Introduction
Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency by installing a ‘defeat device' in certain diesel engines. The device enabled the company to cheat on the emission levels of the engines by indicating that the engines meet the regulation during laboratory testing. However, in the real world, the engines' emissions were found to exceed the limit provided by the Environmental Protection Agency. This revelation resulted in organizational crisis in the form of mistrust, uncertainty, legal concerns, reputation loss, financial loss, and public safety concern (Painter & Martins, 2017) . This paper provides a comprehensive policy to address such ethical happening and prevent future organizational crisis due to unethical endeavors.
Policy to Resolve the Ethical Issue
The company needs to revisit its core principles of credibility, reliability, and solidity that makes it upstanding and ethical. The emission scandal provided controversial perspectives of Volkswagen's history. From its past operations, the company invested billions of dollars in designing hybrid vehicles and other green initiatives and environmental preservation efforts. In this case, the new policy should focus on restoring the core principles of the enterprise and fostering the efforts of legal compliance and environmental conservation. In order to restore its reputation, the firm should design ‘acknowledgment, responsibility, and action policy' (Painter & Martins, 2017) . The policy aims at preventing future recurrence of the unethical practice while punishing those attributed to designing and installing the defeat devices in the engines.
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The policy entails punitive actions that can be categorized into retributive and utilitarian (Painter & Martins, 2017) . The utilitarian elements of the policy need to emphasize on safeguarding the customer and restoring the best practices. In the first case, the company needs to fix the hardware and software that will correct the recalled vehicles with high emission rates. The second restorative policy is to pay costs related to enforcement measures and training of customer protection. The U.S settlement of the costs aggregated to $2.7 billion towards the environmental trust and an agreement to develop zero-emission vehicles in the next years at a cost of $2.0 billion (Painter & Martins, 2017) . Despite being retributive measures, integrating this provision in the policy offers the restorative initiatives. This is because they are developed to act as practical compensation for the adversative effects of the emissions deceit to the environment and customers.
Ethical Decision-Making Models and Associated Parameters
There are various models that can be employed by the company in making decisions related to image repair and management of the crisis. This case will utilize the Integrity Capacity Model which discusses the legal, economic, legal, moral, and behavioral complexities of business ethics. This requires leadership accountability in attaining better future results, observing the correct and right rules and regulation, nurturing sound character within the entity, and developing an ethically supportive and sound context (Whittier, Williams, & Dew, 2006) . This will be achieved through two main approaches.
First, the attribution approach which argues that the company needs to issue public statements that relate to damage limitation and crisis management. In providing the acknowledgment, the company should focus on its response strategy to the crisis and responsibility to the damages caused (Barrett, et al., 2015) . The company should clearly state if the defeat device was a corporate decision or a practice followed by a few individuals. After acknowledging, the company should identify the rogue engineers and individuals who oversaw the installation of the defeat device and take necessary disciplinary actions. However, the larger blame should be kept on the entire corporation. As a result, the firm should design new quality assurance techniques to handle the environmental concerns raised during the scandal.
Secondly, the mortification approach requires the company to apologize to the public and mostly the customers. The company should come out clear by indicating its deep regrets related to the scandal and taking the responsibilities related to the emission issue (Painter & Martins, 2017) . In making the decision, the company should avoid downplaying the damages related to the engine irregularities. Defeat devices are in fact irregularities in the automobile manufacturing sector and the company should be ready for legal responsibilities accompanied by such acts. In this case, the correction mechanism needs to be inclusive and balanced to deal with moral complexity issues in an effective way (Castille & Fultz, 2018) . This will require a leaner organizational structure that is highly decentralized to handle management complexity that contributed to the installation of cheat devices.
Strategy for Communicating the Policy to the Organization
Technology remains the main communication tool to enhance information orientation during the management of a crisis (Painter & Martins, 2017) . Therefore, the use of print media and social media platforms can be used in communicating the implemented strategy across the organization. These platforms also provide the capabilities of successful managing essential information required in decision making in the form of collection, analyzing, and organizatio n. In addition, social media and print media platforms for communicating nurtures information values and behaviors in terms of confidentiality and privacy (Painter & Martins, 2017) . The two communication channels are people-centric making them essential in crisis management when handling the emission issue. The approaches are effective in lowering collaborative cheating where a certain group of engineers and managers colluded to install devices that will cheat emission testing (Castille & Fultz, 2018) .
Potential Limitation of the Policy
First, implementing the policy may hinder the company’s ability to minimize costs, handle deficiencies in monitoring and reporting systems, and meeting of deadlines. These situational factors may hinder adherence to the new ethical policy. Secondly, the policy may not immediately restore the image of the company to the public and key customers. Thirdly, the policy entails corrective measures that will lead to the organizational change in the form of re-alignment and establishment of better security processes (Painter & Martins, 2017) . Such changes are costly and are relat ed to employee resistance.
Strategies for Monitoring and Compliance
First, the company should improve the transparency in the testing protocols to ensure that real-time testing of diesel emissions meet the limits provided by regulating agencies. Secondly, the company should focus on early remedy in the form of increasing its responsiveness in case an issue arises. Thirdly, the company should strengthen the integrity of its leadership and focus on the three values of "reliability, credibility, and solidity" and acting in a sustainable and responsible manner. This will require the organizational transformation in the management structure to make a leaner and decentralized structure. The aim of this strategy is to improve compliance with the core values and the firm commitment to social responsibility.
References
Barrett, S., Speth, R., Eastham, S., Dedoussi, I., Ashok, A., Malina, R., & Keith, D. (2015). Impact of the Volkswagen emissions controls defeat device on US public health. Environmental Research Letters, 10 , 1-11.
Castille, C., & Fultz, A. (2018). How does collaborative cheating emerge? A case study of the Volkswagen. Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 94-104). Hawaii: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
Painter, C., & Martins, J. T. (2017). Organisational communication management during the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: A hermeneutic study in attribution, crisis management, and information orientation. Knowledge and Process Management, 24 , 204-218.
Whittier, N., Williams, S., & Dew, T. (2006). Evaluating ethical decision-making models: a review and application. Society and Business Review, 1 (3), 235-247.
