Assignment on the Organizational Structure & Model of Coca Cola Company

Assignment on

Organizational Structure & Model of Coca Cola Company

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Short overview of Coca Cola
Coca-Colais acarbonated soft drinksold in stores, restaurants, andvending machines all over the world. It was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886 was originated as soda fountain beverage sold for five cents a glass. Coca-cola was originally invented by John Pemberton.Coca-Cola was bought out by businessmanAsa Griggs Candler, whose marketing tactics led Coke to its dominance of the world soft-drink market throughout the 20th century.Coca-Cola currently offers more than 500 brands in over 200 countries or territories and serves over 1.7billion servings each day.Today it sells many kinds of beverages. At present Muhtar Kent is the CEO of this multinational corporation. Their mission is, to refresh the world, to inspire moments of optimism & happiness and to create value and make a difference. The coca cola company emphasizes their activities on people, partners, profit, planet & productivity. Their vision 2020 is to create a long term destination for their business and provide themselves with a roadmap for winning together with their bottling partners. A huge organization like Coca-cola lives on some strict values, like leadership, collaboration, integrity, passion, diversity & quality. As for marketing strategy they focus on their customers, consumers and franchise partners. They observe the market, possess a world view and execute in the market place everyday to be the best at what they do. They also work efficiently and maintain their resources with apt expertise. Thus they are upholding their huge profits and publicity in each passing year.

Organizational structure of coca cola

As we can see in the chart the coca cola company’s structural design is similar to thefunctional design of an organization which is also known as u form design. The C.E.O is at the heart of the operating system of the company. Under him there are a lot of sub ordinates who control the overall business activities of the company. They control the financial, marketing, operations, human resource, administration, R &D, audit etc departments of the organization. So as coca cola is conducting its business with a functional approach we can say that it uses the u from or functional design. When coca cola takes up a new project to manufacture a new kind of product for their customer they tend to use the matrix design of the organization. In this form there are several project managers who are responsible for controlling the process of making a new product. The subordinates who work under the different departments also work under the project managers. So the subordinates of the coca cola company simultaneously work under the vice president of the functional departments and the project managers. For example if Coca Cola Company wants to manufacture a new beverage for its customer then its project managers use their idea and with the help of the functional departments and the sub ordinates produce a new product. Coca cola operates mostly as a functional form of organization but they also use the matrix design thus making its organizational design a hybrid design.

Organizational model of coca cola

The Coca-Cola Company realizes that it needs to be able to meet the ever changing demands of its customers. The organization has two operating groups called Bottling Investments and Corporate. There are also operating

Groups divided by different regions such as: Africa, Eurasia, European Union, Latin America, North America, and Pacific. Each of these divisions is again divided into geographic regions. By allowing decisions to be made on a more local level, the organization can quickly respond to changing market demands, and higher-level management can focus more on long-term planning. Certain divisions of the company, such as finance, human resources, innovation, marketing, and strategy and planning are centrally located within the corporate division of the company. Some of these functions take place at lower levels in each of the regions of the company; however, most decisions are made at the top of the hierarchy. For example, in 2002 the decision to sponsor the World Cup was done at the corporate level. Corporate headquarters, however, allowed the local divisions to make the advertising decisions. When Neville Isdell took over as CEO and chairmen of The Coca-Cola Company in 2004, he began to use more behavioral mechanisms. In order to deal with organization’s extremely low growth rate, Isdell used teams of top managers to create solutions to the organization’s most pressing problems. Face-to-face meetings were held regularly at the local levels so employees could remain informed. Besides the use of teams and meetings, the intranet was overhauled to provide a source of real-time sharing of information. It appears that the organization is striving for a hybrid structure, which allows them to have advantages of both bureaucratic and behavioral model, while trying to minimize the negative consequences of each. The strategic structural changes that the organization has gone through in recent years have created a much needed positive impact on the company. The organization is trying to create a more innovative culture by pushing towards decentralization .So it can be clearly said that TheCoca-Cola Company’s model is a hybrid of both Bureaucratic and behavioral models.