Case Study Diversity at Pepsi Co
MGT 3302 Case #1-Diversity at PepsiCo 1. If I were just appointed the HR manager at PepsiCo, I would implement several mandatory training sessions for the employees and board members. In order for a company to integrate a diversified culture into their organization, every single member of the company has to be involved. Several key components that would be introduced would be legal awareness, cultural awareness, and sensitivity training. Legal awareness would be a very important training component due to the overall impact it would have for the organization.
This particular component deals with the legal aspect of discriminating; also what you should and should not do when it comes to dealing with people of different backgrounds. If the legal awareness training is successful, this could save the company a lot of hardship and money by preventing discrimination lawsuits. Cultural awareness would be another training component that I would implement since learning about the different customs is essential to understand that culture.
Foreign and unknown circumstances can sometimes become awkward; this training would help the organization create a comfortable work environment. Sensitivity training would probably go hand in hand with cultural awareness, according to Mathis and Jackson (2011), “the aim here is to “sensitize” people to the differences among them and how their words and behaviors are seen by others” (p. 101). The purpose of the training would be to build empathy amongst the members of the organization towards one another. . The “diversity management approach” that PepsiCo currently utilizes is “Solve Diversity Issues and Create an Inclusive Culture”. According to Mathis and Jackson (2011), “PepsiCo also has regular diversity celebrations… this inclusion of diversity issues throughout the company contributes to PepsiCo’s success with employees, managers, and customers” (p. 110). I believe that diversity has played a major role in PepsiCo’s financial success, the numbers are concrete evidence of it. 3.
The challenges and opportunities that the new CEO will face given her gender and ethnicity would be many 4. The term “internalize” diversity refers to analyzing diversity approach beyond the financial part or the organizations. When an executive talks about the benefits of integrating diversity into their organization they should also include non-financial benefits. As the case points out, Steve Reinemund did not know how to respond when asked, how would the diversity approach be viewed if it didn’t prove to be beneficial for business.
After analyzing the question and consulting it with other people , he said “and it finally occurred to me that I had spent three years talking about the business case for diversity -“the head-while never speaking about ‘the heart’” ( Thomas and Creary,2009, p. 8 ). Internalizing diversity is very important to the company’s integrity since customers will be able to see the true values and intentions of the company. Customers will be able to see that they truly want to diversify their organization for reasons beyond the financial gain.
