THE PROCESS AND KEY ROLES IN ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE.

NAME: ALISTER JUSTINIANO DSILVA

ROLL NO.: 2121106004
COURSE: M.Sc IN HOSPITALITY ADMINISTRATION
SEMESTER: 03RD SEMESTER
BATCH: 2021-2023
INSTITUTE: IHM AHMEDABAD

TITLE: The Process and Key Roles in Organisational Change - A

case study on Coca Cola Corporation.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ABOUT THE COMPANY: Coca Cola is a retailer, marketer and
manufacturer of non-alcoholic drinks and is known worldwide for it coca cola beverage. In
addition to its coca cola brand, Coca Cola Company offers 500 beverages and non beverages
brands in about two hundred countries. The company was founded by Asa Candler in year 1892.
It’s headquarter is located in Atlanta, Georgia of United States of America. The company had total
net income of approximately 11.8 billion US dollars in year 2010 with total number of employees
139,600 worldwide. Company’s brand i.e. Coca Cola stands number one in the list of most well
known brands of the world (Coca Cola company, 2006-2011).

Coca Cola is a of company that requires making changes in its products and business strategies
according to the consumer expectations and external environment.
The need for change in an organisation is often created by external and internal factors, where
external ones encompass governmental laws, labor markets, market conditions, economic
scenario etc. and internal factors are the workforce, resources, attitudes of workers and strategy
adopted by the organisation.

BACKGROUND/HISTORY: Coca Cola Corporation is among one of the oldest corporations of the
world. It has gone through many internal and external changes since it has been in existence. The
company has used techniques of change management in order to survive from the consequences
of those events.

 During world war II, the company was able to manage its existing position at that time
and also entered in many new markets and discovered new niches (Coca Cola company,
2006-2011). The company also provided free drinks to soldiers which were the part of its
strategy to become a patriotic symbol for the people of the country.
 Coca Cola Corporation adopted acquisition strategy in time of Asian financial crisis. The
company acquired bottling, coffee and tea shop businesses in Korea and Malaysia.
 Beverage is a type of industry where tastes and preferences of the consumers change on
continuous basis. Coca Cola Company also responded to such consumer changing

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behaviours in an effective way by developing new products like Diet Coke and Coca Cola
Zero.
 The company also committed a marketing blender when a rival company launched a black
beverage with comparatively sweet and smooth taste. The product was named as new
Coke. But the sales gradually went down and company faced severe consumer critics and
protests. The company managed this situation very commendably by restoring the old
formula and naming the bottle as diet coke.
 As people are becoming more health conscious and willing to invest on health based
products, coca cola is developing juices and various energy drinks as well. This shows the
company’s strategy to responding varying consumer tastes and expectations and
changing itself according to it.

CASE EVALUATION: The coco cola company used theory of organisational change presented by
Kotler (1996) which elaborated the procedure to manage change on the people dimension of the
organisation. In addition to making operational and strategic changes, the company also changed
its advertising strategy by targeting various groups of consumers like American consumers,
African consumers, Middle and far eastern consumers and European consumers. The company
altered the packaging of its coca cola brand and developed more product lines and broadened
them globally (The Coca-Cola company case. n.d.).

The present condition of Coca cola Company worldwide is very good. The company is selling its
beverages throughout the world successfully. But in some countries, coca cola stores are not as
according to the company’s main marketing, inventory and efficiency theme. The company is
planning to align its performance standards according to its own corporate culture and strategies
with the help of a comprehensive change management plan. These changes will be implemented
within the business operations and management of the company.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

1. EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY: The recent organisational change in coca cola is

directed towards the intrinsic values and motivations of the employees and can be
referred to as ’employee engagement’.

This strategy, together with internal branding programs is expected to bring about ideal
behaviour in employees, which would align the operations of coca cola worldwide, and
bring about efficiency throughout coca cola across all its business segments.

Coca cola hopes to bring about a thoroughly integrated system of communications, and
focus on creating brand relationships with their employees. For this purpose, employee
engagement surveys are conducted twice every year for all the coca cola associates,
which serve to highlight the areas where action is required, and further actions and
implementations can henceforth be executed.

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For coca-cola, an engaged workforce means:

 A more committed workforce.

