Strategy Implementation and Strategic Controls
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Strategy Implementation and Strategic Controls
Introduction
Strategy implementation can be defined as the processes that transform plans into actions that can achieve goals. Within most conventional organizations, the strategy implementation process is subdivided into articulation, communication translation, and monitoring and engagement stages. It is imperative to note that not all firms follow the stages in the prescribed order. The initial sections of the paper will focus on describing the company organizational design, key strategic control systems, primary human resources concerns, and cultural factors. This section will also discuss the effect of these elements on company strategy implementation. This particular essay will focus on Coca Cola, an international beverage manufacturer and distributor.
Implementation of Coca-Cola Strategy
Cultural factors have had a significant effect on the implementation of Coca Cola’s company strategy. The company experiences a multitude of different demographic factors due to their international presence across different continents. Most of the countries outside the United States have incorporated cultural concerns into their national regulations such as the constitution as well as business law (Huber, 2011). For instance, the age factor has emerged as a pertinent problem that has forced Coca-Cola to comply with numerous domestic laws and regulations. These restrictions reduce their ability to maximize on one of their strong point, promotion and advertising (Alkhafaji, 2013). Advertising that is targeted at children is considered unconventional and unethical (Pearce, & Robinson, 2009). Coca Cola is aware that promoting unhealthy lifestyles among children can lead to lower perceptions among the customers and consequently, lower sales. The fast growing population implies that more competitors can reduce Coke’s market share as they create more business. Coca Cola is no exception (Alkhafaji, 2013). With a growth and encounter in new cultures, conflicts occur making it difficult for Coke to operate as normal. Since Coca Cola is a multinational company, most of its strategic goals are focused around identifying and understanding the competition (Alkhafaji, 2013).
Human resources concerns are another major area that affects Coca Cola’s strategy implementation. Key among these problems is the unification of international human rights demands created by different entities with those of the Coca Cola (Huber, 2011). On most occasions, company objectives over take prominence and creates human rights crises such as the recruitment of child laborers, underpayment and the promotion of unhealthy working conditions (Alkhafaji, 2013). The effect of the various human and workplace rights is that they shape the nature of the company’s overall strategy (Alkhafaji, 2013). Coca Cola is forced to restrict its expansion and growth strategies to mirror the workplace requirements. The strategic implementation is also influenced in this sense. Coca Cola faces serious penalties as well as expenditure in providing favorable working conditions and human rights for its wide employee base across the world. This eats into their profit margins significantly and causes a real problem for the long-term survival of the company (Huber, 2011).
Strategic control comprises following the direction of a strategy during the implementation process. Strategic control is also deals with identifying complications or changes as well as facilitating essential adjustments. Some of the common strategic controls include premise, special alert, implementation controls and strategic surveillance. Within Coca Cola, sorting the client needs and product placement are the two most common activities that are governed by implementation controls (Alkhafaji, 2013). In most of the occasions, product placement during special events such as holidays, major sporting events and national functions have a massive say over the strategic decisions made by the company. The Coca-Cola Company has organized their company efficiently to apply the marketing plans that were set (Pearce, & Robinson, 2009). The company has established different levels of management that concentrate on these objectives and consequently act to achieve them using the assistance of other employees. One of Coke’s major goals involves reaching out to the whole world, and this objective has already been partly implemented (Alkhafaji, 2013). Coca Cola’s evaluation originates mainly from their consumers that have significant say over the level to which the company is meeting consumer needs. In this way, Coca-Cola uses the consumer feedback as a major strategic control that shapes their future decisions. In the analysis of Coca Cola’s strategy implementation, it is evident that along the line the company is forced to depend on consumer feedback or demand to guide their decisions (Alkhafaji, 2013).
Coca Cola is one of the few multinational organizations that possess a unique organizational structure. One of the issues to be analyzed is the level of organization within Coca Cola. The company has a unique international division structure characterized by international employees that function independently and separated from the head office (Huber, 2011). Coke has different divisions across all the continents globally each division being headed by a president (Pearce, & Robinson, 2009). Realizing an alignment between the organizational design and its business objectives is paramount for success to be realized (Alkhafaji, 2013). It is necessary to consider Coca-Cola as an ethnocentric organization since its domestic operations are comparable to its international activities. In spite of the geographical region, Coca-Cola functions in a similar manner and promotes the identical brand and product (Huber, 2011). However, Coca Cola has tight control over the global operations from the head office. This gives the head office increased workload to monitor the progress of each division (Alkhafaji, 2013). In this way, Coca Cola can implement the strategy for each continental division separately (Boone, & Ganeshan, 2002). This is effective since Coke is a massive company and it may be challenging to make decisions concerning the financial and strategic issues.
The Fit between Company Elements
The fit between Coca Cola’s strategy and its organizational culture is vital. If Coke is relying on innovation to realize differentiation, but their culture avoids risk and has a propensity to penalize mistakes, the strategy has a high possibility of failing. The organization’s culture can sustain the strategy when three aspects are aligned. One of the first elements is shared values that are lined up with the company mission and strategic focus together with a management approach that promotes actions that will sustain the competencies that present competitive advantage. The second element is norms that can work as effective controls for strategic implementation. They support actions that are aligned with common values. Employees can avoid regulations, and it is impossible to monitor them throughout their working period (Alkhafaji, 2013). However, norms can foster the expected behavior regardless of the supervision. The last element in the analysis is symbols (Verweire, 2014). Symbols are important in that they crate a model for employees in terms of their norms and values. Some significant symbols include the vision and approach of Coca Cola founders and traditions that exemplify company principles, ceremonies, and schedules, and which strengthen the types of activities and actions that are most preferred and appreciated (Alkhafaji, 2013).
