Jessie Carpenter
Professor Merrie Marks
MGMT500.2 Principles of Management
21 September 2013
Case Analysis: Micky Arison and the Costa Concordia Tragedy
The former CEO of Carnival Corp. faced one of his biggest challenges when the Costa Concordia cruise ship began to sink off the Italian coast in January 2012. His actions at the time caused a bit of hype in the public eye. People wondered why Micky Arison wasn’t taking a more public role during the incident. From across the seas Mr. Arison expressed his condolences to victims via Twitter and in company news releases. He also gave his personal assurance that Carnival would take care of the passengers, crew and the victims and announced a comprehensive safety audit (Kinicky, Williams 92).
Mr. Arison is known to be a big delegator. His management style is relatively less involved with the operating decisions of the multiple cruise lines named under Carnival Corporation. When the cruise ship crisis was reported he chose to stay in Miami and leave the immediate response decisions to the executives of that division as to avoid becoming a distraction in Italy (“Arison on Costa”). While another of the cruise ships under his domain was stranded at sea with diminishing resources Arison was publicly seen attending a Miami basketball game (Young). He was criticized for that seemingly negligent behavior as well.
After stepping down from his position as CEO a year later, he went on to say that he would be taking an even less hands-on role by stating, “I’m going to be looking to Arnold to run the day-to-day corporate operations and I may even take a couple of golf lessons.” Arnold Donald is the new CEO while Arison remains on the Board of Directors as Chairman of the British-American Firm (Trotman).
I believe Arison’s decisions to avoid media most negatively affected customers who were looking for him for explanations