The Coca-Cola Company is an American international beverage organization, manufacturer, retailer, as well as the marketer for nonalcoholic beverage syrups and concentrates. This company is famously known for its 1886 invented flagship product ‘Coca-Cola’ by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta, Georgia. Therefore, this report presents how this company applies the Kotter’s eight steps of change to its current Human Resource (HR) practices, policies, or procedures.
Establishing a Sense of Urgency
The term ‘sense of urgency’ refers to acting with the realization that an organization must be efficient for it to be successful. However, when it comes to Coca-Cola Company, its leaders have the capability of making decisions as well as driving activities within the organization for meeting significant opportunity windows in the industry. Besides, this company continues in using expatriate managers regardless of its expensive nature (Hickman, 2014). This company also strives in respecting and promoting human rights whenever its managers make decisions, and this has always been in accordance with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Besides, at Coca-Cola, it is the responsibility of all employees in maintaining a work environment that reflects on the respect towards human rights and is as well free from all the harassment and discrimination, aligned with the company’s Human Rights Policy. It, therefore, implies that the company’s management makes decisions in accordance with this policy and hence prohibits the opposite from happening in the company.
Creating Coalition
Coca-Cola Company coalition strategy has helped it in engaging with Ceres Company for more than ten years on a variety of sustainable initiatives. This has included sustainability reporting and goals, as well as water approach and policies to other social, governance, and environmental issues (Yaeger & Sorensen, 2015). In return, Ceres Company has significantly helped in convening diverse stakeholders for guiding and influencing the sustainability disclosures and strategies of Coca-Cola, which has eventually increased the organization’s sustainability leadership, particularly to their broader coalition of NGOs and investors.
At the start of 2016, Coca-Cola Company has been building coalitions across California alone with the aim of defeating its rival, Soda Taxes. Besides, this is an underway project within the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond, and Watsonville, especially for the preparation for the likely measures in beverage tax. As noted by Vogelsang (2013), this was an actively engaged coalition with the aim of preventing the introduction of beverage tax within the industry for all beverage companies.
Developing Vision and Strategy
The company’s strategic vision is to always be in a good shape for their growth, as they are inherently a competitive selling company. Coca-Cola’s strategic framework keeps on reminding them that their success will always come from collaborating with various businesses and with the growth of their partners. The company has launched a new vision strategy; which is to focus on convenience, choice, and consumer. It, therefore, implies that Coca-Cola is applying this Kotter’s management step to evolve its business strategy in becoming a total beverage firm by providing their customers with more of the drinks they need (Axelrod, 2012). They include low- and no-sugar drink options across various categories, and in more packages sold in many locations.
As noted by Dawson (2016), the company is also using this Kotter’s change management step to build a “consumer-centric brands” portfolio by shifting focus from what it wants to sell to what its customers want to buy. Besides, this strategy is part of the organization’s future growth vision.
Communicating the Vision
Coca-Cola Company has been encouraging open communication, a strategy that helped them in effectively soliciting and leveraging innovative ideas besides engaging in frequent dialogue with their various associates globally. Such dialogue concerning its vision has significantly helped the company in gathering significant information, increasing awareness, promoting business strategies, sharing successes and opportunities, as well as soliciting employees’ opinions (Kessler, 2013). For instance, the company’s global bottling partners and associates have contributed important ideas to some major initiatives including the activation of 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games.
Additionally, the input from employees has been utilized as a key aspect to the company’s vision. Another example of the company’s constant dialogue with its associates is their Global Employee Insights Survey, in which its 2010 results indicated that there was an improvement in engaging with associates (Hickman, 2014). Besides, being a global brand, Coca-Cola utilizes its global impact as way of reaching out to millions of people through media and mass communication.
Empowering Broad-Based Action
Coca-Cola Company through its leaders has been on the forefront of empowering broad-based action. The company has been encouraging its employees to take crucial actions towards the initial steps of changing and ensuring that all are aware of any action plan. This has been achieved through eliminating obstacles, changing structures or systems undermining the vision for change, as well as encouraging risk taking and non-traditional activities (Hickman, 2014). Besides, the company has taken a broad-based action by leveraging on the shared managerial in addition to administrative capacities, thereby leading to better performance of its various global bottlers through the new strategies of change management orientation.
Additionally, Vogelsang (2013) observes that since 2010, the company has empowered a broad-based action by launching a “5by20” as its global commitment for enabling an economic empowerment of about 5 million women entrepreneurs across the value chain of the company by the year 2020. Moreover, through this 5by20 initiative, Coca-Cola has often contributed by providing access to financing, mentoring, and the development of business skills to its women entrepreneurs.
Generating Short-Term Wins
Short-term wins has often allowed Coca-Cola Company in seeing that their marketing strategy works. Research conducted by Dawson (2016) observed that this company has an effective management system necessary for motivating its employees and stakeholders through the creation of short-term targets with a low failure degree. The company’s top management leaders as well as its guiding coalition have always identified the feasible organizational efforts for meeting all the three criteria for an effectual short-term win. This has been a short-term effort resulting in significant cost savings, streamlined procedures, increased revenue, as well as more effective utilization of the existing technology.
Furthermore, Coca-Cola’s senior leadership has always supported the allocation of the company’s various resources to its short-term wins. These resources are such as the allocation of effective staff and managers with the capability of planning, organizing, as well as implementing the short-term wins more effectively. Structurally, these staff and managers have always been aligned with the company’s guiding coalition.
Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
Coca-Cola’s guiding coalition and the senior leadership has always consolidated the gains from the earlier short-term wins in addition to implementing more change. As a result, this has prevented this company from sliding into gratification but continued with its momentum for real change. Moreover, Yaeger and Sorensen (2015) posit that this strategy has helped Coca-Cola in preventing itself from reverting into its old ways of performing things as well as countering any resistance that might emerge towards change.
By the use of its organizational power, the company’s senior leadership and guiding coalition have sponsored the elimination of any unnecessary inter-dependencies, which has also been achieved through allocating more resources. Besides, the company has ensured that its lower level managers are always working hand in hand with its leading coalition (Yaeger & Sorensen, 2015). As a result, this has helped in identifying unnecessary inter-dependencies in addition to leading projects required to effect the change.
Anchoring New Approaches into the Culture
Coca-Cola’s strategy has allowed it to anchor new approaches into the culture by devoting considerable resources as well as time to its institutional change effort thereby preventing the organization from reverting into its old culture. The company’s senior leadership has as well adjusted the organization for it to align the new culture to the changes that have been sponsored by the company (Axelrod, 2012). Because of this, the company has made more changes to align with the effort geared towards new change.
Additionally, as noted by Kessler (2013), Coca-Cola’ top leadership has put new structures in place for supporting the organization’s overall vision, particularly the rewards systems that are designed for promoting change agents and those supporting the new mindsets and behaviors. HR mechanisms have also been aligned with the aim of supporting various performance expectations and therefore have helped to avoid old behaviors from coming back.
References
Axelrod, R. H. (2012). Terms of Engagement : New Ways of Leading and Changing Organizations. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Dawson, C. S. (2016). Leading Culture Change : What Every CEO Needs to Know. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Business Books.
Hickman, G. R. (2014). Leading Change in Multiple Contexts : Concepts and Practices in Organizational, Community, Political, Social, and Global Change Settings. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Kessler, E. H. (2013). Encyclopedia of Management Theory. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Vogelsang, J. (2013). Handbook for Strategic HR : Best Practices in Organization Development From the OD Network. New York: AMACOM.
Yaeger, T. F., & Sorensen, P. F. (2015). Strategic Organization Development : Managing Change for Success. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
