The Coca-Cola Company is one of the world’s major beverage companies, handling and marketing Diet Coke, Coke, Sprite, and Fanta, four of the world’s top five soft beverages. Coca-Cola became the most valuable brand name globally due to these goods, and the corporation was able to achieve success in many areas of business. The firm works globally, with the world’s biggest distribution infrastructure, allowing it to reach and service customers in over 200 countries. This essay analyzes the ethical conduct of Coca-Cola company.
Coca-Cola utilized its clout and lobbying power to minimize the significance of its drinks as the major cause of childhood obesity and diabetes. Coca-Cola was effectively paying for quiet or better outcomes in their favour by paying a big sum of money to a favourable lobbyist rather than finding an unbiased third party with no financial or political affiliations (Noria Corporation, 2021). It is a pattern of competing interests. Coca-Cola is noted for its generosity and educational efforts. The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) was recently chastised for making substantial payments from Coca-Cola to sponsor obesity deterrence education for patients.
While Coca-Cola is a global leader in drinks and other socially engaged goods, its slew of ethical difficulties has led it down several perilous paths. Ethics may affect a company’s profits and its legal standing (Le et al., 2017). The biggest issue is the leadership, which has been ineffective and poisonous. The fact that the director of the branding department leaked the recipe is somewhat of an accusation that Coca-Cola has to reform its leadership if it wants to continue in business. Mainly, Coca-Cola must lead not just in the United States but also with all of its international partners, avoiding and condemning events like the one in Columbia.
There were also several limitations with ethics in the Coca-Cola company. The biggest controversy that affected Coca-Cola’s image was when senior executives suspected of selling the formula to Pepsi’s competitors. Under the fraud statute, corporate espionage is a criminal (Le et al., 2017). According to an informant (Le et al., 2017), Joya Williams, an executive office administrator for Coca-Cola’s brand in Atlanta, was said to have provided him with sensitive information. That was an issue for the corporation since senior executives were leaking corporate secrets for financial gain.
Although Coca-Cola was a global brand and name, nepotism was rampant depending on the locale. Countries like Guatemala were known for granting their executives carte blanche and higher compensation, while the workers were pushed to the bottom. Employees at the Guatemala bottling factory sued Coca-Cola in 2010, alleging that the company used violence to suppress unions and quiet criticism while failing to provide the workers’ fundamental requirements (Noria Corporation, 2021). Another issue is Coca-reluctance Cola’s to address endemic concerns with its licensed partners, where unions are ruthlessly suppressed. While no evidence has ever surfaced that Coca-Cola instructed any of its licensed partners to use strong-arm tactics against unions, which is illegal in the continental United States and most first-world countries, Coca-Cola has a history of pleading ignorance or turning a blind eye to such terror tactics used against its labour force in places like Columbia and Guatemala. Every time an incident like this happens, Coca-Cola is blamed in the minds of the workers and customers.
Coca-Cola is also putting its money where its mouth is to conserve and safeguard natural resources all over the world. Coca-Cola, for example, is aiming to demonstrably protect seven major watersheds, enhance the efficiency of its water use, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions and energy use through its cooperation with the World Wildlife Federation. It also hopes to spark a global movement by bringing together industries, environmental groups, and others to protect and conserve freshwater resources all over the world. These initiatives are producing significant social, environmental, and economic advantages by lowering and recycling the water used in manufacturing. Aluminum cans were recently added to the company’s former aim of recycling or reusing the equivalent of 100 percent of its plastic bottles. It has put money into recycling programs, such as curbside pickup and the world’s largest bottle-to-bottle recycling factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Although ethics may not seem enjoyable, it encourages and empowers workers. Working in a professional and meritocratic workplace boosts output and results in a better product. Setting a basis of tight regulations and zero tolerance for nepotism and concentrating on and offering quality goods before and after some ethical problems have been broken would be excellent strategies to enhance the organization. Coca-Cola had to learn a lot through blunders and litigation when all it had to do was be proactive and examine those concerns ahead of time, rather than taking shortcuts for profit.
References
Le, A., Jiang, J., Sandor, M., Stashick, M., & Zhang, L. (2017). Business Ethics: The Coca-Cola Company. Business Ethics: The Coca-Cola Company, 1.
Noria Corporation. (2021, May 21). Coca-Cola recognized for innovation in business ethics. Www.reliableplant.com. https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/17778/coca-cola-recognized-for-innovation-in-business-ethics
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