Unit Title: Decision Making and problem solving

Assessment Title: Research Report

 Executive summary
The management issue of Coca cola Company related to strategic management will be
discussed here in this research report. It is usually seen that employees coming from different
cultural diversity are difficult to manage which leads to the issue of strategic management.
Some research questions are formed to create a direction for the research findings and
analysis. The researchers in this research report has done the secondary data analysis. Some
alternations and recommendations are provided for Coca cola Company to undertake for
resolving the issue related to strategic management.
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4

Company Identification..............................................................................................................4

Identification of Management problem......................................................................................4

Research questions.....................................................................................................................5

Research design and method......................................................................................................6

Research findings and analysis..................................................................................................6

Managing the issue.....................................................................................................................8

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9

References................................................................................................................................11
Introduction

Management issues are very common in business organisations but it is important to solve the
problems that arise with the organisation with proper decision-making. In this research report,
a multinational company is taken into consideration for addressing its management problem.
The multinational organisation taken is the Coca Cola Company. The management problems
of the Coca Cola Company will be identified by designing a research program. The data of
the research analysis will be secondary in form. The finding of the research will be analysed
which will help in the identification of alternatives and recommendations for improving the
performance of the organisation.

Company Identification

The Coca Cola Company is an American-based beverage multinational corporation, which

has its headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The company was founded as Coca Cola by John
Smith Pemberton and then as Coca-Cola by Asa Griggs Candler in the year 1892. The present
CEO of the company is James Quincey while the President is Brian Smith. The Coca Cola
Company is considered as the prominent manufacturer, seller, and dealer of non-alcoholic
syrups and beverages all over the world. More than 300 brands are consisting of tea, water,
coffee, juice, and sport, and energy drink being produced by the company. The company has
its office in more than 200 nations of the world making it the King of the beverage industry.
The concentrates that are manufactured by the Coca Cola Company are traded in licensed
bottlers labelled as Coca Cola all over the World. The company provides exclusive contracts
to the bottlers. It is then the responsibility of the company to fill up the bottles and cans with
the concentrate, which is mainly the combination of sweeteners and filtered water. The new
brand naming Coke is introduced by the production department of the company in form of
new cool Drinks (Brondoni 2020).

Identification of Management problem

Issues regarding cultural diversity of employees

The Coca Cola Company faced issues regarding the insubstantial team of strategic
management with the organisation. In this research report, the challenges faced by Coca cola
Company due to its global processes of strategic management will be addressed here.
Strategic management is used by the business organisation to influence the overall process
associated with the internationalisation of a company. Strategic management refers to the
procedure of classifying the objectives of a company, creating the desired strategies and
policies, which can ensure the achievements of the set goals, and purposes and allocation of
resources for the implementation of plans. The Chief Executive officer of a business
organisation guides strategic management, which is considered as the greatest level of
managerial practices (Elia et al., 2019).

In Coca Cola Company, the biggest problem is related to strategic management, as it is a

multinational company. It is the responsibility of executive officials to formulate the plans,
which will help in meeting the requirements of all employees internationally. The
responsibilities of the senior manager of the company are huge as the procedure of
developing international strategic management is a difficult task. The employees coming
from different cultural diversity are difficult to manage which leads to the issue of strategic
management. The task is a difficult one as the company has to deals with numerous
companies present in different countries. Coca Cola Company also faces huge competition
with PepsiCo in creating a new variation of carbonated drinks and non-carbonated drinks.
The issues related to the strategic management of Coca Cola Company is that it only focuses
on beverage products while its competitors PepsiCo concentrate on both beverage and non-
beverage products. The company faces the problem of strategic management during the
process of setting goals for creating a vision for the company, classifying the targeted needs,
and long and short-term objectives. Therefore assigning motivated and skillful management
is important for achieving all the diverse goals (Le et al., 2017).

During the process of analysis of the organisation, the issue regarding strategic management
in Coca Cola Company was noted. The assessment of the internal and external environment
for identifying the weaknesses and strengths that the company faces and the threats and
opportunities that the company will experience in the future are required in this process. The
analysis of the management issues in the company is both labour-intensive and cost-intensive
as getting the information of diverse regions are covered in the research is difficult. It is
important to determine the strategy of the company by establishing alternative priorities and
creating effective decisions regarding investment regions (Mustafa and Maliqi, 2020).

Research questions

1. What are the challenges the Coca-Cola Company is facing in regards to global
strategic management?
2. What is the international strategic management problem?
 3. What are measures of management that can be applied for managing the problems
related to specific global strategic management issues within the Coca-Cola
Company?

