Introduction
This organizational structure explains how allocating, supervising, and coordinating duties are done to attain the company’s mission and purpose. It also describes how a company performs leadership through the designation of responsibilities to managers. A company benefits from this formation in the following significant ways. First, it assists in setting an acceptable process that guides routines and operations. Second, it ascertains the efforts applied by each employee in making decisions on particular issues and how their views will help build the company. All this explanation can be observed practically from the Coca-Cola Company’s structure, which is discussed below.
Coca-Cola’s Organizational Structure
An organizational structure is fundamental in the daily operation of the company. Coca-Cola functions internationally, dealing with the marketing, manufacturing, and distributing of non-alcoholic drinks. This entity supports many supply chains running across 200 countries as it serves more than 1.6 billion customers daily (Linnander et al., 2017). The highest management rank is the directors’ board, located at the head office in Atlanta, Georgia. The company uses a system of management decentralized, which is petitioned into two functioning departments. These sections include the Bottling Investment and Bottling Corporate. These departments are then separated to fit the different zones within which the organization serves. These areas include North America, Latin America, European Union, Africa, the Pacific, Eurasia, and these areas are further petitioned into geographic zones (Linnander et al., 2017). The dividing of regions allows localized decision-making, which is very effective for the organization.
The application of this decentralized organizational structure offers the regional and local leaders a mandate to make decisions on behalf of the general managers based at the head office. According to SerĂ´dio et al. (2018), the regional offices have departments that include human resources, finance, strategy and planning, innovation, marketing, research, and development. The heads of these sections are granted the power to function independently. Managers make decisions based on the purpose and objectives of the organization, hence what they approve should agree with the top hierarchy. When Coca-Cola is faced with a minimum improvement rate, the top leadership at the head office is involved in finding a long-lasting approach (Alburo et al., 2020). These decisions rely on reports compiled by the local managers who meet directly with the employees and discuss appropriate solutions.
Communication is critical in making organizational management successful in a company. Coca-Cola also has an internet system that presides over the real-time relay of information within leadership, resulting in efficient relaying of information across the organizational Structure. This mechanism has made the company balance between adjusting mutually and standardizing the workforce (Mills & Harclerode, 2017). The employees’ practices are based on the rules and guidelines, which offer employees pliability while maintaining their concentration on the company’s main objective.
How this Structure Impacts Quality
Coca-Cola Company has an established decentralized organizational structure that is flexible and mainly encourages teamwork. Any product feedback from the market results in a meeting of employees with different specialisms who discuss the matter intensively. During the engagement, marketing experts explain the input of their market research and investigation. Food scientists simplify what development to make on the product, and the finance experts inform on the expenses to be incurred on the change (Kolhede & Gomez, 2017). This engagement can bring out the best process and procedures that will improve the product quality.
Coca-Cola being an international brand, quality has always been a factor of consideration during production. The organization owns almost 400 non-alcoholic drinks serving consumers in over 200 countries (Ellis & Derera, 2019). A vital part of this organization’s structure is ensuring that every product is offered the best possible operation in the regional markets. Different departments concentrate on specific products within the company and use their experts’ information on the brands and consumer needs to effect promotional and sales efforts. In some incidents, a product is developed solely to be consumed locally, and an example of this is the product Lilt, which is only available in Great Britain and Ireland (Ellis & Derera, 2019). This approach leads to quality consistency in their respective production units.
How Coca-Cola’s Organizational Structure Influence the Ability to Change and Meet Market Demands
The application of a decentralized organization structure offers the local and regional heads power to make decisions on behalf of the general management located at the head offices. This procedure presides over making decisions because they can make decisions, making with urgency to suit development in the market needs. This company recognizes that a divided structure will allow the company to function in an uncertain world environment. Petitioning the world market into zones enables the organization to handle the different demands of its consumers and change the market demand of the region. Decentralization of the organizational structure empowers the company’s regional and local managers to focus on specific executive functions (SerĂ´dio et al., 2018). This formation creates the ability to change the product depending on the market demands.
Conclusion
Coca-Cola Company has been leading in the market for several years since its introduction. Many companies producing non-alcoholic beverages have tried to compete with this organization but have never been successful. The organizational structure applied supports its daily operation despite being an international market with different production units in other countries. The duties of managers from the headquarters are mainly to make complex long-term decisions. Therefore, the regional and local managers have the mandate for decision-making at their respective levels in line with its objectives. This procedure generally allows for fast and effective decisions making hence making the organization flexible.
References
Alburo, J., Bradshaw, A. K., Santiago, A. E., Smith, B., & Vinopal, J. (2020). Looking Beyond Libraries for Inclusive Recruitment and Retention Practices: Four Successful Approaches. In Critical Librarianship. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Ellis, D., & Derera, E. (2019). Evidence of Strategic Marketing in Social Enterprises: Lessons from a Developing Nation. In Strategic Marketing for Social Enterprises in Developing Nations (pp. 182-212). IGI Global.
Kolhede, E., & Gomez-Arias, J. T. (2017). Integrating an Applied Marketing Research Course into the Undergraduate Core Curriculum. In Marketing Management Association Annual Conference Proceedings (pp. 85-87).
Linnander, E., Yuan, C. T., Ahmed, S., Cherlin, E., Talbert-Slagle, K., & Curry, L. A. (2017). Process evaluation of knowledge transfer across industries: leveraging Coca-Cola’s supply chain expertise for medicine availability in Tanzania. PloS one, 12(11), e0186832.
Mills, J. L., & Harclerode, K. (2017). Privacy, Mass Intrusion, and the Modern Data Breach. Fla. L. Rev., 69, 771.
SerĂ´dio, P. M., McKee, M., & Stuckler, D. (2018). Coca-Cola, a Model of Transparency in Research Partnerships? A Network Analysis of Coca-Cola’s Research Funding (2008–2016). Public Health Nutrition, 21(9), 1594-1607.