Introduction
Coca-Cola Code of Conduct
This is the leading global nonalcoholic beverage company and also one of the world’s mostly recognizable brands. The company hosts over 16 billion dollars brands with; Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Sprite, and Fanta being some the five top soft drinks globally. The company also has other brands such as Vitaminwater, Powerade and also Minute Miad. It also licenses or owns and markets over 500 beverage brands such as waters, energy drinks, and sports drinks, ready to drink teas and coffees, and also juice drinks. The company has one of the world’s largest beverage distribution system reaching thirsty consumers in over 200 countries, the success of the company can be traced to the Atlanta Pharmacist inventor of Coke back in 1886.
Based on the global operations and success of Coca-Cola, the Company faces numerous challenges hence developing a competitive and dynamic code of business ethics aimed at guiding employees and all stakeholders towards an integrity based environment. The background of the company’s code of conduct is:
- Abiding to the ethical principles that conveys a sense of honesty, respect and also integrity being essential values for a pleasant work environment
- Developing essential values vital for the company’s corporate culture and also key elements in the life of the company
- Ensuring these values are part of the company’s organizational culture and also the daily activities
- Ensuring that the code is based on the fact that most of the time the right and correct action is clear regardless of whether it is stipulated in the code or not
The values behind the company’s code of conduct are:
- Passion for service and customer focus
- Creativity and innovation
- Quality and productivity
- Respect, integral development and personal excellence
- Honesty, integrity and austerity
These values as embedded in the Company’s code of conduct enables the company ensures that their operations are ethical and embraces the needs of all the stakeholders. Although the company has been involved in ethical based scandals, the company has used this code of ethics to create a favorable corporate culture boosting the brand image and reputation globally.
Company overview
The two major companies in the same industry as Coca-Cola are: Pepsi and Nestle which also offers beverages and other services similar to those offered by Coca-Cola. These firms also operates in the global environment hence acting as some of the leading rivals in the global market in the same industry.
Nestle is a worldwide form based on Switzerland with total revenue of 92.2 billion and Profit of 10.6 billion based on their 2012 annual report. The company positions their brand as the leading brand in nutrition and health. It offers wide range of products such as; Nestle Water, Stouffers, Carnation, Nescafe, frozen foods, pet foods, yoghurt, snacks, daily products, breakfast cereals, coffee, and also baby food among others (Interbrand, 2013). It also owns and operates some major consumer brand as depicted above.
PepsiCo on the other hand is second leading beverage and Foods Company after Coca-Cola. The company positions and targets the middle and upper middle class people and also younger generation. Some of the company brands are: Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Mirinda, Aquafina Water, Lays, Nimbooz, Tropicana, and Gatorade (Interbrand, 2013). The company has a global reach on more than 200 countries with employee strength expanding of around 300,000 people. The company product portfolio is one of the most diversified with subsidiary brands such as Pepsi, Quaker, Frito Lay, Tropicana, and also Yum being some of the globally leading brands.
The two companies have competitive code of ethic enabling them to continue growing and thriving in the global market. Comparing PepsiCo and Nestle Code of conduct documents, it I apparent there are three key entities largely advocated by these companies towards dominating the global market through quality operations. These key issues are: integrity, high ethics and quality standards, and also honesty. These key issues are largely embraced by these companies as reflected in the proffered analysis under Coca-Cola based code of conduct. They enables these firms create a competitive edge into the global market towards averting some of the challenges evident in the global business operations.
Comparison
Based on the proffered key issues reflecting vital entities for these companies towards succeeding in the global market, a comparison using them as the benchmark on contrasting the codes of these companies offer a clear insight on the essence of these issues towards defining the success of these firms. Pepsi Global Code of Conduct through varying updates is based on the provided key issues aimed at enabling the company dominates in the global market. According to (PepsiCo, 2012), “our code of conduct continues to be a declaration of the highest standards of ethics and integrity in all that we do, until all of us at PepsiCo with one set of values that guide our daily decisions and actions”. This reflects how the key issues on integrity, honesty, and high standards of ethics and quality defines the company’s success in the global market.
