Johnson& Johnson Crisis Management

The Johnsons and Johnson's (J&J) corporation was involved in a crisis with its Tylenol capsule product when a certain murder added cyanide to some of the capsules leading to the death of some people. This resulted to the corporation destroying millions of capsules at an expense of $100 million and also launched a public awareness campaign to protect consumers (Archie, 2008).

It was not easy for J&J to take the decision he took. Probably, he took this action to avoid more similar cases reoccurring. As stipulated, it was a criminal act and it must have been a hard decision to make in destroying 31 million capsules at an expense of $100 million. Although it was not the company's fault, it took a lot of time for people to trust is products. Things could not be quite different even if it was not the company's fault since it was a matter of life and death to the users and not who did it. When the product was being reintroduced, the company had to come up with a campaign to re-introduce its products and restore confidence back to the consumers.

This J&J crisis is not different at all with the Ford and Firestone's linkage which caused a lot of harm. They both bear similar consequences because at the end of the day it was the public safety which was at stake no matter who really caused the harm. In both incidences, it was the management which was accused of causing immediate action and public distrust.

J&J was acting on a social responsibility. This is because as mentioned earlier, the corporation destroyed 31 million capsules at an expense of $100 million. It is not easy for a company to undertake such an expense. The company took a social responsibility of destroying the remaining capsules since they could not use it not being sure whether those capsules had not been added the poisonous cyanide. This is a good motivation since other companies can learn a lot from the actions taken at J&J that have landed them on these lists.