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Toyota's Culture and the Stick Pedal Recall

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Toyota’s Culture and the “Sticky Pedal” Recall
Toyota may be one of the most successful car manufacturers of all time. A large corporation with a strong culture, one that was characterized by employees sharing the same core values. When a culture is as strong as Toyota’s, things like secrecy, loyalty and full commitment are rewarded. When Toyota first became aware of the faulty accelerator pedals they had produced and let out on the streets they didn’t want to react, they wanted to conceal the issue. Toyota simply took note of the problem, replaced a few of the pedals that were having issues and called it a day. Due to the strong culture, managers and higher ups did not want to disclose this information. Toyota, a huge corporation known for year after year innovation and reliability would not want a few sticky pedals to diminish their reputation. It wasn’t until 2010 that they finally let the cat out of the bag. With more and more sticky pedal cases being documented, Toyota knew they had to do something. There was simply way too many of these faulty pedals out on the road now, people were dying. In reaction to the situation, Toyota issued one of the largest recalls to actually fix these pedals. They now severely damaged their reputation, got hit with many fines, and one of the largest criminal penalties imposed on a car manufacturer. The corporation lost trust and hurt their reputation, they were now trying to rebuild and regain what they lost.
A cultural change at Toyota would be a huge thing, how could a corporation with a strong culture that values secrecy be more transparent? Transparent culture was the exact opposite of what Toyota had developed. This would be a very difficult change but they knew they must do something. They needed to be more proactive of manufacturing issues and react to them faster, not being afraid to tell the world that they may have a

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