Utilitarianism is a moral principle that holds that the morally right course of action in any situation is the one that produces the greatest balance of benefits over harms for everyone affected. So long as a course of action produces maximum benefits for everyone, utilitarianism does not care whether the benefits are produced by lies, manipulation, or coercion (Andre,Velazques). Gene G. James in his book Business Ethics:Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality, defines whistle blowing as, “the attempt of an employee or former employee of an organization to disclose what he or she believes to be wrongdoing in or by the organization” (Griffin). How does one choose if wrongdoing has happened in a utilitarianistic view?
To present the process of utilitarian theory in a whistleblowing case, I ran across documentation referencing Ford Motor Company’s manufacturing of the Ford Pinto the early 1970’s. Petersen and Farrell discuss the ethical dilemmas faced by engineers highlighted by the 1980 Winamac, Indiana trial of Ford Motor Company (1986, p.3). The Pinto was created as a response to the Japanese competition emerging in the US. Due to competition, Ford was eager to get the subcompact car released in 1971. Changes were made, and Ford was able to reduce the lead time of production by a year and a half to get the car on the road.
Frank Capps, a principal design Engineer charged that management’s weight and price goals along with time requirements resulted in engineers having to place band aid fixes to problems that emerged during testing. Capps raised issues from the safety tests in a series of letters to upper officials and was demoted in his position. Another engineer was fired for a whistleblowing event unrelated to the Pinto fuel system error, but ended up testifying in later years as a witness for one of the burn victims based from knowledge he had.
Griffin states that when it comes to the world of Business Ethics, two real world practices serve as Utilitarianism’s greatest obstacles: cost-benefit analysis and corporate whistle blowing (2000). This made sense in the fact that utilitarianism looks for the greater benefit, what better to do this with than by applying numbers through cost-benefit analysis. Griffin cites W. Michael Hoffman’s article on the Ford Pinto incident. According to data provided in W. Michael Hoffman’s article on the subject, Ford figured that 180 burn deaths, 180 serious injuries, and 2,100 burned vehicles would result from the Pinto. Each of these elements would cost the company $200,000, $67,000, and $700 respectively. The sum of these numbers was then compared to the amount it would cost to fix the Pinto’s faulty gas tank (approximately $11 per vehicle). In the end, human life and welfare totaled $49.5 million. The total cost for installing the gas tank fix on all of the Pinto’s was $137 million. Thus because of this application of the Utilitarian Calculus, Ford chose to release a faulty vehicle. Supposedly this was because the amount of pain that was to be inflicted upon the general public seemed to be significantly less than the amount of pleasure bestowed amongst Ford and its multitudes of stakeholders.
By utilitarian theory, one could deduce the same process in evaluating whether or not to blow the whistle. If completing a cost benefit analysis in this approach, one might think the additional cost to consumers based upon the rework by Ford if they start over, or the cost and pain inflicted upon the employees of Ford who might lose their jobs if the information got out into the public was greater than value of whistleblowing thus resulting the engineer maintaining his silence.
This theory is subjective based upon the individuals valuing process. What value and individual places on a situation, item, and process could change from person to person based upon their own situational experiences and lives. Although Utilitarianism is an excellent theoretical problem solver, real life ethical business decisions require the combined use of several different moral philosophies.

References:
Andre,Clair & Velzaques,Manuel. 1989. Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics. Retrieved from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v2n1/calculating.html
Griffin, Anthony. (Oct 31, 2000). Utilitarianism. Retrieved from http://anton_eclipse.tripod.com/utilitarianism.htm
Martin, Mike W. (2000). Meaningful Work: Rethinking professional ethics. New York. Oxford University Press.
Petersen, J.C. and Farrell, D. (1986) Whistleblowing: Ethical and legal Issues in Expressing Dissent. Dubuque, Iowa. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company.