Disclosing the quality-data falsification, and the management overhaul (2017)

A culture of profit first, under a distinguished name

At the root of this misconduct lies the way a composite manufacturer’s separated divisions had each been run against the single yardstick of their own profit. Quality assurance and quality audit sat inside divisions chasing that profit, so that delivery and margin pressure reached the inspection floor — an arrangement only articulated as a structural problem once it was pointed out from outside. That chairman and president Kawasaki acknowledged he had “only been looking at whether profits were there” was candid, and at the same time a measure of the gap between a company praised as first-rate and what was being left unattended beneath it.

Resignations and fines are a necessary settlement, but they do not by themselves replace a corporate culture. In the past too, each scandal brought an apology from the top and a pledge of prevention, and still the disposition that put divisional profit first remained. Whether quality assurance can be separated from the divisions, whether people on the floor can voice dissent — whether the distinguished name survives depends on the plain, long rebuilding that follows the single decision to disclose, and on how well it is done.