ABSTRACT

Shrivistava suggested, as a result of his study of Union Carbide and the Bhopal incident, that industrial crises ‘are not primarily a technological problem, but an organisational, social and political one’ (Shrivastava, 1988). Chief executives of multinationals, like Anderson of Union Carbide, had a responsibility not only for coping internally with the technical and organisational problems of crisis but also with intercultural and international consequences. This mix of different and sometimes conflicting demands was likely to pose major problems for chief executives. So a critical question is how do chief executives of multinationals manage crisis and uncertainty?