Management & Leadership at Coca cola company

6.0 Organization Structure

Coca-Cola is “Tall” in terms of organizational complexity. Coca-Cola is controlled through a vertical hierarchy, with decision-making authority residing with the company’s upper management. Daily and routine decisions are made by the line managers at the middle level (Narayan, 2010).

Coca-Cola has more than 700,000 system employees, including their bottling partners. The company’s operations reach over 200 countries worldwide, with six geographic operating segments. Coca-Cola’s head office is responsible for providing the company with an overall direction and support to the regional structure. The company’s Executive Committee makes key strategic decisions for the company. The Chair of the Executive Committee acts as a figurehead for the company and chairs the board meetings. He is also the CEO and is the senior decision maker (Narayan, 2010).

Each division of the company has a marketing manager, public affairs director, finance director, etc. When one of these divisions is planning to do something, an advertising campaign for example, the division has to communicate with their superiors to get approval. Since the company’s hierarchy is so tall, communication has to travel back to corporate headquarters in the U.S, where the Executive Committee has the final decision making power for activities the divisions have proposed. Below is an organizational chart of the company (Gilhuly, 2014).