Post-bhopal Behaviour at a Chemical Company

The Bhopal disaster where Methyl Isocyanate gas escaped from a Union Carbide plant led to more than 2000 deaths and caused illness in countless others. Chemical industry officials are particularly disturbed that an accident such as Bhopal could occur in what is reported to be the safest manufacturing industry in the United States. The tragedy stimulated moves in the United States that will change the handling and production of toxic chemicals as well as the dissemination of information on potential hazards and safety precautions for toxic and hazardous substances to the public. This article examines some of these changes by looking at the behaviour of a large chemical company not directly involved in Bhopal (which we have given the pseudonym Chemco) following the Bhopal disaster. Our interest is in determining what type of actions Chemco has taken in response to this type of low-probability-high-consequence event. In particular, we are interested in analysing the firm's behaviour using a conceptual framework grounded in organizational theory and behavioural decision theory. Data on Chemco's response to Bhopal were collected through more than 20 hour-long interviews with different executives in the company. This article should thus be viewed as a field study that illustrates a set of conceptual ideas. It is in the spirit of studies advocated by Campbell (1975). One must be cautious in over-generalizing from single-case naturalistic observations but these empirical studies may be necessary ingredients for developing more general theories of behaviour. Our intention is to stimulate further research in the area of decision-making for lowprobability events where firms feel compelled to respond to specific crises that may affect not only their future but that of the industry. Our motivation for conducting interviews at Chemco was to determine whether managers in an organization exhibited a set of heuristics and biases which have been found empirically in studies of individuals. Charles Schwenk (1984) has argued that the same cognitive simplification strategies that have been found by cognitive psychologists and behaviourad decision theorists may affect strategic decisionmaking in an organization. We were very sympathetic to this view before beginning the interviewing process but were careful not to inject this bias when interfacing with the Chemco executives. For this reason the ideas and the theory found in the received literature will be presented after the story line rather than preceding it.