Comment by iambateman
3 years ago
This is how engineers think executive decisions are made and it is just not accurate.
The CEO of Toyota plays golf with the uncle of the head of the “we track you forever” group. They both feel like the nephew has a big future and there is a ton of money to be made over the next 5 years before the CEO plans to retire.
Plus, according to their marketing team, Volkswagen is worse. Much worse.
There is way less science and way more emotion at play.
The Ford Pinto scandal was found to be a pretty clear cut case of an auto company refusing to do a recall because dealing with the expected number of injuries and deaths would be cheaper.
So the OP's perspective is accurate. It's not all just golf and nepotism.
"The evidence suggests that Ford relied, at least in part, on cost-benefit reasoning, which is an analysis in monetary terms of the expected costs and benefits of doing something."
https://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-matteson/module-1-why-do...
It has less to do with just emotion and more to do with politics. Maybe something is a marginal idea but you approve it because X is a good VP you want to reward.