Discuss about the Leadership Style at Coca Cola Company.
Leadership can be defined as a trait to motivate and empower others by taking up responsibility of a task and turn a vision into reality (Northouse, 2015). Several leaders all over the world are famous for their own styles. Hitler for his authoritative style, Martin Luther King Jr. for participative style, Warren Buffet for his delegative style are some of the examples (Almodaresi, 2015). Leadership is seen through and through in any business setting and each leader has their own style (Daft, 2014). The report below is an analysis of leadership styles seen in case of Coca-Cola, a century old beverage manufacturing company that has been through many phases in its course of development and has been under the guidance of several leadership styles (Penderghast, 2013). The report highlights three leadership styles that have put the company at the top and gives the examples of the three leaders who have displayed excellent leadership traits and decision making skill (Shetty, 2014).
Background
Established in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia, Coca-Cola has become one of the most successful American based multinational beverage company (Foster, 2012). The company’s prime product is carbonated soda named Coca – Cola which is served all around the world, except for Cuba and North Korea. The company also produces several other products such as bottled water, sports drink, flavored water and several kinds of soft drinks that are customized according to the local country demands. The company also holds the maximum market share in cold beverage sales
The company does business globally but operates at a local level working with 250 bottling partners around the world. The company does not own any of the bottling partners but rather operates through several local channels. The bottling partners are in constant contact with the local stores, multiplexes, restaurants and other customers to develop and execute local strategy along with the company. The beverage is unique and has a well distinguished taste there by making it crucial for the company to make sure that all the bottles sold worldwide have the same taste. The organizational structure in Coca – Cola is developed such that all its operations function smoothly and ensuring growth of the company. This structure is robust yet flexible to adopt to the needs of the local market (Pfitzer, 2013).
The company has a Board comprising of 15 members including the CEO of Coca-Cola Ahmet Muhtar Kent. These board member are all divided and head several other committees as described in the figure 1
Figure 1: Committees and their members at Coca-Cola
The organization is also divided according to the region of operations. The company in the year of 2016 have changed their International operating structure to make use of the management expertise of their key leaders. The company is now divided in to three regional groups
EMEA – Europe, Middle East and Africa led by Brian Smith
Latin America – Led by Alfredo Rivera
Asia Pacific – Led by John Murphy
The company organizes itself whenever required to make sure either regional decisions or divisional decisions. All the decisions are overlooked by the 12 board members to ensure that the growth of the company sustains.
The vision of Coca Cola consists of 6 P’s. People, portfolio, partners, planet, profit and productivity (Svendsen, 2013). The company believes in a winning culture. It lives in its value of leadership, collaboration, integrity, accountability, passion, diversity and quality. It believed in focusing on the market to achieve its vision. The employees are expected to act like owners and work smart. Their mission is to refresh the world, inspire moments of optimism and happiness, create value and make a difference. The mission, vision and the culture of the company clearly has been developed over several years working towards progress. The company achievement today is clearly due to the exceptional leadership at Coca Cola.
It is impossible to survive in a food and beverage market for over a century if the leaders are not aligned to the organizational goals (Golema, 2013). Starting from Asa Griggs Candler to the current CEO Ahmet Muhtar Kent, the company has been led by intellectuals and effective businessmen to become one of the most reputed organization around the world. The leadership style in the organization itself is of a delegative style (Clark, 2013). A quick glance at the organization structure itself shows that the organization believes in need to delegate and rule instead of taking all the responsibilities. Dividing the organization based on the functions and ensuring that all the functions are not under the control of a single entity and using SME’s to work in each functional division is a brilliant strategy and a clear example of delegative leadership.
The concept of Innovative Leadership has been coined by Dr. David Gliddon which involves the idea generation, evaluation and implementation. With its roots in path-goal theory, leader member exchange theory and the increasing need for creative and effective ways to motivate, empower and lead, several leaders today can be classified as innovative leader (baker, 2015). Ahmet Muhtar Kent is one of them. The five-fold agenda of the CEO makes his approach an innovative way to develop the company. Muhtar believes in the need to invest in research and development, in the welfare of the employees and finding new methods to satisfy the customers displaying the trait of valuing the resources. Collaborative nature of the CEO encourages partnership with several companies (Lowitt, 2013). The CEO encourages innovative ideas in marketing, finance and almost all fields in the organization to ensure that the ideas of his employees are counted in and every single mind in the company is valued. All this skills make an extremely good impression of a lead by example principal. The CEO expects his employee to be innovation and creativity and he himself through the strategic principles puts forth these skills.
