The Business Tort Liability

The President’s Actions to Uphold the Organization’s Ideals

The president of the company should do a number of actions to uphold the organization’s ideals. He should start by creating a culture that would ensure that the organization’s values and guiding principles of quality, safety, and volume were deeply ingrained. Additionally, in order to preserve the brand’s value and stop it from deteriorating, the business president must take corrective measures, such as improving the company’s image or reputation in order to attract former Toyota brand devotees. Furthermore, the company can continue to support its values by educating and training all its employees including the top management on how to support the company’s values in their day to day activities at the organization. Moreover, to help support the company’s values, the President should establish and aggressively promote corporate values of commitment to customers, loyalty, caring, integrity, and innovation. This way, Toyota Corporation will bounce back to profit-making ways. Further, the company’s President should consider empowering the employees to make them independent in decision making and to act as the brand ambassadors of the firm. This will make Toyota a reputable organization t whose values reflect in not only its products or automobiles, but also for its services and workers. Additionally, supporting the Toyota values would mean aligning the corporate values of Toyota Corporation with its corporate culture.

The Long Term Health of the Toyota Brand

Supporting the long-term health of the Toyota brand will require the company’s President to take decisive action to market the company both locally and abroad aggressively. However, it would need more than the just marketing of the company to ensure the long-term vitality of the company’s brand name and products. Mr. Toyoda will need to ensure that any issues or crisis such as the accelerator crisis that directly affect its corporate image is handled in a professional, accountable, responsive, and responsible manner. This way, the company’s long-term brand will be supported by promoting consumer confidence in the company and its products. Furthermore, to improve the long-term health of the Toyota brand, the President of the company should come up with effective long-term strategies that are aimed at enhancing the company’s brand. He also needs to ensure that every member of the organization has a duty to promote the name and image of the organization by upholding its values and principles wherever they are or in their interaction with customers. This action will ensure that the company finds its way out of the current situation whereby its brand image is dented and hence costing it profits and the corporate image it previously enjoyed in the automobile industry. Furthermore, as the President, he should ensure that the cultural differences that often lead to the crisis such as the recall or accelerator crisis are well managed. Through proper management of such crisis, the long-term health of the company’s brand may not be adversely affected as consumer confidence in the company and its brand products goes up.

The Legal Issues Facing the Company

The accelerator crisis which faced the Toyota company led to legal issues such as suits being filed against the company for defective products following the recall of millions of its automobiles from the market. Dealing with such issues would require the company’s President to continue with quality improvement to ensure that issues of substandard or poor quality products that are likely to cause recalls and subsequent legal actions against the company. Further, the automobile manufacturer needs to ensure that it offers adequate legal compensation to the affected customers to ensure that the costs of defending legal suits are reduced. Moreover, he should revitalize the company’s legal department to enable it to deal with any legal issues that the company may be facing. Additionally, addressing some of the legal issues facing the company would require the company’s President to ensure that any such issues such as recalls for defectiveness of its cars do not recur in future.

The Interests of the Customers and Ways of Handling Torts

Supporting the interests of customers means putting the needs, preferences, and concerns of the consumer of the organization at the forefront. To promote the interests of the customers, the President needs to put more emphasis on the values of the company that aims at ensuring quality to its customers. This way, it will be possible to enhance the loyalty of the customers towards the company and its automobile products. In addition to this, to support the interests of its customers or the consumer of its products, Toyota’s leadership should focus on strategies that aim at promoting effective customer service and promoting quality is the priority in the firm’s production or corporate decisions.

Managing Torts Responsibly

As a business manager, managing torts which are bound to occur at any point in time during the lifecycle of an organization is an important aspect of proper management. One of the most effective ways of handling torts is either by minimizing or preventing their occurrence or dealing with them in a responsible and accountable manner.

Bibliography

Fombrun, Charles J. “How to restore your company’s reputation.” Forbes, 6 May 2009. < http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/05/brand-reputation-company-leadership-restore.html>

Knoespel, Rachel Marie. How did Toyota stay on top? Revisiting crisis communication discourse. Master’s Thesis, Marquette University, 2011. < http://epublications.marquette.edu/theses_open/72>

Sakurai, Michiharu. The impact of Toyota recalls on corporate reputation. 2009. < www.jiu.ac.jp/books/bulletin/2010/info/sakurai.pdf>