Introduction
An organisation is a place where different demographic people work together. Today, the world is considered as a global village so that there has few boundaries to establish an organisation local; and abroad. The culture, norms, values, belief are different that affect in establishing organisational culture. Culture is the characteristics of particular group of people that includes language, cuisine, arts, music, social habits and religion (Zimmermann, 2015). In other words, culture is shared values. According to Robbins and Coulter (2007, p.52) ‘Organisational culture is a system of shared meaning and beliefs held by organisational members that determines in large degree, how they act toward each other and outsiders.’ A successful organisaiton like Coca Cola requires considering the culture of various countries in its every plant. `It is globally recognised that managing culture is very important in achieving and retaining organisational success. Different class, demographic, religious people works in an organisation and their attitude, behaviour is not identical. Every organisation established a unique organisational culture to retain workplace harmony. The duty of a good manager is to develop common organisational culture considering the culture of the country, beliefs etc and must be very careful that this culture does not humiliate others beliefs, emotions. Racism is a disease which destroys the workplace harmony and affects negatively in the operations. This write up will describe the organisational culture of Coca Cola both internally and externally. In addition, this report will focus on creating and maintaining culture by managers and people within the organisation. Moreover, this report will evaluate the context of national and global cultures may impact on the organisational output and performance. This report will end by providing some recommendation about the best practice approaches of managers to enable an effective cultural climate.
Organisational Culture of Coca Cola
Organisational culture represents an identical perception which is held by members of the organisation that affects their behaviour, attitude. In an organisation like Coca Cola, various characteristics and cultural people work. And, every organisation is affected both internal and external culture. A main role of culture is to separate the organisation from others and create a sense of identity for its workers. Jacques (1951) claimed that organisational culture shapes the customary and traditional way of thinking things that new members should learn to adapt them perfectly to achieve acceptance in the organisation. Culture is not consistent and not always logical and it also influenced by other culture. A strong culture is internally consistent, shared widely and become clear in its expectations and influence people in their behaviour.
Characteristics of organisational culture
Kreitner and Kinicki (2007) sorted out three main characteristics of organisational culture these are as follows:
Ø Organisational culture is transfer onto new members through the socialisation.
Ø It influences the workers' behaviour at workplace.
Ø Organisational culture operates at various level of the organisation.
Internal organisational culture at Coca Cola
Coca Cola is a multinational organisation so that the organisation needs to develop an identical and unique organisation’s culture for creating better workplace. Four types of organisation culture can be seen in Coca Cola.
Ø Power culture: The ray of power at Coca Cola is practiced centrally. The headquarter of the organisation gives order to its different plant. The operational plans come from the central.
Ø Role culture: The role culture in Coca Cola is logical and rational. Departmental functions are empowered with their role. Each department has supervised by a senior executive and an overall organisation is monitored by a manager at every plant. Employees are appointed based on role according to their ability to carry out the functions.
Ø Task culture: Coca Cola has developed some small teams and these teams are responsible for completer assigned tasks. For example; the organisaiton creates various small marketing teams and these teams are involved in promoting the brand value and product of Coca Cola to consumers. These teams can make decision to implement their assigned tasks.
Ø Person culture: Each plant of the organisation recruits and selects local employees on its various levels because it removes the linguistic and cultural barriers.
However, Coca Cola provides training to new entry employees and training and development department arranges different training for different levels of employees. The organistion evaluate the performance of each employee and on the basis of their performance promotion, reward etc. are provided. In addition, Coca Cola does not allow any labor union in the organisation.
External organisation culture at Coca Cola
Every organisation is influenced by external culture. This external culture influences in marketing strategies and other. The consumers of Coca Cola located across the world and every country possess different culture. For example, when Coca Cola begins its business in Middle East region they was given billboard advertisement where showed three picture consecutively. First picture showed a person who was in exhausted; second picture showed that he was drunk a bottle of Coca Cola and in third picture showed that after drunken Coca Cola he was refreshed.
This advertisement significantly reduces the sale of Coca Cola products in Dubai. The main reason was that people in Middle East is accustomed to reading right to left but advertisement was left to right. So, it is very important to figure out the culture of the nation where an organisation operating its business.