Research design and method

Research design is the guidelines or framework that helps the researcher in synchronising all
the various elements related to the research report properly. The various elements used are
research problems, topics, and data and methods in a systematic manner. The research design
can be divided into three major categories such as descriptive, explanatory, and exploratory
design. Research design is considered as an important procedure for adopting and
implementing the data and information collected for presentation in the research project. The
chosen research design for this research report is exploratory research design, which will help
in meeting the research questions. The exploratory research design is chosen because it helps
in discovering new concepts and thoughts. Exploratory research design is flexible and can
work with the research process in an unstructured form. This design offers the researcher the
opportunity to evaluate several features related to that research topic (Nattrass 2020).

The secondary data will be examined by the researchers for relating the strategic management
issues encountered by Coca Cola in the global markets. The information and data of the
Strategic management problems will be collected from the available annual reports prepared
for evaluations directed by stakeholders of the company. This data and information will be
used for carrying out the analysis of the strategic condition and economic review of the
company. Therefore, the use of internet sources will enable the achievement of the research
as the data and information will help in supporting the recovery of the essential information
necessary in completing comprehensive research.

Research findings and analysis

The findings that are collected from the various journals and annual reports of the Coca Cola
Company revealed that there are various issues, which leads to the problem of strategic
management within the organisation. Diversity in culture due to the difference in language,
religion and social background among the employees resulted in interference in the process
of strategic management of the company. The company had faced some racial discrimination
lawsuits, which settled by forcefully paying some amount of money. According to Serodio et
al., (2020), the employees from the minority group in the organisation faced discrimination
for which they have noted cases of exploitation. The issue that the minority group of
employees within the Coca cola Company faced was that they were not allowed to represent
at the top management position. The Asian being the minority was looked down and more
preference was given to the White or American-based employees. The issue of racial
discrimination led to the weakening of strategic management as the company failed in
achieving all its objectives and goals. Some of the external issues were also the reason for the
management problem within the company, which includes political turbulence near company
locations, activities of competitors, and variations in commercial principles, instructions, and
laws. As per Chiu et al., (2019)The failure of strategic management due to the issues related
to cultural diversity also resulted in losing competition and position in the internal market.
This resulted in a lack of innovation and creativity of the employees, as the employees were
not getting a positive environment for bringing in new ideas and innovation. A major
competitor like PepsiCo creates additional opportunities as it was taking sales advantages of
subsequent collaboration among various products. Coca cola was lacking the commitment
from its senior managers to improve the increase in issues related to diversity and
discrimination.

It can be analysed that Coca Cola Company has various issues related to strategic
management, which is important to eliminate to understand the various complex interaction
in different areas of management. According to Gupta and Bhaskar (2016), the administration
of the Coca Cola does not provide enough priorities to the strategic issues, which can help the
company in foreseeing and tracking their future operations and change according to
customers’ needs and outlooks. The senior managers need to take special attention in
maintain cultural diversity and eliminate racial discrimination as it will help in achieving all
the set objectives and goals. Scholars believe that the skills and efficiency of the managers
are examined during such a difficult situation. With improved competition within profitable
activities, many companies all over the world have directed to a way of existence in terms of
generating a competitive edge. The effectiveness of the company can be measured by using
strategic effectiveness in handling the challenges.

From the findings, it can be analysed that the barrier in terminology is resulting in the issues
of cultural diversity. MNC like Coca Cola Company depends on effective communication for
managing the organisation. The difference or barrier in terminology affects the functioning of
a multinational mother or Father Company and its international subsidiaries of the company.
The barrier in the process of communication among the employees or team due to language
difference affects the performance level of the organisation. The different cultures and new
languages are issues regarding the process of approaching other operators in the process of
decision-making. Hence, communication needs to be the form of international business. It is
important to exchange employees as it helps in spreading the knowledge and norms of the
company (Kamales and Knorr, 2019)

Managing the issue

The company being the world's largest manufacturer of soft drinks having branches in
various nations, which becomes difficult to merge several programs into a collective strategy.
Every nation of the world has its specific way of managing the issues relating to strategic
management, which mainly depends on spatial needs and performance from the different
sites. The requirement of strategic management issues is different in different companies as
there is a difference in competitive, cooperative and resource allocation and distribution
systems (Van der Byl et al., 2020). A single strategy needs to be incorporated for dealing will
all the management issues with the company otherwise, the issues continue to remain as it
advances in other locations. The strategy needs to be split in terms of different regions, as it is
not possible to have one single strategy.

The Coca Cola Company can apply the managerial process model for handling the issues and
problems related to strategic management. This model will support in evaluating the potential
of the productivity of the company related to different managerial processes, which include
decision-making, proper planning, and correct budgeting for achieving good performance in
the long run. The importance of the managerial process is that it will help Coca cola in
boosting coordination among employees for combating the cultural difference, race, and
linguistic, which are considered as the utmost vital principle of strategic management
concerns that affect the performance level of the company. The implementation of the
administrative procedure will ensure in maintaining an effective system of communication
within the organisation. An effective system of communication will helps in understanding
the needs of the employees, enhancement of confidence, and trust among employees. This
will lead to an increase in efficiency of the performance of the employees as it helps in
making trustworthiness between different employees groups and team working spirit. This
measure can help the company in mitigating the strategic issues and hence improving
productivity, which will be connected with the preferences of the customers (Van der Byl et
al., 2020).

