Coca-Cola Ethical Dilemma

Ethics are values and principles that individuals use to govern his decisions and activities. Ethics are about moral judgment of an individual about right and wrong. In an organization, code of ethics refers to set of guiding principles and organizations use these principles in their policies, programs, and decisions for business. Within organizations, decisions are taken by groups or individuals and these decisions are influenced by the culture of the company. Decision making and relevance of ethics may also differ for nonprofit and for profit organizations. In contemporary business environment, organizations must have a clear ethical policy and implement it in proper manner. There are many social, legal and economic outcomes that company has to face in case of any ethical dilemma, so there must be a smart strategy to deal with ethical dilemmas. In this paper, we will address the ethics for nonprofit and profits organizations, ethical dilemmas being faced or faced by each of these companies and the outcomes of these ethical dilemmas. Critique of actions of each of these companies will be provided from the point of view of applicable philosophical theories of organizational ethics.

Ethical standards in business are important for every leader to know and understand. The book Ethics 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know by: John C. Maxwell discusses ethics in the world today. When people make unethical choices, the reason they do because of three main pitfalls. People do what is most convenient to them, people tend to do what they must do to win, and people rationalize their choices with relativism. In this summary, Maxwell’s definition of business ethics will be framed, examples of ethical standards and guidelines, the meaning and contrast of ethical thinking and ethical behavior, and how to avoid these major pitfalls to live an ethical life. The

Business Ethics is a set of moral principles applied in the commercial world. Business ethics provide guidelines for acceptable behavior by organizations in both their strategy formulation and day-to-day operations. An ethical approach is becoming necessary both for corporate success and a positive corporate image. Following pressure from

Ethical behavior is behavior that a person considers to be appropriate. A person’s moral principals are shaped from birth, and developed overtime throughout the person’s life. There are many factors that can influence what a person believes whats is right, or what is wrong. Some factors are a person’s family, religious beliefs, culture, and experiences. In business it is of great importance for an employee to understand how to act ethically to prevent a company from being sued, and receiving criticism from the public while bringing in profits for the company. (Mallor, Barnes, Bowers, & Langvardt, 2010) Business ethics is when ethical behavior is applied in an business environment, or by a business. There are many

From the late 1800s until today, the Coca-Cola’s brand has evolved into a top contender in the beverage industry, which ignited the “cola wars” with the company’s top competition PepsiCo. with Coca-Cola controlling 45 percent of the global soft drink market; Coca-Cola’s most famous brands include: Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Powerade, Dasani water and Fanta with Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite and Fanta being four of the top five leading soft drinks. At the peak of Coca-Cola’s reign, an estimated $1 billion of their products were consumed daily. In 2006, Coca-Cola lost it’s top position to PepsiCo. due to their competitors diverse strategy to include snack foods in their product line. As a result, Coca-Cola’s reputation was in jeopardy. Although Coca-Cola takes pride in its social responsibility by offering educational opportunities and learning tools to the youth and graduates, environmental conservation efforts and charitable donations for HIV/AIDS research, the company has encountered a stream of ethical dilemmas. Coca-Cola’s ethical dilemmas include: contaminated products, antitrust violations, racial discrimination suits, fraud accusations, manipulating marketing and financial statements, anti-union tactic allegations, ‘strong-arming’ distributors and channel surfing. This misconduct has severely affected Coca-Cola’s reputation with its shareholders. Although Coca-Cola has set a strong standard of accountability and is reinforcing the integrity that once fueled the company, their

Today’s business world presents numerous ethical issues. In today’s world above board/moral ethics in organizations do not often materialize intuitively. Organization must strive to provide employees with a clear understanding of the overall company vision. This will aid employees in practicing the code of ethics, policies and procedures in the workplace. Companies must be unwavering in continuously delivering the uppermost ethics of provision in which customers, applicants and employees are entitled to under fair business practices. One major core value is to uphold responsible and fair business practices.