The mission for Coca Cola states that the company is interested in refreshing the world, inspiring instance of contentment and optimism and lastly, to develop value and influence a difference. This company mission fits in perfectly with the Coca Cola’s strategy in that it allows for the organization to enjoy high customer loyalty. Consumers are drawn to the efforts by the organization to develop products and services that meet their needs. The popular drink, Coke, has been revolutionized from a simple beverage into a strong brand (Wilson, & Gilligan, 2013). The values of the company such as collaboration, integrity, accountability, quality and diversity are also an excellent fit with the rest of the other elements such as the mission, strategy and organizational components. The discussion as to whether these different components complement the Coca Cola strategy is hinged on the following recommendations (Alkhafaji, 2013).
Recommendations
Every organization, Coca cola included, has to achieve a balance between advancement and difficulty of its strategy and the problems of implementation. It is more beneficial to meet a mediocre strategy effectively implemented instead of an outstanding strategy that fails because Coca Cola lacked the capacity to implement it. Several factors appear to contribute greatly towards Coke’s ability to implement (Kolbusa, 2013). Discussing these proposals can greatly increase the probability of assuring the success of the company’s strategy. One of the recommendations is an increased strategy alignment. This involves clarifying the different strategies and ensuring that they are aligned toward the company goals. The ordinary approach towards strategies is to express them as high-level declarations that sound well among board and executive standards but are unacceptable among mid-level personnel. Regrettably, if the staff cannot comprehend the strategy, they lack the ability to connect with it (Alkhafaji, 2013). Therefore, this recommendation proposes that the strategies should be clarified in a manner that the employees in Coca Cola can gather to sustain its implementation. Done in the right way, this proposal is effective in tying together the Coke objectives and goals into a single aspect that is easy to understand. Furthermore, aligning the company strategy is a useful strategy that can allow Coca Cola to identify redundant or wasteful departments within their ranks.
Effectively communicating the strategy is a useful approach that can be adopted in Coca Cola. In this company, it has been observed that there is a disjoint between the employees, line managers and other support staff. It is relatively difficult to find an organization where the employees complain of too much communication (Alkhafaji, 2013). In this context, communication is a powerful factor that ensures that the strategy is delivered. This recommendation proposes that Coca Cola should continuously communicate the core of their strategy at different level of the company by exploiting multiple mediums. Relying on only one form of medium is a recipe for failure. Coca Cola has adopted sophisticated and therefore, can access resources such as blogs, notice boards, websites, and meetings to reiterate the definition of strategy and the role of every individual in making the strategy successful. Deliberations need to happen at all the level, translating Coca Cola’s strategy to simple and contextualized messages that link to the contribution of employees (Alkhafaji, 2013). In short, expressing the strategy offers the connective material across the beverage company that assists the stakeholders comprehend the bigger picture.
Conclusion
Most of the issues arising within Coca Cola
emerge from its sheer magnitude and scope of operations at the global level. At
this advanced level, strategy is an important aspect. Strategy is enacted using
organizational structure, employees, organizational culture, and control. An
effective Coca Cola strategy must productively work through these components in
order to generate performance. Regardless of the effectiveness of a strategy,
if Coca Cola employees lack the ability to implement it, if the Coke organizational
culture cannot sustain it, if the structure is unable to synchronize it, and if
the systems lack the capacity to calculate and control it, there is a high
probability that the strategy will be unsuccessful. The paper commenced by deliberating
how all of the components independently connect with the strategy. The section
of the essay that covered the case study sought to analyze the integration or
the level of fitting between the different strategy and components (Alkhafaji,
2013). Questioning a greater part of organizational heads concerning their specialty
reveals that strategy is a key priority. Frequently, leaders concentrate their focus
and resources into developing strategy and invest a little time discovering the
best way to implement a specific strategy across the whole organization. Strategies
are regularly developed in a deliberate setting with a focused group of experts
that have been trained and awarded resources. These types of strategies are
typically appealing, and illustrate predominantly excellent features. Most of
these strategies are very effective while on paper. However, most of these
strategies fail at the implementation stage.
References
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Alkhafaji, A. (2013). Strategic Management: Formulation, Implementation, and Control in a Dynamic Environment. Routledge.
Boone, T., & Ganeshan, R., (2002). New directions in supply-chain and technology management: Technology, strategy, and implementation. New York: AMACOM.
Huber, A. J. (2011). Effective strategy implementation: Conceptualizing firms’ strategy implementation capabilities and assessing their impact on firm performance. Wiesbaden: Gabler.
Kolbusa, M. (2013). Implementation management: High-speed strategy implementation. Berlin: Springer.
Pearce, J. A., & Robinson, R. B. (2009). Formulation, implementation, and control of competitive strategy. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Verweire, K. (2014). Strategy implementation. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Wilson, R. M. S., & Gilligan, C. (2013). Strategic marketing management: Planning, implementation and control. London: Routledge.
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