The negative issues that arise within the Coca Cola Company affect the performance and
hence the internal and external environment. The company needs to invest in the system
related to strategic management as it helps in observing, examining and reacting to the
problems related to diversity management. The adaptation process can help the Coca Cola
Company to achieve best arrangements related to its environmental issues and learning the
importance of how advanced knowledge and understanding facilitates the company. The
system of strategic management will help in focusing on the decision-making of important
issues by ignoring irrelevant issues. Tracking collective assignments will improve the
activities and performance of the organisation. To handle strategic management issues the
company needs skill and knowledge for solving such issues easily. the automated system of
management need to be used for managing the external issues of the Coca Cola Company as
it helps in tracking, identifying the issues related to significant public policies and
implementation of the problem-solving tactics so that they are not transformed into legislative
actions (Gurca et al., 2020).

The automated monitoring process to handle the common issues related to strategic
management for the external and internal environment helps in aligning the capabilities and
resources for controlling the potential opportunities and threats effectively. The company
must undertake the process of collective decision –making. This process includes different
channels linked with various mangers of the organisation for taking decisions collectively.
The company needs to look after its long-term investment in better transportation services,
which include the proper planning as it helps in achieving the expansionary needs of the
company. The planning process should embrace the determination of upcoming transport
conveniences and a suitable distribution of financial resources. The issues related to the
strategic management of the Coca Cola Company will be addressed only if the above-
mentioned measures are implemented in an appropriate manner. The ignorance and lack of
interest will hence result in the progression of the management issue (Kodama 2020).

Conclusion

The multinational business organisation faces management issues, as the number of people
involved in such organisation is huge. The management issue that the Coca cola Company is
facing is related to strategic management. In this research report, the challenges faced by
Coca cola Company due to its global processes of strategic management are addressed. The
employees coming from different cultural diversity are difficult to manage which leads to the
issue of strategic management. Some of the research questions are formed to direct the
research findings and analysis. The secondary data are examined by the researchers for
relating the strategic management issues encountered by Coca Cola in the global markets.
The data of the Strategic management problems are collected from the available annual
reports prepared for evaluations directed by stakeholders of the company. It is analysed that
Coca Cola Company has various issues related to strategic management such as issues
regarding different cultural backgrounds of employees, which is important to eliminate in
order to understand the various complex interaction in different areas of management. Some
alternations and recommendations are provided for Coca cola Company to undertake for
resolving the issue related to strategic management.
References

Brondoni, S.M., 2020. Shareowners, Stakeholders & the Global Oversize Economy. The
Coca-Cola Company Case. Symphonya. Emerging Issues in Management, (1), pp.16-27.

Chiu, H., Fischer, D. and Friedman, H., 2019. Board Diversity in Audit and Finance
Committees: A Case Study of Coca-Cola', Diversity within Diversity Management
(Advanced Series in Management, Volume 22).

Elia, S., Petruzzelli, A.M. and Piscitello, L., 2019. The impact of cultural diversity on
innovation performance of MNC subsidiaries in strategic alliances. Journal of Business
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Gupta, S. and Bhaskar, A.U., 2016. Doing business in India: cross-cultural issues in
managing human resources. Cross Cultural & Strategic Management.

Gurca, A., Bagherzadeh, M., Markovic, S. and Koporcic, N., 2020. Managing the challenges
of business-to-business open innovation in complex projects: A multi-stage process
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Kamales, N. and Knorr, H., 2019. Leaders with Managing Cultural Diversity and
Communication. Asia Pacific Journal of Religions and Cultures, 3(1), pp.63-72.

Kodama, M., 2020. Innovation through boundaries vision and dynamic capabilities: the
strategic management perspective. In Developing Boundaries Knowledge for Innovation.
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Le, A., Jiang, J., Sandor, M., Stashick, M. and Zhang, L., 2017. Business Ethics: The Coca-
Cola Company. Simon Fraser University Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy, 1(1), pp.35-
45.

Mustafa, D. and Maliqi, Z., 2020. Managing inclusion at a diverse workplace: from a
managerial and employee perspective.

Nattrass, N., 2020. In defence of exploratory research: A reply to critics. South African

Journal of Science, 116(SPE), pp.1-36.

Serodio, P., Ruskin, G., McKee, M. and Stuckler, D., 2020. Evaluating Coca-Cola’s attempts
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