily with that in mind.