Preview

Coca-Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Issues Essay Example

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
334 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Coca-Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Issues Essay Example
Many of the ethical issues surfaced when Warren Buffet resigned in 2006 and Doug Ivester took over. Ivester lacked leadership and as a result, the company faced many ethical issues. Ivester tenure was symbolic in that it was short-lived. This was a serious public relations glitch for a company who for so long, performed flawlessly. Ivester was replaced by Doug Daft, the former president and chief operating officer. Unfortunately, Daft had no success in derailing the controversies. In early 2000, Coca-cola was embroiled in ethical scandals such as racial discrimination, misrepresenting market test and manipulating earnings.
Text Questions
1. Why do you think Coca-Cola has had one ethical issue to resolve after another over the last decade or so?
In 2000, Coca-Cola failed to make the top ten of Fortune’s annual “America’s Most Admired Companies” list for the first time in a decade. Many believe this was a direct result of the contamination scare in June of 1999. 30 Belgian kids became ill after consuming Coca-Cola. Rather than come out right away and defends its product, Coca-Cola took several days to respond. I believe that as a result of this global crisis, Coca-Cola panicked and spiraled out of control. This company was operating on a high level for a decade and to be hit with such a scandal rocked the foundation the core.
2. A news analyst said that coca-cola could become the next Enron. Do you think this is possible?
I do not believe that this case is similar to Enron. Enron’s culture was one of greed and win-at-all-cost mentality. Enron leadership created an atmosphere of invincibility. This was evident by the “rank-and-yank” system implemented to rid of those who were rated at the bottom 20 percent. This forced employees to engage in questionable practices in order to maintain their standing within the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Enron Case Study

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages

    What happened to Enron was just its founder at the time Ken Lay was greedy and unethical right from the beginning, and that was how he steered the boat to that direction. Instead of firing traders who were pocketing profits for themselves, manipulating reports which showed steady financial trends, he managed to keep them, because they were making a lot of money for the company. So he was giving opportunities for this staffs to do underhand works and he only cared if it made profits for the company. Later, when Jeff Skilling joined Enron, he developed what Lay had…

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In November, twenty thirteen, PepsiCo was presented leadership recognition for maintaining the best overall governance, compliance and ethics program. PepsiCo states their success is due to collaboration and partnership with internal colleagues and interested stakeholders and investors (PepsiCo, n.d., ¶ 3). The thought process behind PepsiCo’s ethics and compliance is a dynamic corporate governance that changes according to the busy changing environment. Some things that PepsiCo does to maintain ethics and compliance is to continue to redesign the proxy statement and improve the communication with the stockholders. PepsiCo takes to heart what the shareholders have to say and provide policy changes based on the feedback that they receive. PepsiCo offers the code of conduct in twenty five different languages as well as a twenty four hour, seven days a week “speak up hotline” that…

    • 1726 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    1. Were Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield right to accept Unilever’s takeover offer for Ben & Jerry’s in 2000? And what does this case imply about business ethics more generally?…

    • 1962 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The business culture at Enron was about what you would expect from any large, successful, corporation. It was highly a competitive, cut-throat culture that created an environment where workers would do almost anything in order to thrive. Charles Wickman, a former Enron employee, was quoted as saying, “If I’m on the way to my boss’s office, talking about my compensation, and I step on somebody’s throat on the way and that doubles it, well I’ll stomp on the guy’s throat” (The Smartest Guys in The Room). The traders at Enron became the engine that produced most of the company’s profits. “Traders weren’t fired or even disciplined. Instead Enron sent a telex to Borget, please keep making us millions” (The Smartest Guys in The Room).…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Walt Pavlo Case analysis

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This case is a best example of how ethical behavior at top management plays such an importance role in the success or failures of its employees and the organization as a whole. MCI’s upper management was not concerned about ethics; their main focus was to boost its profits to meet Wall Street’s expectations. It was evident that the culture at MCI did not recognize or act against misconduct which created negative work environment. When management put pressure on their employees to meet unrealistic goals and forcing them to do whatever to get the job done will essentially force the employees to unethical practices to meet their targets, and in most cases employees do so to save their job. MCI’s aggressive sales and marketing programs, management preoccupied with meeting analyst expectations, neither conducting proper background checks nor reporting known customer fraud to authorities and shareholders are the best examples of negative work environment and unethical practice.…

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Since the late 1990s, Coca-Cola has been embroiled in at least eight significant ethical dilemmas. The first came in June 1999 when Coca-Cola’s products were contaminated. Consumers in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg became sick after using Coca-Cola products. Coca-Cola mismanaged the problem and downplayed it. Then over 100 people became sick in France and months later in Poland with water contaminated with mold. In each of these events, Coca-Cola did not react in a timely fashion or with the appropriate concern for public health, but eventually conceded that it was their contamination problem.…

    • 1293 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    What has the company done to address their ethical issues, what could they do differently to avoid future ethical issues?…

    • 2530 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    legal & ethical

    • 1451 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Read the articles below and analyze the ethical and legal aspects of the actions taken by the cola giants.…

    • 1451 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Enron Case

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages

    With Enron, the responsibility and blame started with Enron’s executives, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andrew Fastow. Their goal was to make Enron into the world’s greatest company. To make this goal a reality, they created a company culture that encouraged “rule breaking” and went so far as to “discourage employees from reporting and investigating ethical lapses and questionable business dealings” (Knapp, 2010, p. 14). They insisted the employees use aggressive and illegal accounting procedures.…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Odwalla

    • 2640 Words
    • 11 Pages

    1. What factors contributed to the outbreak of E. coli poisoning described in this case? Do you believe that Odwalla was responsible, wholly or in part, for the outbreak? Why or why not?…

    • 2640 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    (a) Retirement benefits for top executives are unfair compared to lower level employees working in the production sectors of the company. AFLCIO reports that cooperate executives receive liberal retirement benefit packages, the plans offered to employees are poor and “self funded”.The Proxy Statement for 2003 (Coca-Cola, Inc., 2003b) and Annual Report for 2002 (Coca-Cola, Inc., 2003a), indicated that the inequities are greater than the AFLCIO (2003a) assessment.…

    • 273 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Enron was under the control of what was thought to have Upper Managers that were to have ethical and moral believes that followed the Corporate rules and regulations. These manager lacked to have the need to successful accounting transparency, which enabled the company’s managers to make their financials look much better than they actually were. Specific people made out with billions of dollars due to their unethical behavior. Money is power and can do major damage if the rules and belief systems are not upheld. Due to the unethical and morality decision employees lost their jobs as well as their pension funds. This also damaged the lives that were involved with Enron’s products as well.…

    • 410 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ethics and Enron

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The most persuasive explanation of how an apparently ethical company could go so wrong concerns…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Enron scandal could have been avoided if employees and management had a stronger ethical culture and if arrogance and greed weren’t dominant among management.…

    • 283 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Personal Values

    • 730 Words
    • 3 Pages

    References: Dolphin, B. (2007, May). Coke & Pepsi take corporate ethics to a new and refreshing level. Retrieved from http://assetcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/05/coke-pepsi-take-corporate-ethics-to-new.html…

    • 730 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays