The Coca-Cola Company Struggles with Ethical CrisesRUNNING HEAD: THE COCA-COLA COMPANY STRUGGLES WITH ETHICAL CRISESThe Coca-Cola Company Struggles with Ethical CrisesLlami L SlomanJack HuddlestonHRM 522November 4, 2012Delineate the ethical issues and dilemmas (as found in Chapter 3) the company faced.Coca-Cola was faced with many ethical issues and dilemmas which had a bad impact on the company. Their where many ethical allegations that were taken against the Coca-Cola company such as: financial misconduct, lying, abusive, conflicts of interest, intimidating behavior and discrimination. All of these ethical issues made Coca-Cola company not a happy place to work. Between the years 2001 and 2004 Coke was accused of intimidating behavior and using abusive in Colombia, many people believed this had something to do with the eight deaths of Coca-Cola workers in the year of 1989. Although, Coke was never found to be directly related to the deaths, they were still taunted with the reputation and cause a very bad raptor with human rights proponents and environmentalists. Since the allegations have ruined the companies’ name they have now become a more social responsible organization, Coke has improved their working conditions as well they now financial support minorities’ organizations and causes.
Their where many ethical issues that arise because Coke was lying to consumers, there was a big dilemma of Coke having a conflict of interest in with the Belgian contamination scare in the year of 1999. During this time of the scare the Belgian officials did a recall on Coca-Cola products because of the number of consumers that became ill after they consumed a Coca-Cola product. Coke was very fast at denying the situation but could not produce a responds to any questions that arise because of the product affecting people. Coke did not find a reason to even investigate the situation. After all the complaints Coca-Cola finally decided to do an investigation, during the investigation they found out that a batch of carbon dioxide was improperly processed. Many consumers and media were infuriated with Coke because of the slow response to the issue. Coke’s main concern was to keep the focus of the company’s image and reputation and not the consumers.
Pablo A. Alvarez: [15 June 2012, 2:15 p.m.]: “They have some big problems regarding the future of our company.”
Alexandre Bouleron: [15 June 2012, 2:15 p.m.]: “I hope I didn’t miss any opportunity to say something negative. It seems like everybody has been talking about the Coca-Cola scandals, you know, this story seems to have only grown longer on my personal blog than usual and I’m glad that people are being treated very well again.”
Michele Dierkes: [15 June 2012, 2:16 p.m.]: “We will continue to fight the Coca-Cola disaster on behalf of all of our shareholders. This is really the last time this company will make a stand. Let’s be absolutely clear about this: We believe it’s important to make sure we stay competitive in the competitive environment we have going into the next generation. The best way to do that is to provide that competitive environment in the best sense possible using a product that we care about in the way that the best way could be. And so if we were to lose our position in the market or make an offer that they didn’t want to make and we would have to make a very big trade off, then we’d have to do it against our interests in our own company. And so we’ll never be competitive in that spirit and if we were to lose the
During the time Coca-Cola was dealing with the scare in Belgian and started to recover from the issue they then suffered yet another allegation. This time Coke was faced with the allegation of racial discrimination by a large amount of African American employees. Coke was faced with chargers because African Americans stated there was discrimination in promotion, pay and performance evaluations. During the time of the allegations, Coke denied