In today’s world people would have you believe that ethics is a questionable requirement. That ethics is based on perception. Wither we see ethics the same way or not in the business world we should all agree that right is right and wrong is wrong. In business we should all live by a certain standard of fairness that includes an amount of personal morals that prevent you from simply following the crowd. If you want to be a true leader in the business world it requires a certain amount of courage to do what is right regardless of the personal consequences.

While becoming employed for an international company may seem like a great adventure, this may not always be the case. Two major ethical issues I would like to focus on are human rights and environmental impact.

The coca cola company is been in business for a hundred and twenty eight years. The coca cola company is a multinational beverege company and as the name the company’s most famous for its product coca cola. Coca cola was invneted in 1886 by John Stith Pemberton from Columbus Georgia who is a pharmasist. Cocal cola is known all around the worls ans is often associated with happiness. Moreover coca cola means “Delicious Happiness” in Mandarin. The first time coca cola was served it was served at 5 cents per glass. At present the estimated serving of coca cola are estimated at one point nine million worldwide. And like every company this company has also had its difficulties and profits. (Coca-Cola, n.d)

The Coca-Cola Company is one of the biggest global leader in the beverage industry. It offers more that hundreds of brands, including fruit juice, soft drinks, and all kinds of beverages. It is best known for its flagship ‘Coca-Cola’. Due to the intense competition in the beverage industry, marketing activity is vital for it to maintain its leading position. Once Coca-Cola stops its consistently advertise, its competitors will be able to take its market share. In 2014, it spends 6.9% of the total revenue on advertising, making Coca-Cola was the top advertiser in its industry (Investopedia, 2015). This essay will examine whether the marketing activities that conducted by the company is ethical or not.

In their personal and professional lives, people can and, unfortunately, sometimes do go against their moral and ethical standards. Ethical standards are what it means to be a good person, the social rules that govern our behavior. Ethics in business is essentially the study of what constitutes the right and wrong or the good or bad behavior in the workplace environment. A business is an organization whose objective is to provide goods or services for profit. The organization has a group of people that work together to achieve a common purpose. The moral challenges that these men and women face each day along with a whole range of problems that could occur, are why ethics plays such an important

I think that Coca-cola has learned a lot from their ethical crisis but has a ways to go. To be proactive, they have made local education and community improvement program a top priority. They also offer grants to various colleges both local and abroad. Recycling has become a priority to them also. Chair Neville Isdell received the

Coca-Cola is the world’s largest beverage company specializing in the production in soft drinks. It had also grown over the past 120 years into one of the most reputable companies in the world with an instantly recognizable brand name (Thorne, Ferrell, and Jackson 408-409). However starting in the 1990s, Coke began to experience series of bad decision, mismanagement, and alleged misconduct (Thorne, Ferrell, and Jackson 409). Debbie Thorne, O.C. Ferrell, and Jennifer Jackson’s case study The Coca-Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Crises examines Coca-Cola and those troubles it has experienced in recent years.

Marketing is only one intricate facet for any company sustainability. There are six components for the marketing code of ethics, also known as “the six pillars” of marketing (6PM). The 6PM components includes: 1) caring, 2) citizenship, 3) honesty, 4) fairness, 5) responsibility and 6) respect. All these components separately play a significant part in the marketing code. Understanding how each element pertains individually and collectively to the success of a business can prove crucial to any organization longevity. The 125 years of operation has shown Coca-Cola (n.d) has been sustainable. One can easily observe the 6PM in the company’s vision (Figure 1), mission (Figure 2), and value core (Figure 3). The Coca-Cola Company initiated, developed, and implemented the 6PM methodology/ethics as part its corporate culture for continuous sustainability.

2.1 What roles does corporate reputation play within organizational performance and social responsibility? Develop a list of factors or characteristics that different stakeholders may use in assessing corporate reputation. Are these factors consistent across stakeholders? Why and why not?