Ethics at Coca Cola - Essay Example

Ethics at Coca Cola Coco Cola’s current drive to make changes in order to face concerns regarding environment protection and ethical behavior in its marketing practices is fueled by organizational leadership as shown by the efforts of its executives. Dominique Reiniche, Coke’s European Business Head saw that reading the social and political environments in which the beverage business exist could lead the company to greater achievements. Reiniche saw that society, especially in the West is becoming more and more concerned with how companies conduct themselves with respect to the environment, how products are exactly being produced or manufactured.

This reading of the social context allowed her to execute changes via the political platform by virtue of her leadership of the European Beverages Association. Her leadership of the association thus allowed for important changes specifically restricting marketing of coca cola and other softdrinks not only to make ethical changes in how to do business within her company but also industry-wide. Consequently, ethical changes made by Reiniche were wise with respect to the strategic advantage they conferred to Coke.

Other beverage companies were moving in environmentally and ethically driven direction, so Coke could not afford to be left behind and thus, make the move instead a source of competitive advantage. Collaboration and effective communication with regulators, industry players and other non-governmental organization as shown by Reiniche is another facet of organizational leadership. The change initiated with respect to restricting marketing of softdrinks to children necessitated not only the efforts of one company but the collaboration of many concerned parties.

Collaboration allows for easier facility of the Ethics at Coca Cola 2implementation of the ethical agenda through support and the authoritative use of influence and power to make changes (it greatly helped for instance that Reiniche was President of the European Beverages Association that she welded power to lead the industry to make changes). Furthermore, collaboration only works with effectively communicating agenda to all concerned parties. Coke’s chief executive by Neville Isdell has communicated that ethical changes regarding operations to address environmental concerns are what Coke have in mind – with speeches as he did for the Worldwide Fund for Nature’s annual conference.

In action, he has in fact led his company to collaborate with WWF to cut back and recycle the billion of liters of water it uses annually. Creativity and innovation also mark the practice of organizational leadership shown in the way that Coke’s move to work with Greenpeace to manufacture more environmentally friendly coolers and vending machines. Product reformulation while not itself focused on Coca-Cola’s core product attest that the ethical agenda has reached operational changes. Organizational leadership also shows that continuity of agenda is shown through a track record of commitment to changes in all facets.

For instance, Coke leadership’s has taken into consideration the impact to the agricultural sector of its expansion to other beverage products. It has also continually addressed concerns that its cutback on marketing will only be limited in one medium (television) and transferred to another (the Web).