McDonald - The Arthur Page Society

management is listening for threats by issue/environmental scanning. Once an
issue is identified, the next step is to determine whether it is something that will
affect the organization. If the answer is that it will, then the corporation must give
the issue priority in pro-active, timely strategizing.
Choices of response to issues include:
• Acquiescence to demands of opposition—stop doing what is being
criticized
• Negotiation with oppositional forces—strive for compromise and
consensus
• Confrontation —discredit opposition, put forth arguments against
opposition, and/or take legal action against opposition).
4.3 Teaching Points in the McDonald’s Case
1. Issues do not develop overnight. Constant monitoring of an issue provides
opportunity to incorporate proactive, rather than defensive, responses early in the
process.
McDonald’s had ample opportunity to realize that the issue of health and nutrition
was gaining momentum and that they were being targeted. As early as 1986, an
executive with a major public relations firm working on the McDonald’s account sent a
memo to McDonald’s referencing a meeting that had been held on nutrition with the
recommendation that McDonald’s “should attempt to deflect the basic negative thrust of
our critics.” 128 Ten years later, the Greenpeace advocacy group in England had specified
that one of the things “wrong” with McDonald’s was that their food was unhealthy for
consumers. Issue scanning would have alerted McDonald’s to the growing controversy
35