The casebook asks what happens when a firm's own playbook becomes the biggest threat to the business. In a polycrisis environment of pandemics, political instability, online outrage and fractured supply chains, conventional strategies fail, and the book follows a dozen leaders who faced extraordinary pressure and chose between leading on principle and retreating from responsibility. Cases include Starbucks in Sumatra, Unilever's strategic shift under Paul Polman, Chobani's hiring of refugees and a brewery caught in a social media storm. Each case comes with MBA-aligned frameworks and teaching notes for business students, executives and entrepreneurs, on leading authentically during crisis, engaging fragile communities, making principled long-term decisions and turning organizational values into strategy. The book draws on two decades of the authors' research and runs to 393 pages in its digital edition.
Key Messages
- A firm's own playbook can be the largest threat to the business when pandemics, political instability, online outrage and broken supply chains arrive together (Miklian and Katsos 2025).
- A dozen leaders, among them at Starbucks in Sumatra, Unilever under Paul Polman and Chobani, show the choice between leading with principle and retreating from responsibility.
- Each case is paired with MBA-aligned frameworks and teaching notes, so the book works as a course text for MBA students and as a reference for executives.
- The same research became Force Majeure, a business and crisis simulation across roughly 200 real-world markets, used for rerunnable crisis exercises in organizations and as a classroom simulation mapped chapter by chapter to course material.
What the cases teach
The cases run from Starbucks in Sumatra and Unilever's strategic shift under Paul Polman to Chobani's hiring of refugees and a brewery's social media crisis, a dozen leaders in all. The themes are leading authentically during crisis, engaging with fragile communities, making principled long-term decisions, and translating organizational values into strategy, and each case comes with MBA-aligned frameworks and teaching notes for business students, executives and entrepreneurs. The book was published on 17 June 2025 and runs to 393 pages in its digital edition.
The research behind the cases is on this site. The crisis playbook argument, that climate change, globalization and growing inequality converge to magnify crises, appeared in Harvard Business Review in November 2021. The evidence on small firms comes from 34 interviews with SME owners in Beirut (Business Horizons, 2025) and a review of how small businesses experience shocks (International Small Business Journal 40(2), 2022). The leadership argument is developed in the Cambridge Element Ethical Leadership in Conflict and Crisis (2024).
Companion simulation: Force Majeure
Force Majeure is the business and crisis simulation built from the casebook research. Players run a company across roughly 200 real-world markets while the game runs the crises, through thousands of cultural and economic scenarios and more than a billion unique campaign paths. Organizations use it for rerunnable crisis exercises, and MBA instructors use it as a classroom simulation mapped chapter by chapter to course material. The public site is conquercrisis.io, and the simulation was built for the boardroom and the MBA classroom.
Research Topics
crisis management
responsible business
case studies
polycrisis
business ethics
crisis leadership
MBA teaching cases
Citation
Jason Miklian, John E. Katsos. Responsible Management in Crisis: A Global Case Primer. Cambridge University Press, 2025.
BibTeX Citation
@book{miklian2025_responsible_management_in_cris,
title = {Responsible Management in Crisis: A Global Case Primer},
author = {Miklian, Jason and Katsos, John E.},
publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
year = {2025},
url = {https://miklian.org/papers/responsible-management-in-crisis-a-global-case-primer/}
}