Coca Cola Narrative Essay

aAssignment 1 Q1 Organizations 1. How has the company changed over the years in order to survive a highly competitive marketplace? Coca-Cola is a billion dollar global operating organization. They’ve been around for over a 100 years and they currently operate in over 200 countries. This is not a simple task, but Coca-Cola has found ways to manage by taking the right risks and evolving over time. Coca-Cola has over time invested in their brand, their quality, the right marketing, the availability of their product and are continuously looking for ways of innovation.
The latter is what perhaps might be the biggest reason they are still around. Organization culture This plays a very big role at Coca-Cola. This involves the shared values, principles, traditions and ways of doing things that influence the action of the organizational members. Innovation and risk taking is very typical (high) when looking at the organization culture of Coca-Cola. Further Coca-Cola focuses on 5 difference makers. These are: Culture Coca-Cola has studied the culture very well and has incorporated passion points of the people, such as music, sports and entertainment into their campaigns.
The biggest focus point for Coca-Cola now is the LOHAS culture, people who highly value lifestyles of health and sustainability. When learning new things about the culture Coca-Cola thinks of ways of associating themselves in creative, interesting and authentic ways. Coca-Cola is aware that changes occur very fast. They’ve manage to remain number 1 by staying on the edge of cultural relevancy. Innovation Innovation also has an important role in Coca-Cola’s organization. To avoid becoming irrelevant, Coca-Cola has focused on innovation of their products, packaging, equipment and consumer engagement.

Coca-Cola knows that with innovation comes risk taking. But Coca-Cola tries to learn from these mistakes and try to keep share this knowledge so that the same mistake is not made elsewhere. With their new network known as the Coca-Cola Digital Network, which is based on precision marketing, Coca-Cola wants to reach their consumers with precise marketing campaigns while making use of all digital platforms. This network allows them to deliver content anytime and anywhere in the world. They are able to offer their content on in-store television networks, grocery stores, self owned digital vendors, billboards and taxi tops.
Ultimately their major focus is the mobile phone. Engagement Reaching their customers, commercial partners and their consumers in new ways is also a focus of the Coca-Cola organization. The focus lies in refreshing their ways to reach the consumers with innovative and creative ideas. Collaboration Coca-Cola also focuses on collaborating with all the people involved with the brand (stakeholders), such as the customers, suppliers, government, NGO’s, creative partners, shoppers and consumers. Social Media plays an important role in this. Coca-cola wants to use stakeholders who practice advocacy for the brand to their advantage.
For instance by highlighting consumer created movies on Youtube or other expressions created by others. They foresee that the focus must shift from creating an impression to using the expressions that are being offered. Being present online will also help them defend their brand if people are giving the wrong expressions. Profit This does not only include financial profit. Also collaborative profit which can bring value for all involved with Coca-Cola is included. This can be in forms of campaigns, where all stakeholders are engaged (their bottlers, suppliers and partners such as Youtube).
To summarize Coca-Cola’s survival you can say that Coca-Cola has been able to survive all this years because of rethinking and refreshing their business. This to be able to deliver Brand Love and Brand Value through culture, innovation, engagement, collaboration and profit. 2. Has the company’s management approach changed over the p of its lifetime and if so how? Explain Over the time Coca-Cola has grown into a global organization. This made it necessary for Coca-Cola to combine global and local leadership. This to be able to stay in touch with the needs of the local customers and adapt to changing market demands.
They’ve done this by dividing their organization in regions such as: – Africa – Eurasia – European Union – Latin America – North America – Pacific. These regions are then again divided in geographic regions. Final decisions are made in the head office, known as corporate. Decisions are then lead down the chain to positions as: – Executive committee – CEO – Strategic Business Units – Management Decisions are made on a higher level but lower management are given the freedom to adapt to their local markets. Q2 Decision-Making Article 1: “Philips steps up cost cutting, plans major overhaul of business” . Describe each decision and any other information such as what led to the decision, what happened as a result of the decision, etc. Philips has decided to layoff an additional 2. 200 of its employees. This due to the decision made in 2011for drastic overhaul of its business. After disappointing figures of the TV business, Philips has decided to shift their business to more profitable industries such as medical equipment. In 2011 Philips has made a management reshuffle to be able to deal with the challenges facing Philips. With this also came the plan to cut 800 million euro’s of costs and 4. 00 employees. Now this cost-cutting target has been raised to €1. 1 billion euro’s and the layoff of 2. 200 additional employees. By doing this Philips wants to remove duplication and reduce complexity in areas such as IT. The money saved from these cutbacks will then be reinvested in innovation, research and sales. 2. Discuss what possible heuristics may have been involved in the decision making process. Philips has learned that the TV business has led to disappointing figures. This led them to the decision of choosing for a different sector to focus on, the medical sector.
They’ve studied the TV business and learned that they have heavy competition who are lowering their prices to combat local Chinese suppliers. With research of other markets they’ve discovered the possibilities for them in the medical sector. 3. What did you learn about decision making from these examples? First and foremost the lesson learned is that heuristics are very important when it comes to business. Learning how to deal with problems, learning from them and discover new possibilities is the key to success. Philips has learned that they needed a changed and used their intelligence of the market to adapt to this.
Article 2: “” 1. Describe each decision and any other information such as what led to the decision, what happened as a result of the decision, etc. 2. Discuss what possible heuristics may have been involved in the decision making process. 3. What did you learn about decision making from these examples? Q3 The Port of Rotterdam 1. How would you describe the crisis management team’s organizational culture? What problems do they have in making decisions quickly? Explain We would describe the organizational culture with 2 words: Safety and Unity. This team built out of separate little teams is especially concerned with safety.
The team also needs unity for it the perform quick and fluently. The problem in decision-making is poor communication and limited information exchange between the parties. 2. What changes are they making to accelerate the crisis management decision-making procedures at the Port of Rotterdam? They will implement a comprehensive change management plan. This management plan should enhance collaboration and communication between the different organizations within CoPI( Commando Place Incident) resulting in a quicker and more efficient response unit. 3.
What challenges to the plan might the Port of Rotterdam crisis management team face? First of all it is a big challenge to convince the crisis management team members that their procedures should change first. Because IT-based systems could potentially cause more problems if not installed on the correct platform changes on three levels need to be made in order for the plan to succeed. These three levels are: Information exchange, decision-making procedures, and the level and scope of responsibilities and authorities. Sources Coca-Cola http://businesscasestudies. co. uk/coca-cola-great-britain/ ttp://www. thecoca-colacompany. com/dynamic/leadershipviewpoints/2010/10/the-genius-of-and. html http://heritage. coca-cola. com/ http://www. scribd. com/doc/17134627/Coca-Cola http://www. 123helpme. com/management-styles-at-coca-cola-view. asp? id=150376 Phillips article http://gulfnews. com/business/technology/philips-steps-up-cost-cutting-plans-major-overhaul-of-business-1. 1073055 http://www. bloomberg. com/news/2011-03-31/philips-s-van-houten-tackles-tv-overhaul-that-eluded-predecessor. html http://www. euronews. com/2012/09/11/philips-cuts-more-costs-and-jobs/