On the other hand, according to (Nestle, 2012), “our code of conduct have shaped our business practices hence governed by integrity, honesty, and fairness in dealing and also full applicable to the law”. This also reflects the company’s efforts to ensure that their operations are centered under integrity, high standards of ethics and quality, and honesty in business operations. These key issues define the success enjoyed by the company in the global market. Based on the proffered analysis, it is evident that the two companies (PepsiCo and Nestle) use these key issues towards creating a competitive edge into the global market hence facilitating growth and developments. The same key issues are embraced by Coca-Cola hence defining the success and continuous dominance of the company in the global market.
The failure of these companies to address some of the proffered key issues is likely to have marginal impact. Integrity, high standards of ethics and quality and honesty is likely to cause different damages to the company such as: damaging the reputation and global image and causing health concerns among consumers hence lowering sales. On the other hand, if the company addresses these issues, there are marginal outcomes that they are likely to enjoy such as: increasing consumer loyalty and also averting legal disputes.
Techniques
Coca-Cola success and ability to address some of the global business challenges is largely defined by the company’s ability to retain and enhance practice of their code of conduct. There are different techniques that Coca-Cola can use towards ensuring that the code of conduct remains essential despite the changing social, political, technological, and economical forces in the global business environment and society. These techniques are: Continuous update and refreshing the code of conduct and Corporate Social Responsibility strategies. These two techniques can enable the company embrace such changes by incorporating these forces outcomes into their code of conduct. The company currently adopts: environmental based technique and increase awareness on health implications. However, these techniques although essential towards advocating for healthy living standards; they fails to incorporate diverse and dynamic issues in business environment hence the need for implementing and aligning the current techniques with the proposed techniques.
Technological advancements
Based on the continuous technological advancements, companies are enacting measures aimed at embracing technological advancements for innovation aimed at improving their business operations. Coca-Cola embraces varying approaches towards maintaining competitiveness in the global market. Such techniques include: continuous research and dataflow techniques. The continues research technique has enabled the company embrace more effective production and packaging techniques while the data flow technique has enabled the company connect data and people hence assessing consumer responses to various brands hence increasing competitiveness in the global market and increasing effectiveness in service delivery. Furthermore, the company is using these techniques to address and manage the issue of environment by encouraging environmental friendly measures.
However, despite such technological approaches, the company is likely to face different potential technological challenges such as: diversification in production techniques, inability to keep up with technology, and invention of more healthy beverages produced by new entrants or existing competitors. Such challenges are likely to undermine the effectiveness of the organization and the continuous dominance of the beverage market. However, the company can address the challenge of inability to keep up with technology through inventing continuous research development programs aimed at addressing such issues.
Coca-Cola has been used in different lobbying strategies aimed at convincing the government to act into its favor. The recent lobbying effort although unsuccessful was based on using food stamp with the conservative group asking the company to where the company expects citizens to pay for the Poor American’s unhealthy purchases. Based on the food stamp program, it costs $ 80 billion a year with around $4 billion allocated to soda hence the reasons were unjustified and likely to increase the issue of health concerns caused by soda drinking intake in the society. Such efforts were inappropriate in relation to unhealthy implications reflected into the community by some of these products as availed in the market.
Corporate Citizenship
The company uses different strategies by allocating resources aimed at benefiting the global community. Some of the strategies embraced by the company are: funding global projects such as: higher education, global education, and classroom teaching and learning. Furthermore, the company extends its corporate citizenship by being involved in environmental based initiatives and upgrading the wellbeing of communities. Through the use of these global citizenship efforts, they can significantly contribute to company’s sustainable developments goals through: encouraging environmental conservation measures and healthy living standards among other entities.
References
Interbrand (2013). Best Global Brands 2012. Available at: http://www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/2012/Best-Global-Brands-2012.aspx
Nestle (2011). 2011 Annual report English. Available at: http://www.nestle.com/asset-library/Documents/Library/Documents/Annual_Reports/2011-Annual-Report-EN.pdf
Nestle (2013). About us. Available at: http://www.nestle.com/aboutus
PepsiCo, 2012 Annual Report; Global Code of Conduct http://www.pepsico.com/Assets/Download/CodeOfConduct/English_GCOC.pdf
Coca-Cola, 2012 Annual Report: Code of Business conduct