For companies operating at global levels it is quite necessary to have people in the organization who can adopt and work with multiple cultures. Though the heads of each country working for Coca Cola are usually chosen from the native employees, being a president or a chairman for an entire area that covers multiple cultures is quite difficult. However, at Coca – Cola cross culture leadership is efficiently implemented by several regional chairmen. One person in the Coca Cola Company that has been able to successfully implement this style of leadership is Atul Singh, the current chairman of Asia Pacific Group. The chairman makes operation decisions for 36 predominant markets in the Asia Pacific Group. He works with employees hailing in five business units that comprise of India, China, Korea, Japan and other Asian countries. The cultures and the working styles of each of this country is completely different. Japanese are productive and quick, while Chinese are punctual and Indians are hard working. Working different kind of employees especially in an operations set up needs a clear understanding of the cultures the company operate in. Atul Singh has been the vice president of Coca Cola India and moved on to work in Mainland China. Singh played a significant role in restricting the Coca-Cola’s system to fit the needs of each of the region. He made sure to make changes to the bottling system used in Indonesia to meet the fasting growing need in the country by switching to two production lines. The same is in question for Japan and China. At Coca Cola, regional decisions are made by the regional chairmen and board rather than by the global board. It is only apt that these employees understand the need of the region way better than the head office and hence are given significant authority to implement these changes (Murthy, 2014). For the sake of the new bottling system in Indonesia alone the company spent $500 million to support the changes showing the trust and value they place in their regional heads. Singh also heads the gender diversity campaign called the Asia Pacific Talent Initiative.
Every company has a vision and expects every employee to work towards achieving this vision. Every person has their own way of working towards this vision. However, there are also those employees that make this vision itself a style of working. The company’s vision of the 6 P’s have been adopted into the very style of working of James Quiency, the president and Chief Operating officer of Coca Cola.
A visionary leader is an excellent communicator, risk-taker, well organized, strategic and charismatic and so is James Quiency (Szucs, 2014). Quiency is responsible for all the operating decisions made globally. Although armed with a battalion of other experts working at regional and functional level, Quiency holds the responsibility to analyze and approve several decisions. Quiency was responsible for the growth of Coca Cola in Europe to become the largest shareholder in nonalcoholic ready to drink beverage section of the region. He has strategically improved the brand image by collaborating with efficient partners such as Erfrischungsgetranke AG and Iberian partners displaying charisma and effective communication. He also improved the operation execution process in the region to decrease deliver time and increase the capacity of production through his management skills. He also played a major role in acquiring companies such as Innocent juice that proved to be a profitable segment. The re-launch of Coca Cola Zero and the acquisition of Jugos e Valle are all due to visionary leadership of Quiency. He I known for this communication ability, motivational behavior, negotiate skills and most of all the belief in the company’s vision. He had worked relentlessly in communicating and motivating the People he works with, developing the portfolio of the company, collaborating with efficient partners, acquiring profitable organization and increasing productivity thorough his efficient operation management.
Conclusion
Leadership is the key to success in any business set up. In case of MNCs leadership plays a much vital role to ensure coordination and alignment of different regions towards growth. At Coca Cola, a company that adopts a delegative leadership style, individuals such as the CEO, COO and regional chairman have shown the new and adaptive leadership approaches. It is a combination of all these approaches and the adaptive and robust nature of the company that has helped the company to ace the beverage market for over a century.
References
Almodaresi, S. M. A., Ebrahimzade, R., & Abolghasemi, M. (2015). Study the impact of types of leadership on talent management (case study: Yazd Red Crescent organization). Journal of Health Administration (JHA), 18(59), Pe92-Pe105.
Baker, J. D. (2015). Getting buzzed on innovative leadership. AORN journal, 101(4), 401-403.
Clark, D. (2013). Leadership styles.
Daft, R. L. (2014). The leadership experience. Cengage Learning.
Foster, R. J. (2012). Cocaâ€ÂGlobalization. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2013). Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.
Lowitt, E. (2013). The Collaboration Economy.
Murthy, D. V., VenuGopal, K., & Ratnalu, D. (2014). Business excellence with indianism: an epitome to global leadership. DMIETR, 69.
Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Pendergrast, M. (2013). For God, country, and Coca-Cola: The definitive history of the great American soft drink and the company that makes it. Basic Books.
Pfitzer, M., Bockstette, V., & Stamp, M. (2013). Innovating for shared value. Harvard Business Review, 91(9), 100-107.
Shetty, N. (2014). Leadership Style at Coca-Cola Company. Retrieved July, 16.
Svendsen, S. E. (2013). Refresh. Create. Inspire: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Mission, Vision and Values Behind The Coca-Cola Company and the Digital Marketing Strategies of the (Doctoral dissertation, Liberty University).
Szucs, R. S. (2014). Cognitive Level Of Consumers’knowledge In The Case Of A Few Food Products. European Scientific Journal, 10(10).
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