Organizational Structure and Ethical Issues of Kraft Company - Essay Example

 The said structure may be considered bureaucratic or post-bureaucratic depending upon the performance. Bureaucratic is considered when there is a value for merits, hierarchy, and definite separation of responsibilities and roles. On the other hand, a post-bureaucratic organization may have a hierarchy but there is a sense of equality in voicing out opinions and ideas through dialogues. Post-bureaucratic also favors consensus which means the decision would depend upon the majority of votes or prevailing idea (DuBrin 263).

Despite of the “majority wins” mentality, hierarchy still exists in post-bureaucratic organizations. Kraft was sort of a centralized rigid organization way back before its acquisition of Cadbury. After one and a half years of acquiring Cadbury, the company decided to split the organization into two namely the snack food business and grocery business (Geller). In addition, it also made efforts to decentralize its structure by allowing more staff to participate in decision-making and improving the company as a whole.

The decision-making involving product development and manufacturing would be the ones transferred to the lower levels of the organizational hierarchy. In addition, the structure might look like a matrix because the information technology, human resources, and logistics teams would be shared across the organization (Ferrari). Organizational structure is not the only concern in the paper as ethical issues are also important in the productivity and performance of a company. It is already an accepted fact that making mistakes is inevitable but can be reduced by careful preparations, best practices, and sound decisions.

Each mistake can be detrimental to the overall state of the company so the rightness or wrongness of an action or practice is being looked at by the professionals and even by the public. After all, a business depends upon the profit that will be gained from sales that they can make from the market which includes the public. Once the public sees something wrong with the products, services, or practices of a business, they will stop patronizing the business. As a result, the business will earn less due to a decrease in sales.

Worst may come to worst, the business may shut down its operations. When it comes to Kraft Foods, it is not safe from ethical issues as it had been involved with two primary issues: the ethics in cloning food products and the acquisition of Cadbury. It was said that genetically-modified organisms and clones for food production became a controversy in the 90s when people suspect that they would not bring any good to the public. Some people speculated that those can be harmful once taken. It might have a partial truth with it but the Food and Drug Administration had released stricter guidelines for monitoring cloned food goods to ensure the safety of the consumers.

Kraft marketed the Starlink corn which was contaminated. The said corn was used in making the Taco Bell shell which was marketed by Kraft in supermarkets (Brick, Cameron and Woodle 5). In response, Kraft made a series of tests and when they found out the contamination to be true, they quickly pulled out the said product from the market. Another ethical issue would be the acquisition of Cadbury as Kraft made a promise not to close the plant in the Summerdale community.