Coca-Cola\'s Mission and Vision Statements

Coca-Cola's mission and vision statements have a high degree of congruency with its strategy. By outlining in simple terms what the company does and how it does it, these statements provide a clear explanation of the core business, and provide the company's employees with guideposts for action.

Coca-Cola operates with a matrix structure. The organization has strong geographic divisions, but within each division the company also has product units. The five main geographic units at the heart of the company's organizational structure are Eurasia & Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America and Pacific. The company's beverage units are focused on still or sparkling, but will vary from region to region and country to country. This paper will outline some of the aspects of the company that help to support the strategy, including the control systems, the culture and the statements of mission and vision. All of these play an important role in supporting the company's strategic objectives.

Main Body

The basis of the company's strategic control systems is the Coca-Cola Operating Requirements (KORE), which replaced the previous system in early 2010 (Coca-Cola Annual Review 2010). The KORE system is designed to allow the company to "address the changing business landscape while supporting our company's strategic growth plans by creating an integrated quality management program." With this program, all of the company's operations worldwide are held to consistent standards for product quality. The company also "constantly reassesses the relevance of our requirements and guidelines not only in manufacturing but throughout the entire supply chain." Further enhancing the strategic control systems is a concept known as "Coca-Cola Systemwide Performance." Under this, the company's representatives meet with "several of our largest bottling partners…to discuss…a core set of performance indicators for the Coca-Cola system" (Ibid). These core indicators, along with the new KORE system, form the basis of strategic control within the company today.

The company also has a strong set of cultural values that help ensure consistency around the world. These are based around the concept of the 2020 Vision, that serves as the framework for setting objectives relating to sustainability and market success. The company tries to foster an environment where employees take ownership of their work and situations that they face, so that customer service is maximized. In addition, the culture preaches urgency, proactivity and efficiency (Ibid). The culture is guided by the mission statement(s), which are "to refresh the world," "to inspire moments of optimism and happiness" and "to create value and make a difference." There are several elements to the vision statement, covering people, the portfolio, partners, the planet, profit and productivity.

The key human resources concerns are to identify top talent and retain it. The company believes that its people are a key asset, along with the brands. As such, Coca-Cola strives to be a destination employer where employees can exercise creativity, exploration and professional growth. The culture is oriented towards a diverse and collaborative environment, something that Coca-Cola believes will help add value to its business (Coca-Cola, 2012).

The mission, vision and culture all appear to be strongly aligned with Coca-Cola's strategy. The company is a beverage company first and foremost, hence refreshing the world. 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, making money and being efficient. 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.