The case study "Bhopal" presented by James Weber of Marquette University reads as if it were written by the public relations department of Union Carbide. Only the company's version of events is presented, and few of the actual facts relevant to the company's behavior in the case received even peripheral mention (Text, pp. 574 583.
To begin a consideration of this case, it must be recognized that Union Carbide is a multinational company. According to one perception of multinational companies, the "owners and managers of global corporations view the entire world as their factory, farm, supermarket, and playground" (Sklar, 1984, p. 8). An alternative view was expressed by former American Undersecretary of State George Ball (1967, p. 26), who referred to multinational corporations as cosmocorps, and defended their activities, which he described as "taking the raw materials produced in one group of countries, transforming these into manufacturing goods with the labor and plant facilities of another group, and selling the products in still a third group . . . with the benefit of instant communications, quick transport, computers, and modern management techniques." Agreeing with Ball, Peter Drucker, (1981, p. 63) said that, "to the developing country . . . , the multinational is both highly important and highly visible." On the other hand, Eric Williams (1970, p. 123), former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, said that the psychological dependence of developing countries on the industrial countries was born of colonialism, and is fostered by the modern multinational corporation; that such "psychological dependence strongly reinforces the other forms of dependence," and perpetuates dependence as "a state of mind"; an action which "seems to have crippled . . . self confidence and . . . self reliance. . . . psychological dependence leads to an ever growing economic and cultural dependence on the outside world."
To be sure, both...