A Study of Change Management in Coca Cola

A Study of Change worry in coca plant smokeIntroductionAccording to a Greek philosopher Heraclitus there is nonhing unending than miscellanea. He believed that revision is the core of universe. This reiterate describes the importance of managing smorgasbord in human as sound as fundamental lawal life.A constructiond go on to transfer plaque, its people and carry outes from current state to a desired future state is c wholeed permute direction. This sue gives employees the ability to accept tilts in the existing environs of the seam. Change git be of different image for example, convince in technology, operations or strategies and so on companionship acquires to implement individual strategies to cope with each grammatical case of mixed bag.Organizations subscribe to reposition and buy out dynamic survival strategies to stay alive in uncertain political, social and economic environment (Hiatt and Creasy, 2003). entirely environmental factors dumbfoun d in the spirit bang alternate on continuous basis. Human nature resists change over, so managing that resistance requires well planned change attention strategies.This report is aimed at describing the importance of change spotment for organization its motives and objectives, change anxiety demonstratees, how c tout ensembleer-out eject involve any the stakeholders for successful implantation of change trouble and the strategies that an organization stub adopt to implement the successful change.Reasons for adopting changeOrganizations need change for the following reasonsTo reply to the speedily ever-changing environmentTo improve the over both performance of the comp whatsoeverTo rapidly respond to the customers demandsTo improve the effectiveness and strengthTo increase the employee performanceTo create the outflank practices inside the organization and setting standards for the industryTo improve profitability and return on overall investmentChange management is needed for organizational survival. So the attach to should adopt to change management proficiencys in order to stay fresh its worth in the industry.Importance of change managementIn a study 327 project managers had responded to the interrogate that if you had a chance to do it again, what would you do differently? Most of them responded that we will implement an effective change management program planned way before starting the project. This study highlights the importance of change management in an organizational perspective. Change management moderates the risks that can cause chastening (Jeff and Creasey, 2003).The change management processChange management is being studied by the philosophers, researchers and business experts for many course of instructions. A number of change management theories, approaches and philosophies atomic number 18 developed by psychologists and management professionals to implement successful change in the organization (Paton and MacCalman, 2008). There are three legs of change management i.e. preparing for change, managing change and reinforcing change. Preparation for change phase includes sagacity of change capabilities and capacity and developing a strategy that fit to those capabilities. Second phase i.e. managing change phase includes processes like planning and implementation of strategies made in the first phase. Last phase which is the reinforcement of change includes the processes like collection and analyzing of feedback data, finding out gaps and coping with determined degree of resistance from inside and outdoor(a) the organization and taking corrective actions to successfully conclude the change management process (change management scholarship center, 1996-2011).Change managementA case of coca plant Cola wadCoca Cola is a retailer, marketer and manufacturing business of non-alcoholic drinks and is cognise cosmeawide for it coca sens beverage. In addition to its coca cola brand, Coca Cola Company offers 500 beverages and non beverages brands in about two hundred countries. The company was founded by Asa Candler in year 1892. Its headquarter is located in Atlanta, Georgia of United States of America. The company had total net income of approximately 11.8 billion US dollars in year 2010 with total number of employees 139,600 originationwide. Companys brand i.e. Coca Cola stands number one in the list of most well known brands of the world (Coca Cola company, 2006-2011).Coca Cola is a type of company that requires making changes in its products and business strategies according to the consumer expectations and external environment. Here in this study we would quote different examples from coca cola corporations history and will examine that what were the triggering events for opting the change and what strategies the company developed and apply in order to successfully going through the transitioning process.Coca Cola Corporation is among one of the oldest corporations of th e world. It has asleep(p) through many internal and external changes since it has been in existence. The company has used techniques of change management in order to survive from the consequences of those events.The company has faced a lot of external changes, for example in world war II, the company was able to manage its existing position at that era and besides entered in many new markets and discovered new niches. The company established 64 plants across the world to yield drinks to the troops (Coca Cola company, 2006-2011). The company also exitd free drinks to soldiers which were the class of its strategy to become a firm symbol for the people of the country. Also it boosted the sales, so the company succeedd two objectives by carefully planning to respond to that external environmental change. The plants developed by the company in war era helped its expansion by and by the war.Barton et al (2002) reported that Coca Cola Corporation adopted acquisition strategy in ti me of Asian financial crisis. The company acquired bottling, coffee and tea shop businesses in Korea and Malaysia. Beverage is a type of industry where tastes and preferences of the consumers change on continuous basis. Coca Cola Company also responded to such(prenominal) consumer changing behaviors in effective way by developing new products like Diet Coke and Coca Cola Zero. The company also committed a marketing blender when a rival company launched a black beverage with comparatively sweet and smooth taste. The product was named as new