Unethical Behavior of the Coca Cola company

Coca Cola Company which is known to be the best selling beverages company in the world was established in may 1886.Due to the popularity and its contribution towards the general public, the unethical practices that were performed in the company could not come out in front of the public.But because of its harmful effects on children and youth the general public started to protest against the company and because of these protests,the truth of the company came out in front of the general public.

The company since its inception has used significant amount of drugs in its beverages for the unique recipe and taste.A normal bottle of Coca Cola company contained 60mg of cocaine(A form of drug).
The company neglected the harmful effects that cocaine can cause to the human body and continued to use it in their product.The company did this in order to create an addiction towards their products.This was a total crime and totally unethical and so legal notices were sent to the company and so finally they had to remove cocaine from their products.But as a substitute ingredient they started to use caffeine that which is also called an addictive ingredient.

Apart from this,the coca cola company was sued for misleading lebelling process. Company had included fake details about the product in order to mislead its customers.This is one of the unethical business practices of the coca cola company.The Coca Cola Company was also accused of violating the human rights of the employees who worked in bottling plants in Columbia.The company had offered very poor and unhealthy working environment and also paid them very less wages.

In 1999 Coca-Cola’s faced another blow when it was accused of racial discrimination. The company sued around 1500 of its African,American Which led to the protest worldwide The employees of the company said that they were discriminated on the basis of job,Pay,Salary,designation etc .The suit alleged that top management had known about company wide discrimination since 1995 but had done nothing about it. In 1992 the company pledged to spend $1 billion on goods and services from minority vendors, just to show that they were not discriminating anyone but the companies own employees denied this and said that this all is done for just show purpose. Although Coca-Cola strongly denied the allegations,but this created an unrest in the society.The company had to pay  $193 million to settle the claims.

In early 2000’s the company  was accused of channel stuffing.It is a practice of shipping extra, unrequested inventory to wholesalers and retailers before the end of a quarter.Channel stuffing creates the appearance That there is a strong demand for their products and this results in inflated financial statement earnings and the subsequent misleading of investors.

 In 2004 The company  was accused of sending extra concentrate to Japanese bottlers in an effort to inflate its profits. The Coca Coca company was already under investigation as a former employee of the company had filed a lawsuit Against the company accusing them of fraud and improper business practices. Even though The company settled the allegations, but the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did find that channel stuffing had occurred. 

Their are number of more cases against the company where they are found indulging in unethical business practices and when caught,their top management hardly responded and did very little to overcome such problems.

Thank You..