General Analysis:

The case consisting of the Goodrich employees and the management is a typical case of
bloated corporate egos combined with the blinding urge to re conquer market share even
at the cost of budget cuts on critical safety aspects. It also depicts how a stitch in time can
actually save time and money instead of going down the spiral of deceit and falsification
at each subsequent step. It also shows how internal workplace politics can wreak havoc
and the pitfalls of having a person, like Sink, who essentially does not have the skills to
cross verify the claims of his juniors, in a very responsible position just because of him
being good at office politics. It also very much highlights the potential long term damages
that an organization may have to encounter for trying to snub unpleasant revelations and
not tolerate dissenting views. From an individual standpoint for the likes of Lawson and
Gretzinger, the case highlights the issues of succumbing to peer and management
pressure and not being the whistleblower in time. They had to face both personal and
professional turmoil for a longer period, and deciding to take a stand much earlier may
well have given them lesser pain.
The falsifications were done with the full coaxing and pressure of all the higher ups at the
Troy plant, all of whom were more desperate to save their immediate reputation with the
senior management. This not only gives a clear link towards the myopic thinking of the
Troy plant, but also the apparent lack of supervision and control from Akron. Corporate
governance was essentially only in the books at Goodrich at the time of the incident and
most followed the It does not hurt me if I dont know it philosophy only to be
confronted by a much larger mess involving federal investigation. All this was the price
they paid for choosing to remain ignorant.
What was the driving force behind all of the above actions? I firmly believe that they
were mainly guided by the urge to get the previous failure off their back as also as a
consequence of a desperate drive by Goodrich to get back into the market. Undercutting
their bid had made them desperate to cut corners at their end and left themselves with no
maneuvering headroom in case of any surprises. This simply shows that blindly cutting
costs may not be the answer to many tricky scenarios. The incident also shows that
Goodrich had not taken any lessons from its previous failure at LTV, and had not
strengthened internal processes to avoid a repeat of failures. The several years when it
had fewer orders should have been used to strengthen skills and fine tune processes in
order to make it less vulnerable to failures in the futures. Rather, Goodrich chose to only
concentrate on undercutting other bids to gain its market share back.

Recommendations:
Blind cost reductions and low bidding should not be used as the sole means to gain
market by any company.
An emergency budget should have been kept so that the much lesser impact of
redoing the brake assemblies could be absorbed at the very beginning.
For a person like Warren with a good reputation, personal ego should be kept aside
so that decisions made could be rational.
Goodrich should have used the period when it was black listed to actually develop
improved brake prototypes and strengthen internal processes
Have a robust whistle blower policy at the organization so that the employees on
the ground do not have to fear for their jobs and give in to any unethical practices
of the superiors
Identify a person with whom the buck stops for each product, and make it
mandatory for that person to be personally verifying and signing all test and
production data for the product. Also fix legal culpability.
Make sure a person with enough expertise is placed in responsible positions so
that the person does not have to blindly rely on someone else
For the employees on ground like Lawson and Gretzinger, one should be bold
enough not to succumb to pressure and call a spade a spade at the very beginning.
Simulated ethical dilemma scenarios can be created and the employees at all levels
go through them to develop a firm sense of how to act in crisis.
Executives at responsible positions and with long experience should not have
succumbed to the scenario, and should have held their nerve and corrected the
brakes at the very beginning instead of trying to hush it up.