Pepsi and Coke Case Study

Pepsi and Coke Case study.

Coke and Pepsi are both multinational companies. They had faced an ethical crisis in India where it is concern about consumer’s health and the environment cleanliness. This paper will discuss both Coke and Pepsi issues with respect to issue management, crisis management, global business ethics and stakeholder management besides looking into their corporate social responsibilities and what lesson does this case portray to other multinational companies to be aware of.

The issue started when Coke and Pepsi’s products were tested containing a hazardously high level of pesticide residue by a public interest group called Center of science and Environment. Sunita Narain the director of CSE proclaimed that such residues are able to cause cancer and birth defects besides harming the human nervous and immune system if the products are being consume over a long period of time. CSE also claims that the pesticides levels in the products of Coke and Pepsi were much over the limit permitted by European Union standards.

  India Resource Center accused that all soft drinks companies especially Coca-Cola Company’s operations are polluting the sacred water in India. India Resource Center even accused these soft drinks companies of water controlling and exploitation of natural resources.

 Issue Management

Issue management process includes identifying the issues at hand, analyzing the issues, ranking or prioritizing the issue using the five filter criteria, formulating an issue response, implementing the issue response formulated, and evaluating and monitoring the results after the issue response is executed. Coke did show a bad issue management, by conducting its own test of their products which shows that drinks are safe to be consumed. Coke also conducted various studies that indicated all Indian food supply has a certain levels of pesticide in it. In the case, Coke is clearly is abusing their customer’s rights of safety and rights of health...