The advertisement style in Muslim courtiers is different than other countries. Customer buying behaviour is an important part of an external culture. In third world countries, people are not habituated with outside lunch or dinner and. In developing countries, people are habituated with taking their food outside. And, this culture also influences in purchasing Coca Cola drinks. It is very clear that beliefs, linguistic, customs and other external culture affect on the strategy of business. And, the success of an organisation depends on how quickly the organisation adopted the culture. Coca Cola considers the local cultural factors in its marketing strategies and becomes successful to gain and maintain good market share.
Creating and maintaining culture by a manager in Coca Cola
Creating and maintain organisational culture is always challenging for every manager. It requires considering numbers of factors. Riley (2014) mentioned some key factors that are affecting in creating organisational culture. These are as follows:
Ø Values, belief, norms, administrative practices and personality of founder
Ø Leadership and management style
Ø Size and development stage of the organisation
Ø Organisational policies, and practices
Ø The gender of employees
Ø Nature of the business, for example, profit oriented or charitable
Ø Location of the organisation such as Middle East, Europe or Asia.
Ø External environment such as economic, legal or social
The organisation culture leads the goals and objectives of an organisaiton. The strategies and implementation procedures are designed to gain the targets of the organisation also avail to its culture.
Creating organisational culture at Coca Cola
Coca Cola is world best selling soft drinks company operating more than 100 countries. So, that it is inevitable that the organisational culture is greatly affected by the local culture. The organisational culture of Coca cola is influenced by headquarters’ but the organisation also considers the local cultural factors. Coca Cola creates its organisational culture in following ways:
Ø The organisation appointed and keeps those employees who think and feel the way that management do.
Ø The management body instructs and socializes these workers to their way of thinking and feeling.
Ø The managers of different plant act as a role model that encourages workers to identify with them and shape their values, beliefs and assumptions.
Implementing and managing the culture at Coca Cola
Coca Cola culture is defined by seven fundamental values such as passion, leadership, collaboration, integrity, quality, diversity and accountability (Coca-Cola, 2015). As a global business, the organisation’s ability to understand, adopt and operate in a multicultural world both in the workplace and in the marketplace is challenging for its sustainability. The management of the organisation promotes and retains the organisational culture in following ways:
Ø Describe formal statements of Coca Cola’s philosophy, vision, values, mission and material used in employee recruitment, selection and socialisation within the organisation.
Ø Coca Cola created physical space and energetic working environment.
Ø The organisation does not allow any racism, gender discrimination and physical harassment.
Ø The organisation arranges deliberate training programs, role modeling and coaching by manager and supervisors.
Ø Slogan is a part of organisational culture. The company changes its slogan many times from 1886 to 2009. It is because the organisation energizes its employees and customers through different slogans. The present slogan is ‘Open Happiness’.
Ø The company provides rewards, promotion, status symbols and this culture is identical at all plants.
Ø Coca Cola celebrates various national cultures in its every plant according to the culture of the countries.
Ø The management body carefully gives attention to the activities, process, and outcome of workers and organisational operations.
Ø Coca Cola provides open culture focuses on safety and common facilities such as identical canteen, car parking, building trust at all levels.
The organisation develops an externally friendly atmosphere where employees are treated well. The company resolves conflict quickly and stops every chance of conflict at the initial stage. The organisation is very careful about the health safety and follows the law of countries. Coca Cola reached at this organisational culture after passing various turmoil situations. Now, the company is a role model to other organisations.
Conclusion
Every organisation’s goal is to achieve good market share and without better organisational culture it cannot possible to achieve. Culture is shared values that shape the behaviour, attitude of people and different cultural people work together in an organistion. For better workplace harmony, organisation outputs and high employee performance, it is essential for the manager to create a suitable organisational culture. Globalisation process has reduced cultural differences than previous and it brings the opportunity to diversified business to others. A successful manger is able to coordinate national and global culture along with organisation culture and leads the organistion to achieve the target.
References
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Robbins, S. and Coulter, M. (2007) Management. London: Pearson Prentice Hall
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