Unlike main competitor Pepsi, Coca-Cola has not veered much outside of beverages, preferring to build its business around its core product and complements thereof. This simplifies the business, allowing for a more manageable organizational structure.
The consistency of the company's operations around the world supports is well-supported by these organizational components. In every country, Coca-Cola's business has roughly the same structure, albeit differing in size and scope. This allows for a relatively centralized control system. When head office works with top bottlers to establish culture and controls for the entire organization, this is only possible because the company is strictly focused on the beverage business, such that its operations are similar throughout the world. Smaller bottlers in smaller markets can take their cues from larger bottlers because they mainly differ in scale.
The mission and vision complement the broader strategy. The mission covers three basic issues -- what the company does (makes beverages), how it intends to succeed (make customers happy) and what this is intended to accomplish (adding value to shareholders). Despite the poetic sentiments of the mission statement, it is clear that it supports the company's strategy very well, because it orients employees to this specific understanding of the business, and that understanding is congruent with what the business actually is.
The vision has several different components, but each again lends support to the core business model of the company. The parts of the vision statement can be understood as employee satisfaction, a strong portfolio, strong supplier relations, sustainability,...
All of these are congruent with a consumer products company that operates with a high-volume business model. There is nothing groundbreaking in this vision, but it does illustrate the company's priorities, and those priorities do mesh well with each other. The vision statement basically defines the business model and how the company intends to derive the value that is talks about in the mission statement.
Conclusion
Coca-Cola's focus on beverages allows it to have a relatively simple operation. The company operates in most of the world's countries, and therefore utilizes a geographic organizational structure, with units for different brands coming under the geographical divisions. The global presence highlights the value in having a culture that is diverse and collaborative, and having mission and vision statements that align with those values. Those mission and vision statements provide a relatively clear outline of what the company does and how it intends to go about doing it. That creates a high level of congruency between the mission, vision, culture, control systems and strategic objectives. The ability of the company to continue to grow in the face of market saturation and challenging environmental conditions is testament to the cohesion between the way the company works and what its strategies are.
