All departments: marketing, production, distribution, sales, customer service should be trained for ethics. Company should become the flag bearer of equal employment and diversity as some measure has already been taken by the management. It is not just the product that goes into market; for the company as old as Coca Cola a lot more is at stake. The voices of employees, complaints of customers, grievances of distributors and even concerns of competitors should be given importance. Ethics is the do or die situation and if not tackled and constantly monitored, then the fate of Coca Cola would not be different from that of Enron. Stakeholders & Future company's future depends on safeguarding the interests of all its stakeholders. Most companies like Coca Cola count on the charitable works they do for maintaining their public reputation. Setting up charity schools, hospitals, roads and health centers etc. does not necessarily mean that the responsibility to all the stakeholders including the customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, competitors, government, community and society is also being discharged. Community and society is a couple of stakes in the above array of stakeholders that a business is obligated towards directly. There are other stakeholders that most companies forget about including competitors. In their cut throat competition most companies forget that they owe a certain degree of responsibility to them as well. In Europe the rights of competitors are safeguarded in the form of antitrust laws but even in the absence of such laws a responsible company should not damage the interest of this important stakeholder. Coke has been a leader in the soft drink industry but Pepsi Corporation has been successfully attempting to challenge this lead. Competition thrives and supports the industry if it remains within ethical parameters. If ethical parameters are lost then the company itself suffers in the end. Therefore, it is important for Coca Cola as a...

A similar kind of obligation is necessary towards suppliers and distributors. Coca Cola does not own all the bottlers, distributors, and retailers it needs for global sales. Therefore, it has to rely on other bottlers, distributors, and retailers. Relationship of Coca-Cola Company with their independent bottlers became shaky and had resulted in some tension in the past. Therefore, the company should work out ways in which to take their important stake holders like distributors into confidence before taking any major decisions that could hurt them and the mutual relationship in the long run. Last but not the least among all stake holders is customer whose interests and concerns should be given prime importance.
Conclusions

The analysis of the case shows the importance of ethics in company's philosophy and rules and regulation. Absence of ethics affects the daily routines tasks as well long-term plans of the company. In today's age the all companies including Coca Cola must make ethics the part of their basic philosophy or get ready to face the repercussions. "Our entire society not just the business community is facing an ethical breakdown of crisis proportions. As we sift through the financial and human wreckage in our society, searching for clues to what went wrong, the only common denominator seems to be unethical behavior and a lack of character and integrity" (Copeland Jr., 2005).