Diversity In Coca Cola

The Coca-Cola Company article describes what occurred to Coca-Cola back in 1999, when due to a lack of effective diversity leadership, the world’s first producer of sparkling beverages lost the largest discrimination lawsuit in the United States history. In the lawsuit, the company was accused of systemically discriminating against black employees in promotions, evaluations, terminations, and pay. The case begun with four employees accusing the company, and then the suit became a major one by having approximately 2000 plaintiffs. The plaintiffs asked for monetary damages and court required the company to modify some of its employment methodologies. The company denied such charges, but after continual mistakes of Top Management, and due to the

The company is listed in DiversityInc’s Top 50 companies for Diversity, and now the company sees its global diversity as a competitive advantage that generates tangible and indelible profits, and constantly adapts its corporate culture.

The article starts by focusing in the discrimination lawsuit, and then telling how fast Coca-Cola changed its leadership approach to become a real diverse centric company. The article describes the then and now of the company since the lawsuit, and refers to many issues that the Mr. Douglas Ivestor had in his leadership style, or better said, the article illustrates the lack of leadership coming from this

However, it is hard to believe that racial discrimination was the only type of discrimination in the company, when there was a lack of leadership and diversity management and care. What about gender? I can imagine that before the 1960s there were not much opportunities for women to be considered in Coke’s workforce, only at administrative or clerical positions, but not in operational or in managerial, and less in the director’s level. Of course, racial discrimination against African Americans was a much higher priority and offense in those days. The lawsuit could have had more plaintiffs if employees and directors like Mr. Ware, were aware of all the types of discrimination that could rise from the lack of diversity management. The big difference these days is that we do have diverse workforce in most of the advanced economies, and even more in the U.S., and in first half of the 1900s, was not that way. It was very diverse for Coca-Cola because had many plants in many countries around the world. Today, we can find in a Coca-Cola plant in the U.S. White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and other race employees in the same facility, and from different gender, at all levels of the organization, and with different cultural and religious