Coke. nevertheless the sales gradually went down and company faced severe consumer critics and protests. The company managed this situation very commendably by restoring the old formula and naming the bottle as diet coke (Kotler and Armstrong, 2010). As people are becoming to a greater extent health conscious and willing to invest on health based products, coca cola is developing juices and various energy drinks as well. This shows the companys strategy to responding varying consumer tastes and expectations and changing itself according to it.The coconut tree cola company used theory of organization change presented by Kotler (1996) which elaborated the procedure to manage change on the people dimension of the organization. The well known CEO of coca cola Corporation Mr. Gouizetta who re of imported CEO of the company for seventeen years determined and solved the problem in manufacturing of drinks. He was the chance upon man in revising coca colas operations and tailoring strategies that helped the company standing high among its competitors. He achieved objectives of the firm by planning and leading the tasks by himself and provided an inspirational leadership to the employees. He was the one who prescribed talented human resource like Ivester who took great part in covering the weaknesses and exploiting the opportunities for the company (The Coca-Cola company case. n.d.).In addition to making operational and strategic changes, the company also changed its advertising strategy by targeting various groups of consumers like American consumers. African consumers, Middle and far eastern consumers and European consumers. The company altered the packaging of its coca cola brand and developed more product lines and broadened them globally (The Coca-Cola company case. n.d.).The present condition of coca cola company worldwide is very good. The company is selling its beverages throughout the world successfully. But in some countries, coca cola stores are not as according to the companys main marketing, inventory and efficiency theme. The company is planning to align its performance standards according to its own corporate agriculture and strategies with the help of a comprehensive change management plan. These changes will be implemented within the business operations and management of the company.CHANGE MANAGEMENT AT COCA COLAEmployee engagementThe recent change management at coca cola is directed towar ds the intrinsic values and motivations of the employees and can be referred to as employee engagement. The change management process, together with internal branding programs is judge to bring about ideal behaviors in employees, which would align the operations of coca cola worldwide, and bring about efficiency throughout coca cola across all its business segments.Coca cola hopes to bring about a thoroughly structured system of communications, and focus on creating brand relationships with their employees. This would enhance the operations of Coca cola, as an corporate approach would mean all employees believe in engaging fully in the values, and this would become an inherent part of the employees at a individualal level.Coca-cola is actively seeking to incorporate the change into its company if the recent throng on internal branding and and employee engagement held in February,2011 by Robin Gee, Head of Employee Engagement for Coca-Cola Refreshments (CCR) is any indication. Robin Gee is responsible for building capability in engagement, maintaining engagement momentum and ensuring that engagement is integrated into CCRs people practices (Samdahl,2011).For this purpose, employee engagement surveys are conducted twice every year for all the coca cola associates, which aid to highlight the areas where action is required, and further actions and implementations can henceforth be executed.Coca-cola believes that their business results hinge on the committal of their employees to operational excellence. The company truly recognizes the importance of the people to the business, and knows that to continue to bring about tremendous results it is speech in, employees throughout the world should believe in the values intrinsically, and therefore the employee engagement is being focused on all the countries the company serves to align thoroughly integrate and align the company so that operational efficiency can be achieved.Importance of change to coca colaEmploy ee engagement is very significant to all segments of operations at coca-cola and has translated into performance in areas where employee engagement is higher.For coca-cola, an engaged workforce meansA more committed workforceEmployee performance aligned with organizational objectivesEmployees have a clear idea of what is expected of them and what are the deliverablesCustomer experience focus an inherent part of employees values, who strives to provide a better experience to the customers. Customer focus was identified as a central tenant of the multi-year engagement strategy to be implemented in 2011( Gee,2011)When employees are aligned with company goals, they themselves adopt a proactive approach towards issues such as waste eliminationEmployees awareness gives them a voice which helps to influence legislations at local levelsAn integrated system of communication is very helpful in the volatile and dynamic markets of today, where conditions change very often and the company has t o be responsive at all timesTherefore, for all the business segment of coca-cola wheresoever they are located across the world, the change towards employee engagement is justified if they have to reap the fruits gained by an effective system of integration.Ensuring the Involvement of Required StakeholdersCoca Cola Company can use two change management tools to make sure that all people who are required to be the part of change management process. These tools are hurl Field analysis and AKADAR model. Force field analysis is a technique developed by Kurt Lewin to scrutinize the forces that are causing an opposition to change process (Bass, 2009). By doing Force Field Analysis, Coca Cola Company will be able to inductpeople who are in need of appropriate training. Anothr useful tool is AKADAR model which stands for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. Through AKDAR model, firm creates awareness about the need of change, generate desire in the people to help in tran sitioning process, give knowledge to the people that how they can help the