 Employee performance aligned with organisational objectives.
 Employees have a clear idea of what is expected of them and what are the deliverables.
 Customer experience focuses an inherent part of employees’ values, who strives to
provide a better experience to the customers. Customer focus was identified as a central
tenant of the multi-year engagement strategy to be implemented in 2011.
 When employees are aligned with company goals, they themselves adopt a proactive
approach towards issues such as waste elimination.
 Employees awareness gives them a voice which helps to influence legislations at local
levels.
 An integrated system of communication is very helpful in the volatile and dynamic
markets of today, where conditions change very often and the company has to be
responsive at all times.

2. THE FORCED FIELD ANALYSIS AND AKADAR MODEL: Coca Cola Company can use two
change management tools to make sure that all people who are required to be the part
of change management process. These tools are Force Field analysis and AKADAR model.

Force field analysis is a technique developed by Kurt Lewin to scrutinise the forces that
are causing an opposition to change process (Bass, 2009). By doing Force Field Analysis,
Coca Cola Company will be able to induct people who are in need of appropriate training.

Another useful tool is AKADAR model which stands for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge,
Ability and Reinforcement. Through AKDAR model, firm creates awareness about the
need of change, generate desire in the people to help in transitioning process, give
knowledge to the people that how they can help the change process, develop an ability
in the people to go through the change and provide them with continuous reinforcement
to withstand the change.

3. ENSURING SUCCESS OF THE ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE:

 Productive and consequential dialogues and talks with employee representatives.
 Online and paper surveys from all the stakeholders involved in the ‘change’ throughout
the world, and with associates to gain an insight on their perceptions
 Effective communication at this stage for informing the stakeholders the reasons for
change and the benefits it would bring.
 Overcoming the ‘inertia’ by taking all stakeholders in confidence. The surveys can serve
as a pre requisite to gain an insight on the stakeholder perspective.
 Details of the action planning process communicated to all those who would initiate the
change.

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RECOMMENDATION AND IMPLEMENTATION:

 First of all the company should ascertain the core problems exist in the company for the
organisational change management. The company may develop a organisational change
management program for responding to financially uncertain environment of the world.
 It can also develop organisational change management programs for better operations
and logistics. The company can introduce new procedures and technological systems to
carry out operations. Programs can be introduced in forms changing company’s mission
and corporate culture enhancements.
 For all that, the most essential thing is to train upper management to provide them with
specific skills necessary to effectively going through the transitioning process.

 Systems thinking can be used to guide the successful change in the organisation. The
model is based on an integrative and interactive open system which consists of the
variables, attributes, internal relations and environment. The system is based on
characteristics like wholeness, interdependence, chain of influence, need for balance and
adaptability etc in an open system where communication is seen as an integrated process
that facilitates change within the organisation.
 New system that can be adopted by the company may be the machine bureaucracy.
Where there is clearly defined hierarchy, well defined area of operations, standard
operating procedures, proper rules and regulations, well division of labor, formal
relationships among the member of organisation, centralised decision making, technical
competence and standardisation of work.
 it is important for Coca Cola Company that it should develop strategies to reduce
employee defiance to change.

CONCLUSION: Coca-cola believes that their business results hinge on the dedication of their
employees to operational excellence. The company truly recognises the importance of the
people to the business, and knows that to continue to bring about tremendous results it is
bringing in, employees throughout the world should believe in the values intrinsically, and
therefore the employee engagement is being focused on all the countries the company serves
to align, thoroughly integrate and align the company so that operational efficiency can be
achieved. Employee engagement is very significant to all segments of operations at coca-cola
and has translated into performance in areas where employee engagement is higher,
Communication can be a key element to successful change management. Communicate the
changes to the employees; tell them why the change was inevitable and how they will benefit
from the change. The management should itself adopt a positive attitude towards the change
so that employees can follow their lead and welcome the change. Coca-cola as a company has a
heritage of embracing change rather than resist it and it should translate into their future
endeavours towards organisational change management to ensure that the organisation is best
poised to market under all sorts of environmental conditions.

REFERENCE: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/case-study-of-change-
management-in-the-coca-cola-corporation-business-essay.php

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