Unethical Behavior In Coca Cola Company

Assessing the corporate reputation is key for stakeholder longevity. Most stakeholders what to align their personal beliefs with companies that has similar values. As a stakeholder, any unethical behavior is looked at and evaluated to see how it affects them. Depending on what the unethical behavior is and how it affects them, determines how the internal and external stakeholders will react (Marquina, Arellano, & Velasquez, 2014). Their perception of the firm may be positive or negative. The company’s reputation will affect their revenue (Love, Lim, & Bednar, 2016). All stakeholders in the company have a common goal but may be affected differently by the unethical behavior. Coca-Cola Company, or Coke, exhibits several ethical behaviors that affects stakeholders. They include: product safety, racial discrimination, distributor …show more content…
When Coke was accused of racial discrimination it cost the company a lot of money. The company had 2,000 employees to file a lawsuit against the company and testify they had been discriminated against. The company paid $193 billion to settle the claims. The purpose of corporate reputation is to meet stakeholder’s expectations, provide profit, and value (Cakir, Ozmen, & Dogan, 2014). This unethical behavior had a negative effect on their stakeholders: employees, customers, and investors. Coke also had distributor conflicts. Fifty-four bottlers in the U.S. filed a lawsuit against Coke and their largest bottler company. The suit tried to stop Coke from directly delivering Powerade, a sports drink, to Walmart warehouses instead of individual stores. Other companies claimed this activity would decrease the value of their companies and that the antitrust laws would be violated. Coke settled for an undisclosed amount of money (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell, 2018). Again, this behavior cost the company money. Each lawsuit affects the company’s reputation and affects the