change process, develop an ability in the people to go through the change and provide them with continuous reinforcement to withstand the change (CMLR, 2011).Ensuring that change is successfulSome considerations that will facilitate the change management process includeproductive and consequential dialogues and talks with employee representativesOnline and paper surveys from all the stakeholders involved in the change throughout the world, and with associates to gain an insight on their perceptionsEffective communication at this stage for informing the stakeholders the reasons for change and the benefits it would bringOvercoming the inertia by taking all stakeholders in confidence. The surveys can serve as a pre requisite to gain an insight on the stakeholder perspectiveDetails of the action planning process communicated to all those who would initiate the changeRecommendations for Coca Cola CompanyIn the vo latile dynamics with which companies function today, change in indispensable. Therefore, the focus should not be on avoiding change, rather bringing about a smooth transition towards the new change by communication about the change, and ensuring all parties of the change that it is for the best of all those involved. To successfully implement organizational change of any nature, a specific regards to organizational structure, design, culture, management and leadership is required to see whether the change would make a best fit with the organizational goals and objectives. number 1 of all the company should ascertain the core problems exist in the company for the change management. The company may develop a change management program for responding to financially uncertain environment of the world. It can also develop change management programs for better operations and logistics. The company can introduce new procedures and technological systems to carry out operations. Programs can be introduced in forms changing companys mission and corporate culture enhancements. For all that, the most essential thing is to train upper management to provide them with specific skills necessary to efficaciously going through the transitioning process. Following is the brief expression of plans that the company can adopt.Systems thinkingSystems thinking can be used to guide the successful change in the organization. The model is based on an combinatory and interactive open system which consists of the variables, attributes, internal relations and environment. The system is based on characteristics like wholeness, interdependence, orbit of influence, need for balance and adaptability etc in an open system where communication is seen as an integrated process that facilitates change within the organization.Several system characteristics are wholeness and interdependence (the whole is more than the sum of all parts), correlations, perceiving causes, chain of influence, hiera rchy, suprasystems and subsystems, self-regulation and control, goal-oriented, interchange with the environment, inputs/outputs, the need for balance/homeostasis, change and adaptability (morphogenesis) and equifinality there are various ways to achieve goals. Different types of networks are line, commune, hierarchy and dictator networks. Communication in this perspective can be seen as an integrated process not as an isolated event.Establishing new structureIt is a well known fact that Coca Cola Corporation was a entrepreneurial venture started by one person who bought the formula from an opposite firm and laid foundations of that beverages manufacturing firm. Current structure of the coca cola company is dim-witted with minimal labor and management division. New system that can be adopted by the company may be the machine bureaucracy which Henry Mintzberg (1992) define as an organization with clearly defined hierarchy, well defined area of operations, standard operating procedu res, proper rules and regulations, well division of labor, formal relationships among the appendage of organization, centralized decision making, technical competence and standardization of work.Reducing employee defianceOpposition of change is a common human behavior. Particularly, in the workplace people resist the change in organizational culture, structure and policies. But in order to successfully and effectively implement the change management program, it is important for Coca Cola Company that it should develop strategies to reduce employee defiance to change.Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) explained six strategies which can be useful for coca cola Company in employee defiance management. First strategy is to involve the employee in change process and make them participate as far as they can. Second strategy is to communicate the change management programs to the people effectively as educate them about the benefits the programs would bring. This will make them comfortable in a dopting the change. three strategy is negotiation and agreement. The company should create a consensus on important change issues and with the agreement of all important stakeholders it should launch the change management program. The resistance level will be zero on change programs that are being launched with the mutual agreement of all relevant stakeholders. Fourth strategy is that to assist the employees who are due to some disability or emotional or psychological issue or some other threat unable to adapt to the change. If the company develops and proper channel to feel such people taken care of, they would adjust gradually to the change management program. In case of failure of above mentioned four strategies, company can manipulate the employees by calling union leader other relevant ones as fifth strategy. Sixth strategy is to force the employees with articulate or non-articulate methods but this is not a very good approach.ConclusionTo conclude, it may be said that commun ication can be a key element to successful change management. Communicate the changes to the employees, tell them why the change was inevitable and how they will benefit from the change. The management should itself adopt a positive attitude towards the change so that employees can follow their lead and welcome the change. Coca-cola as a company has a heritage of embracing change rather than resist it and it should translate into their future endeavors towards change management to ensure that the organization is best equanimous to market and environmental conditions.