The Coca-Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Crises

RUNNING HEAD: THE COCA-COLA COMPANY STRUGGLES WITH ETHICAL CRISES

The Coca-Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Crises

Llami L Sloman

Jack Huddleston

HRM 522

November 4, 2012

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

Coca-Cola was faced with many ethical issues and dilemmas which had a bad impact on the company. Their where many ethical allegations that were taken against the Coca-Cola company such as: financial misconduct, lying, abusive, conflicts of interest, intimidating behavior and discrimination. All of these ethical issues made Coca-Cola company not a happy place to work. Between the years 2001 and 2004 Coke was accused of intimidating behavior and using abusive in Colombia, many people believed this had something to do with the eight deaths of Coca-Cola workers in the year of 1989. Although, Coke was never found to be directly related to the deaths, they were still taunted with the reputation and cause a very bad raptor with human rights proponents and environmentalists. Since the allegations have ruined the companies’ name they have now become a more social responsible organization, Coke has improved their working conditions as well they now financial support minorities’ organizations and causes.

Their where many ethical issues that arise because Coke was lying to consumers, there was a big dilemma of Coke having a conflict of interest in with the Belgian contamination scare in the year of 1999. During this time of the scare the Belgian officials did a recall on Coca-Cola products because of the number of consumers that became ill after they consumed a Coca-Cola product. Coke was very fast at denying the situation but could not produce a responds to any questions that arise because of the product affecting people. Coke did not find a reason to even investigate the situation. After all the complaints Coca-Cola finally decided to do an investigation, during the investigation they found out that a batch of carbon dioxide was improperly processed. Many consumers and media were infuriated with Coke because of the slow response to the issue. Coke’s main concern was to keep the focus of the company’s image and reputation and not the consumers.

During the time Coca-Cola was dealing with the scare in Belgian and started to recover from the issue they then suffered yet another allegation. This time Coke was faced with the allegation of racial discrimination by a large amount of African American employees. Coke was faced with chargers because African Americans stated there was discrimination in promotion, pay and performance evaluations. During the time of the allegations, Coke denied