The year 2007 will be remembered as the year the toy industry was shaken by a seemingly endless stream of recalls. Can we learn something from the 2007 toy recall crisis? Is China really to blame, or are the drivers and causes of this crisis originating from much closer to home? Yes it is, says Mary B Teagarden, Professor of Global Strategy at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, in her 2009 article Learning from Toys: Reflections on the 2007 Recall Crisis, where she contends that much of blame lies with (American) businesses themselves.  Much of the focus has been on China and its contractors, but China is not solely to blame, as many of the  risk drivers come from the companies who outsourced the production, not the Chinese manufacturers.

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