1. What was the issue facing The Coca Cola Company in this case? What stakeholders were concerned and how did their expectations differ from the company’s performance?
The major issue facing The Coca Cola Company is the availability of water. Because all aspects of the production are dependent on this resource, from the company’s perspective water is the key component of profitability. Other stakeholders, such as residents of the surrounding area and organizations such as the World Wildlife Foundation and other environmental groups had a different point of view; profitability was not a concern. These stakeholders were concerned with long term effects of demand on the water supply and contamination of water runoff.
2. If you applied the
By reducing, recycling and replenishing, the company set a goal of returning to nature and communities an amount of water equal to what was used in the beverages and their production. It partnered with World Wildlife Fund, an environmental group, to support projects such as river conservation, rainwater collection and efficient irrigation.
The dialog with stakeholders was successful on many levels; many new initiatives were started, including the web-based tools to for benchmarking and best practices of peers. The partnership formed with World Wildlife Fund to address stakeholder concerns about its impact on water quality and access, gave credibility to this new process. By engaging the various stakeholders, TCCC was able to understand society’s expectations, capitalize on outside expertise, generate creative solutions and ultimately neutralize critics and improve the company’s reputation by implementing the water neutrality initiative.
5. In your opinion, did TCCC respond appropriately to this issue? Why or why not?
The Coca-Cola Company responded appropriately once they believed a serious issue was brought to their attention. However, they waited until they were forced to react to address an already known problem. They knew their water consumption was depleting availability and contaminating reserves yet, did nothing.