چکیده :
Entering the new century, foreign Fortune 500 companies operating in
China and Russia have encountered an increasing number of public crises concerning
various social and environmental issues. The public crisis refers to an unexpected,
non-routine, and media-exposed event in which affected stakeholders (e.g., community
members, employees, customers) charge that a company has compromised their
interests. Although many of these crises involved the misdeeds of multinational
corporations (MNCs), the story is beyond catching baddies. Instead, there are
contextual challenges rooted in the social, political, and market environments of
China and Russia that drive the occurrence of the public crisis regardless of MNC
misdeeds. Considering the institutional change and stakeholder growth in these
countries, it is increasingly important for MNCs to understand and effectively deal
with these challenges. This article provides insights to MNCs and researchers in three
ways. First, the article reveals the patterns of MNC crises in the two countries from
2000 to 2011 and presents the variation between the two countries. Second, the
article identifies four types of contextual challenges, including the global-national
challenge, the social-trust challenge, the institutional-voids challenge, and the
normalized-misdeed challenge. Finally, the article discusses the managerial implications
of these challenges and recommends tackling strategies.