Kraft company case study

Kraft Summary

The author of this response is to find out some details and information about the company Kraft Foods. Indeed, the facets and characteristics that will be summarized and described will include the organization's structure, how centralized it is or is not, the lines of authority and communication as well as the teams, committees and task forces that make up the organization. Next up will be the systems of Kraft including how the budgets are set, how the planning is done and what measures are used to evaluate performance. After that, the people of Kraft will be discussed. The facets of the people will include the skills, experience and knowledge of the employees, their depth and quality and their attitudes about the company itself and their jobs within in. Finally, there will be a description of the culture of Kraft. Topics for the culture will include their values, their key norms, their symbols, their dominant management style and how conflicts are resolved. While Kraft is not the most dominant company in the United States or the wider global corporate world, they are certainly near the top of the list.

Analysis

Through its acquisitions and expansions, Kraft is actually a company with a lot of irons in the fire. Indeed, Kraft's business and subsidiary portfolio includes the Kraft name in particular, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Velveeta, Jell-O and A-1 Steak Sauce, just to name a few. They actually have more than half a dozen high-level categories of products including baking/desserts, cheese and dairy, coffee and beverages, deli meat, hot dogs, bacon, causes and condiments, side dishes and meal helpers, snacks and other miscellaneous goods. The company is centralized in that Kraft itself has its own power structure but it is also decentralized in that the member brands of the company exert their own level of command and control. Indeed, Kraft itself is based out of Northfield, Illinois which is a suburb of Chicago nestled in right along the western edge of Lake Michigan. In terms of corporate structure, there was actually a "de-merger" that occurred just two years ago whereby Kraft Foods spun off from Kraft Foods Inc., the latter of which was renamed to Mondelez. Mondelez is still an international distributor and disseminator of Kraft goods but Mondelez and Kraft are entirely separate companies. This further decentralizes the power structure of Kraft but keeps Kraft competitive at the same time. In all, Kraft has revenues of about $18 billion (but it is falling) and has about 23,000 employees. For all its expansion, Kraft has actually divested a number of companies as it has sold off brand names Breyer's, Birds Eye, its frozen dinner market (to Heinz) and its foodservice unit (Kraft, 2014).

As with most public firms, as Kraft is traded on the NASDAQ market, the budget is set by the Board of Directors and the C-level executives of Kraft. The big names to know with Kraft are Chief Executive Officer W. Anthony Vernon, Executive Vice President of Corporate and Legal Affairs Kim Rucker, Executive VP of Integrated Supply Chain Robert Gorski, Chief Financial Officer Teri List-Stoll and Principal Accounting Officer Melinda Whittington (Yahoo, 2014). John Cahill serves as the Chairman of the Board (Kraft, 2014). The Board and Kraft in general also include a compensation committee, an audit committee, a governance committee and independent people that keep the company's internal personnel honest. These internal and external people work in concert to keep the operations and actions of the company "above board." These people, both internal and external, do the evaluations. There are also the shareholders and analysts that monitor publicly traded companies (Yahoo, 2014).

The people of Kraft are shown on their website. Their people of focus include one of their district sales managers, the President of their Wal-Mart sales, their Military Major Account manager and others. The values and opportunities explained by Kraft include a foundational curriculum, a general business academy and a leadership academy. The Kraft website openly touts its people as it source of success. They also confirm the above about decentralization in that they have 17 different brands that range in revenue from $100 million to $1 billion USD each. Their depth and quality are confirmed by a lot of external agencies and organizations that tout its adeptness and attractiveness as a company to work out. These awards include 50 Best Employers for Latinas (ten years runningfrom Latina Style Magazine), top 50 companies for Diversity (Diversity Inc. Magazine), 100 Best places to work in IT (ComputerWorld), best place to work for multi-cultural women (Working Mother) and Canada's Top 100 Employers Award (Kraft, 2012).

There is also a lot of information about Kraft's culture as an employer. The major parts of this culture, as explained on their website and other places, includes community involvement, compliance and integrity, corporate governance, food safety and quality, nutrition and well-being, sustainability and workplace culture. The workplace culture is itself further divided into safety, wellness and people/diversity. When drilling down further, Kraft portends themselves to be a company that encourages and welcomes diversity, they seek to develop strategic relationships with external organizations so that they can connect with a "broad range of consumers" as well as prospective employees. They also assert that they want a diversity in suppliers for their raw materials and other goods and services that Kraft needs to then serve its own clients (Kraft, 2014).