Contrast these two separate incidents involving world renowned products.
In the fall of 1982 , seven people died after taking Johnson and Johnson's Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that been laced with cyanide.
Guided by the company's credo that the focus of its company was its customers the CEO set on a course of alerting the public to the dangers and recalled 31 million bottles of the product , at a cost of then $ 100 million .
The company told customers that it would stop production until it could provide tamper resistant caplets and launched an investigation to find the culprit . The company also offered to exchange the millions of bottles of Tylenol capsules that had already been sold for Tylenols tablets.
Costly, but it saved and ultimately prospered the firm.
Though initially the market share fell from 34 % to eight, by the end of the year it had rebounded to 24 % percentage.
Years later the company had more than regained market share.
The crisis had given the company in essence to show that it had a serious commitment to product safety and quality to its products.
This model of action should have given other businesses a template example for maintaining credibility and customer trust through disasters.
However Source Perrier did not follow this template model in their experience in the marketplace.
In 1989 Perrier was the leading imported water purveyor in North America with about 6 % of the market share in the United States.
The "naturally sparkling "water comes from a mineral spring in the south of France.
In 1990 Benzene, a poisonous organic liquid, that was known to cause cancer in rats, was found in the product Perrier Water sold in the United States sales market. The concentration of this harmful solvent was found to be 4 times the legal allowed limit for Benzene in drinking water.
At first Source Perrier said it was an isolated incident and reassured people that the underground spring that was the source of the product was surely virgin, pure and unpolluted.
An employee had cleaned some bottling equipment with a fluid containing benzene.
The company reassured the public that "The problem had been immediately dealt with ".
The company recalled 70 million bottles of the product from the North American market.
A few days later, it said the contamination was caused when employees failed to replace charcoal filters that screen out benzene, a chemical impurity in the natural gas in the water.
The company changed its story yet again, saying that the chemical Benzene is naturally present in Carbon Dioxide .
The company insisted that the Benzene which was normally present in the Carbon Dioxide which the company added to create the "fizz" should have been normally filtered out in the bottling process.
As a result of the admission that the carbon Dioxide had been artificially induced to the Perrier Water product - the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made Perrier drop the words "naturally sparkling " from labels , since of course it had now been admitted by Source Perrier that the water product was artificially carbonated.
By 1995 sales in the United States of Perrier Water had fallen in half.
Even though in the coming decade the market for bottled water exploded Perrier had not even regained a portion of its previous market share.
The two diametrically opposed examples of how a company handles a crisis illustrated that crisis management is often the key to a company's very survival.
Handled well it can prosper the company.
Handled poorly it can very well destroy the firm itself.
A wise man once said, ?The first one to plead his cause seems right until his neighbor comes and examines him.? That wise man was Solomon and the saying comes from the book of Proverbs, a book respected as the Word of God by both Christians and Jews alike. As an evangelical Christian born and raised in the charismatic movement, I grew up hearing only one side of the Israeli/Palestinian story, primarily the Israeli side. I always assumed that God gave the land to Jews and if the Palestinians don't like it, well, they can sit on a tack, because everyone knows that Palestinians are the devil. ? Sunday school songs aside, what's happening in the Gaza strip is serious. That's why we need a grown-up Christian response. Sadly, that's exactly what's lacking in this crucial hour.
So here goes.
I believe that Israel has the right to exist in safe and secure borders. I also believe that Israel has the right to defend itself. I understand the sentiment of President-elect Obama when he says that if rockets were being fired at his home while his two daughters were asleep, he would do everything he could to prevent it. I believe Hamas is a terrorist organization that espouses an ideology diabolically opposed to freedom and progress. I despise the fact that they persecute my brothers and sisters in Christ living under their thumb and, of course, firing rockets indiscriminately at civilians is never justified. Period.
So is Israel justified in their heavy- handed approach towards the citizens of Gaza? Judging by the fire breathing on both sides of the debate, I don't see a consensus on this one coming any time soon. As for my fellow Christians, we can debate the subject until Jesus comes back and the debate will have largely missed the point. Sure Israel may'or may not'be justified in their aerial bombing campaign and subsequent invasion of the Gaza strip, but that question alone shouldn't determine the proper Christian response. Why? Because Christians are called to live by a higher standard than what's merely justifiable.
Jesus would have been completely justified in slaying the bloodthirsty Romans of His day. The crimes that the Romans committed against the Jews were every bit as bad, if not worse, than the crimes Palestinians commit against the Jews today. But when Jesus hung on the cross, He showed the world that there's a higher law in God's moral universe than brute justice. And that law is mercy. When it comes between following the suffering redemptive love of the cross and the enemy crushing way of the sword, Christians are supposed to choose the cross'at least that's what Christians used to believe.
No I don't think that followers of Jesus would be prudent to impose New Testament standards on non-Christians, but what I find particularly odd is that when Palestinian Muslims embrace Christianity (like the case of Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas leader who recently made his testimony public) we expect them to embrace a new attitude towards their former enemy Israel. We expect them to love, bless, do good to, and pray for their enemies?like Jesus says to do. But when an Israeli Jew embraces Jesus as Messiah, most of my Christian friends don't expect them to be less militant towards their Palestinian neighbors but more militant. We expect them to fight for their land and liberty even if that means that on the other side homes are demolished, land is confiscated, Palestinians participating in non-violent demonstrations are either tortured, imprisoned, or assassinated (this happens all the time in the West Bank by the way) and, as in the case of Gaza, women and children are denied food and medicine for years on end.
My Christian friends would say that problems in the Middle East would be solved overnight if every Jew and Palestinian would simply confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Without meaning any disrespect to people of other faiths, as a Bible believing Christian, I'm compelled to agree. But here is where the argument falls apart when the wrong people use it. Some of the same people who use this argument are also the ones bombarding the White House with e-mails urging our Secretary of State to let Israel fight. They never seem to ask themselves the question of who would Jesus bomb? What a shame that is! Because how can we as Christians say that the world would be a better place if everyone became one of us when we're the ones cheering when the bombs go flying?
Both Bill Piker & Aaron Taylor are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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