An Analysis Of Organizational Change Online Tutoring

Coca Cola Case Study

Introduction

There is a famous Greek philosopher, which says that the only thing constant is change. This change is applicable to individuals, organizations, and even the entire economy. However, the importance of change is most important for business organizations because they are working in an ever-challenging and dynamic environment (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). The internal environment of any business is controllable and therefore the change might not seem evident, however, the external environment provokes changes in order to stay at par with the external forces and stay competitive in the market.

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Company’s Profile and factors inducing organizational changes

Coca-Cola is one of the top brands globally. They are known to be one of the major brands of food and beverages. They are operating in more than 200 countries and have a diverse portfolio of around 380 different food and beverage products under various brand names. Organizations, which are operating on such a huge scale, requires changes both domestically and globally. They are facing competition and other external challenges, which require solutions; the solutions require organizational changes. These changes might be induced due to:

Changes in technology

The technological environment is ever-changing and any business requires to change its technology before its methods or operations turn obsolete. Not only they can get obsolete but with time they might lose their competitive advantage and becomes easier to imitate by competitors. These changes help in gaining quality and efficiency which provides cost-effectiveness and competitiveness in the market. For instance, Coca-Cola needs constant investment in methods to lower their cost, minimize wastage and bring innovation in products and production processes (Pollack & Pollack, 2015).

Changes in consumer expectations, tastes, and preferences

Coca-Cola is not only known to be a leading beverage manufacturer but also known for producing beverages that are mostly synthetic and unhealthy. Currently the taste of consumers and brand loyalty overshadow this perception, but with increasing awareness and inclination towards organic, healthy, and natural products, there will be time soon when competitors will start taking market share from Coca Cola, mainly because their products are considered to be unhealthy or synthetic (Brodoni, 2020).

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Changes in competitors’ strategy

The carbonated and juice industry is highly competitive globally, and therefore it is imperative for Coca-Cola to make organizational changes to meet the competition effectively. These changes are mostly related to supply chain strategies, production methods, restructuring the organization, creating or merging strategic business units, and introducing or divesting brand portfolios.

Changes in a political and legal climate

Operating in more than 200 countries, Coca-Cola has to face many challenges related to changes in the macro-economic landscape. They require responsive strategies to counter any changes in legislation, legal requirements, or taxations.

Changes to increase employees performance

Multinational brands usually implement similar organizational structures and policies globally. However, every market requires modification in methods, policies, and organizational structure, based on domestic environmental forces.

Systematic Approach to bring changes

Creating a change through Lewin’s Change Model

Lewin’s Change Model distributes the change over three stages of a continuous cycle (Hussain et al., 2018). The first stage is unfreezing, where the organization needs to prepare to accept changes. Coca Cola for instance, is known as one of those brands, which bring innovation in terms of communicating their brand to consumers, mainly to increase brand recognition and vale perception. Coca Cola now decides to re-strategize their marketing strategy for markets operation in developing countries. The Chief Information Office in Georgia, USA is now focusing on digitization of South Asian market, where they want to engage customers on different social media platforms , just like they did in regions such as North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand etc. This will require the readiness of regional and domestic marketing managers and executives, so that they are aligned with the philosophy of the Global Chief Information Officer. The second phase is the changing phase where the organization actually implement the strategy. These changes can be implemented through motivation. This motivation can be financial and non-financial, for instance Coca Cola can announce a promotion for an employee who successfully complete the digital marketing or digital marketing coordination certifications successfully. They can also be awarded with increments and other financial benefits. Last stage is to freeze, which means that when the entire strategy is successfully implemented, then further changes are not executed, the entire set of new policies, operational procedures and skills are froze until the new changes are required in organization to encounter any external environment changes etc. However, as commonly confused, these changes are still constantly going through improvements and updates, however there are no major changes in hierarchy , structure or no major skill set is required until next unfreezing (Hussain et al., 2018).

Action Research Model as a systematic change agent

The model is more comprehensive, as it gives a more detailed breakdown of approach towards problem solving and change implementation (Molineux, 2018). Coca Cola is leading its category globally and there is a massive inflow of raw material and even more complicated outflow of finished products. The complex supply chain structure and presence of too many intermediaries makes it very difficult for planning and forecasting department to counter bullwhip effect (the difference in real and recorded demand due to miscommunication between supply chain intermediaries). The first step in this model is to define the problem, which in this case is discrepancy in supply and demand due to lack of real time and integrated communication between intermediaries. The second step is consultancy with an external change agent. The consultant along with the organization will now move towards the third step, where relevant data will be gathered and initial diagnosis will be initiated. These findings will then be shared with the party, in this case Coca Cola. After the findings are recognized by the business as reasonable, then the change agent and the business will jointly validate the diagnoses and move forward to the next step. For instance in this case, the recognition of absence of integrated supply chain will be diagnosed and later validated as a genuine problem. Next, the suggestion will be given to Coca Cola, where they can implement information systems in form of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), which will help them to connect supply chain partners, help in gaining almost real time information and use artificial intelligence and systematic organizational information to forecast demand or supply needs, accurately to counter the bullwhip effect. Once the ERP is implemented, staff is trained to adopt and conduct supply chain operations through ERP, then the last step will be evaluation. In this case, Coca Cola will monitor the current demand and supply discrepancies and compare them to figures that existed pre implementation, and finally decide whether the applied changes were effective or is there something else needs to be done in order to eradicate the problem (Altamony et al., 2017).

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