This research examines the actions of the Johnson & John son Corporation in conjunction with the Tylenol product tamper ing case. The issue involved in this case is consumer product safety, and the appropriate corporate response to cases involv ing this issue. Consumer product safety is an area of govern ment regulation (Galambos, and Pratt, 1988). For that reason alone, this case and this issue are worth examining. Addition ally, however, questions of product safety can destroy public confidence in a corporation more quickly than can any other single issue (Steiner, and Steiner, 1988). Thus, cases involv ing the issue of product safety are of critical importance to corporations.
STAKEHOLDER MODEL OF JOHNSON & JOHNSON
With respect to the post Second World War time period in the United States, the status of the individual appeared, in the 1960s, to move in the direction of parity with business. The combination of rapid technological innovation and the advent of the Reagan Administration in Washington, however, demonstrated that what appeared in the 1960s to be a fundamen tal shift in societal philosophy was, in fact, more an aberra tion than a permanent change.
The propensity of the individual in American society to consume, as opposed to save, appears to be inconsistent with the capacity of business, abetted by government, to eliminate jobs, shift labor utilization, and effectively reduce income almost at will. Each of these phenomena has occurred with increasing intensity, however, since 1981. Individuals in con temporary American society, therefore, appear to have been effectively brainwashed into embracing a relationship between themselves and business/government in which they are unequal partners, in which they receive the fewest benefits, and in which they bear most of the costs. Nevertheless, individuals, as consumers and as a group, are important stakeholders in cases involving product safety, because th...