Coca Cola Companys Organization Challenges - Essay Example

Coca Cola Company’s Organization Challenges As organizations thrive to stay relevant in the market, they face a lot of challenges. The aim of every business enterprise is to make profits and more profits. This objective is realized when certain strategies and plans are well designated within the company. However, in many organizations, the strategies face a lot of upheavals during implementation. The success of any company is therefore determined by the ability of the business to meet these inevitable challenges and combat them successfully and meet the set goals of the enterprise. This paper posits that challenges are obvious in normal business environment. Some of the obvious setbacks include global recession, terrorism, intense competition and rivalry, technological changes and changes in climate. This study delves in studying the Coca Cola Company’s challenges and how it redresses them. Background of Coca Cola Company The Coca Cola Co. is an American beverage corporation that is multinational. It delves in the manufacturing, retailing and marketing of non-alcoholic beverage drinks all over the world. It has its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia (Anders, 2013 p 43). The multinational company is renowned for flagging the Coca-Cola product that was invented in 1889 by a pharmacist known as John Stith Pemberton. The formula of Coca-Cola was developed by Asa Griggs Candler in 1889 and has since then been discrete in the company. Coca-Cola Co. operates what is referred to as a franchised distribution system (Anders, 2013 p 43). The company is responsible for production of the syrup concentrate that is sold and distributed to the numerous bottling companies spread all over the world that holds exclusive territories. Challenges Coca-Coca Co. happens to be identifiable company. Being attractive is one of the superior strengths that it has. It happens to be known worldwide with a powerful brand. It has a clear logo that is also acknowledged with ease (Anders, 2013 p 47). With no doubt, there is no drink company that meets the heights of Coca-Cola’s social status. Some people buy Coke drink not because of its unique taste but because of the need to conform to the global society that uses Coke. In spite of these advantages, Coca-Cola Co. still encounters challenges. These setbacks are essentially a threat to the popularity and the expansion of the company. The challenges threaten the business. Loss of trust has been a recurrent problem that has rocked the Coca-Cola Co. for a very long time. Each day, the company strives to earn respect from the consumers (Anders, 2013 p 73). This is done by ensuring that they produce drinks of the best quality. They aim to improve their logo and increase the strength of their brand. The company aims to win the trust of the customers. However, this has failed to happen several times. For instance, lately, there has been controversy about the coke drink in many countries. The drink is alleged to contain too much sugar and a lot of concentrated chemicals which is greatly different from the original coke drink formula that was produced in 1889 (Anders, 2013 p 43). Consequently, some consumers have lost confidence and trust with the beverage company. This is a big disadvantage to the company. Intense rivalry and competition by other drink companies have affected the Coca-Cola Co. in one way or another. It is a fact that no company matches Coca-Cola in the beverage business. However, it faces competition from other smaller companies. For example, Pepsi is increasingly becoming a threat to Coca-Cola as it produces drink from cola just like Coca-Cola. Pepsi ha intensely embarked on meticulous and severe marketing campaign for their products against Coca-Cola. The popularity of Pepsi is increasing and some consumers are opting away from consuming Coca-Cola drinks. This is indeed not placating to the Coca-Cola Company. High labor turnover has also slowed the progress of the Coca-Cola Co. Often; the management is compelled to make some decisions through the human resource department (Anders, 2013 p 90). There is always need to improve the labor force and better the work rate especially when the objectives of the business are not being met and the reason is based on the labor force. Alternatively, the company often has the urge of injecting in fresh and young blood in the company, hoping for an increment in productivity. Unfortunately, this comes with problems in the labor force. There are cases where the newly recruited workers are incompetent, naïve or even inexperienced (Anders, 2013 p 91). This affects the production level of the company, and the company has lost a lot of revenue through high labor turn over. The above challenges have the prompting factors. Basically, the management and the kind of leadership at Coca-Cola are blamed for the above setbacks. In most countries, there have been complaints of existing dictatorial leaders who do not foster communication that is free and open for the betterment of the company (Anders, 2013 p 32). Consequently, new and better ideas from the junior staff members do not reach the management for materialization. The labor force and particularly the marketing department have been accused to be responsible for the increasing pressure that the company is being subjected to by their rivals like Pepsi. The department is not being aggressive enough to counter the strong influence of competitors. They wait for pressure to pile before they can come up with a creative and original marketing strategy to counter the rivals. By the time this is done, competitors would have moved one more step closer to Coca-Cola Co. Demotivation of junior most employees