Volkswagen German car giant has admitted scandal of cheating diesel engines emissions tests, If you were a CEO what would be your immediate response?

In business and economics, crisis management is an immediate response to a corporate crisis or a scandal and issue management is a long term response to a destructive risk to a company's reputation or trust  (Griffin A, 2014). This perception is helpful in understanding what would be the Volkswagen's CEO immediate response to the emissions scandal when suddenly faced by a huge crisis of trust. If VW won’t react as such and belated public apologies this will far more damage to its reputation than the original cheating emission test in USA when the Volkswagen's engineers installed software in its cars to disguise illegal emission levels, the incidence that  losing them sales, market share, and investor and consumer confidence.

For this reason I think that the central to the problem is effective crisis management  ,VW’s priority should be immediate response in identifying and addressing the situation in the first place and make a sense that never ignore  the problem or decisive is that nothing like this ever happens at Volkswagen again (exclude option2). Subsequently if I was a CEO I would postponed public campaigns because of huge public mistrust (exclude option1) and deferred solution measures for long term plan (exclude option 3) .

 So as a CEO, my first response would be making a statement of public apology on emergency for acknowledging the incidence, expressing concern and showing a good example of a corporate honest immediate response to avoid serious reputational, financial and commercial impact of the scandal.

Public will only accept your company again, if there was a clear apology from your side. As a CEO, I have to ensure that now everything is fine and there is a separate intelligence department that will look after the things going on the in the company.

And definitely, a unique marketing strategy will become the key point to win back the customers.

I agree with M's Ghada answers, thanks for the invitation. 

CEO should follow the following order to gain back the trust.

1. Public apologize and begging for the forgiveness  of regulators, government and consumers.

2.Introduce even solution-measures  such as tougher compliance and governance standards in the company.

3. Do public campaigns to win back the trust of customers, employees, partners, investors and the whole public.

4. Decisive is that nothing like this ever happens at Volkswagen again  .

A Japanese automaker Mitsubishi is also got in into a similar scam. It is business, where trust is very important. These brands are known for their reliability factors. Hence an apology is the first priority, and resignation of VW CEO is another good step made by them. Then they have to introduce a solution that will make people to forget what ever had happened so far. I hope VW will do it well. 

For every mistakes committed it is a must to apologize, so as the CEO he/she must conduct a public apology and beg for the forgiveness  of regulators, government and consumers. Then that's the time to introduce even solution measures such as tougher compliance and governance standards in the company. Winning back someone's trust will take time but VW gotta be patient and pay for the consequences. So I think they must let the issue to mellow down first before doing another campaign to gain public trust. 

Apologise for what has happened, mitigate the outcome and make sure you will learn from your mistakes. 

All accounting negligent direct and indirect because they harm the company's reputation with customers and better expelled from the company

If the test engine emissions falsified , then it will lead to global warming . So VW violated the limit on emissions allowed by the European Union and the World . Then immediately VW must withdraw all its production which has been launched without exception , and must pay damages because he OZONE layer is damaged to the world if it was operated / used consumers worldwide . Another example Honda ever launching a car with Air Bag that is not functioning properly , then the Honda sportsmanship withdraw all car production around the world without exception .

VW is not the only one.

630,000 cars from different brands will be called this year in Europe to have the software corrected.

Why is everyone looking at VW?

From your list in will go with no. 1.

If Euro 6 emission regulations is very hard to comply what will happen when Euro 7 pollution regulations will be issued? All will do like VW. But they already done it. 

Thank for your invitation. In case  that I am in a position of CEO, I will take the following procedures :

1- Good statement of a public apology letter to the Customers, Employees, Partners, Shareholders

2- Consisting of the Crisis Cell from the the top Management of all Departments to set up the optimal solution to face huge reactions from all in order to reduce the worst impact of this Scandal

3- Open a negotiation with official side to explain the situation in order to allocate a level of the violation of General trade Rules and Regulations / International Trade Organization.

4- Immediate procedures to withdraw all products distributed to be replace by the  new  modified product with compensation all customers for any Economic & Financial losses or delay in their works

5-Creation Climate to dialogue between the supplier and customer  to clear up the situation and confirm  definitely the real reasons behind this mistake with actions taken to avoid that in the future

6- Promise honestly that a such case will never repeated in the future with explanation of  VW History in the healing and adopting High Level Technology to find relevant solutions and damping any worse case