Coca Cola Case Study

Delineate the ethical issues and dilemmas (as found in Chapter 3) the company faced.

The Coca Cola Company at the turn of the century came under scrutiny for one ethical problem after another. These issued included integrity, alleged racial discrimination, abusive or intimidating behavior, manipulating earnings, environmental issues, and disrupting long term contractual agreements with distributors.

The company's integrity took a major hit in the unethical manner in which they responded to and handled the contamination issues in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Not only did the company mishandle the scare over contaminated products in Belgium and France, which led to the biggest recall in the U.S. soft drink giant's history where they pulled 2.5 million Coke products off shelves they never took responsibility for the problem. The companies slow response time to the crisis also raised questions as to their integrity. To further add to their unethical behavior they blamed the contamination on poor quality carbon dioxide used to put fizz in drinks and a toxic chemical that contaminated the outside of cans for the symptoms. There problems in Belgium and France were followed up with the environmental issues that arose and were brought against their bottling plants in India. The company was charged with both groundwater depletion and contamination. Coca Cola's ethics again took a hit when they were sued for racial discrimination by current and former African American employees. The suit, which was filed in April 1999, claimed that Coke discriminated against black salaried employees in pay, promotions and evaluations. The suit was settled when Coke agreed to a settlement of 193 million dollars. At the beginning of the twentieth century Coca Cola was once again mired in unethical controversy when they were implemented in the intimidation and deaths of plant workers in Columbia. Their public relations spiral continued when they were accused of channel stuffing or shipping non requested inventory to wholesalers and retailers to inflate their earnings to meet expectations of investors. The companies ethical reputation was again questioned with environmental issues surfaced when their plants in India were investigated due to accusations of groundwater depletion and contamination. While all these issues were surfacing in the global marketplace Coca Cola was also facing issues in the United States. The contractual agreements with distributors came under question when fifty-four of their bottlers filed suit against them for breach of agreement. The suit claimed Coca Cola Enterprises was delivering their goods to ware houses instead of using direct store delivery. The bottlers claimed this would hurt their business.

Determine which of the issues/dilemmas you identified was the most significant. Explain your reasoning.