have made the Coca-Cola Co. vulnerable and susceptible to the three situations studied above (Anders, 2013 p 43). The low ranked employees are sometimes subjected to long working hours in other countries. They are not well paid and their salaries and allowances are often delayed. Some workers have complained of harassment by their superiors (Anders, 2013 p 43). These are not motivating at all and have often led to migration of workers away from Coca-Cola or existence of a bunch of demoralized staff that produce less quality products which end up ruining the reputation of the Coca-Cola Co. Good, ambitious and objective companies do not sit back and watch when challenges emanate in the company (Lam, 2011 p 8). Today, business has evolved to scenario of the survival of the fittest. Companies who cannot sustain the intense heat of competition lag behind and register loses in the field. This is not the desire of companies. Profits have to be realized and when challenges emerge, mitigation measures must be searched for and implemented in time for efficacy. Coca-Cola Co. is not an exception. Since 1889, it has managed to be the world’s largest beverage producing company. It has been vibrant and active in the business for centuries. There is no secret to this achievement (Lam, 2011 p 8). The company vest a lot of energy in combating these setbacks and this is something other dink companies have failed in doing hence getting extinct in the business. The company has often restructured its leadership (Walsh & Dowding, 2012 p 76). The human resource department is given autonomy to search and lure exceptional leaders who can pursue and realize the goals of the company. Currently, Coca-Cola Co. boasts of exemplary leadership in its numerous departments. The leaders are good managers; they are free to the employees and are good ambassadors of the company. Coca-Cola Co. seeks and hires leaders who have got good performance and production records. This ensures that the leaders employed are able to coordinate their staff together and work with them to ensure that the objectives of the company are achieved. There is need to concentrate on staff appraisal, recognition and rewards (Walsh & Dowding, 2012 p 77). This is an area that has been identified by the company and it is evident that the company is spending a lot of resources to realize that this happens. For example, the company has noticed with much concerned that most of the staff members are complaining of low wages, thus it is constantly working on a waging system that intends to improve the salaries and the allowances of the workers, the company, through its numerous branches organizes annual awards ceremonies where exemplary and outstanding employees are rewarded (Walsh & Dowding, 2012 p 77).. Besides, the company has promotional programs that aim at promoting workers on merit. This serves to win the confidence and trust of workers so that they can be enthusiastic and productive to the company. In other words, the company strives to improve the working environment for its workers so that the employees may not have a bad mouth towards the company. The Coca-Cola Co. also needs to invest so much in the marketing department (Lam, 2011 p 8). It is a fact the logo and the brands of the company are the most dominant in the beverage market. However, companies like Pepsi are making huge strides towards the summit where Coca-Cola sits comfortable. This is not good since it is not easy to say that Coca-Cola might still be comfortable in the summit in the next ten years since competition intensifies with each passing day. The company has often been renowned to be creative and aggressive in marketing (Lam, 2011 p 8). The kinds of adverts that they use in launching and popularizing their products are superb and master piece. However, the rising competition means that the company has got more work to do. They marketing department must get rid of the archaic methods of marketing and invent new ways and better strategies that will see them increasing the distance between the company and their rivals. Adverts and promotional shows are considered. There is need to realign employees towards the goals of the Coca-Cola Co. The employees recruited or the ones existing must be conscious of the objectives, aims and the visions that are held by Coca-Cola Co. worldwide (Anders, 2013 p 100). When this is fully implemented, the employees will be able to work without supervision and produce the desired outputs. Besides, such employees are kept on toes by the goals, vision and the objectives (Lam, 2011 p 8). New norms and behaviors must also be inculcated in the company to transform it to a better one. The business environment will be friendly and favorable for working on. In summary, the paper has studied the Coca-Cola Co. paying emphasis to the challenges it faces like loss of trust, demoralized workers and intense competition. The challenges can be redressed if the transformational and transactional measures put forth are implemented fully. Coca-Cola Co. is still relevant in the market because of its great power to counter such challenges. Other companies must emulate this unique trait about Coca-Cola if they seek to stay relevant in the highly competitive business world. References Anders, J. (2013). Coca-Cola's Marketing Strategy: An Analysis of Price, Product and Communication. GRIN Verlag. Lam, A. (2011, April). Innovative organizations: structure, learning and adaptation. In Paper presented at the DIME Final Conference (Vol. 6, p. 8). Walsh, H., & Dowding, T. J. (2012). Sustainability and The Coca-Cola Company: The Global Water Crisis and Coca-Cola's Business Case for Water Stewardship. International Journal of Business Insights & Transformation, 4. Read More