PepsiCo’s Organizational Culture Characteristics: An Analysis

PepsiCo organizational culture characteristics case study and analysis
A Pepsi vending machine. PepsiCo’s organizational culture integrates excellence and corporate social responsibility. (Photo: Public Domain)

PepsiCo’s organizational culture indicates the company’s commitment to maximizing the strengths of its human resources. A firm’s organizational culture defines the traditions, values, and ways through which workers perform. In PepsiCo’s case, employees are encouraged to focus on excellence in a collaborative way. As the second biggest food-and-beverage company in the world, PepsiCo continually strives to improve its workforce. It is essential to maintain a high-performance culture to sustain this market position. PepsiCo uses its organizational culture as a strategic approach to optimize its performance by harnessing the strengths of its people.

PepsiCo’s organizational culture emphasizes taking care of employees and using their capabilities to achieve high business performance.

Features of PepsiCo’s Organizational Culture

PepsiCo adjusts its organizational culture through the years. This aspect of the business responds to changes in leadership as well as business situations. At present, the following are the main characteristics of PepsiCo’s organizational culture:

  1. Performance with Purpose
  2. Real World Leadership
  3. Collaboration

Performance with Purpose. PepsiCo employees perform with the purpose of achieving excellence for the company, customers, communities, and the planet. This feature of the organizational culture indicates PepsiCo’s commitment to fulfill its corporate social responsibilities. In essence, employees are encouraged to address the concerns of PepsiCo’s stakeholders. The most significant impact of this characteristic of the organizational culture is that it motivates workers to do better. For example, PepsiCo employees are motivated to excel in what they do, and to ensure that their efforts contribute to the improvement of the business and its stakeholders.

Real World Leadership. PepsiCo’s organizational culture emphasizes leadership based on what employees, investors, customers, and communities really need. The company uses employee knowledge to develop its leadership. More specifically, PepsiCo promotes employees to leadership positions. This internal leadership development indicates that PepsiCo’s organizational culture facilitates the use of employees’ work-based experiential knowledge to fuel business leadership and growth. As a result, the process of organizational learning is maintained through PepsiCo’s organizational culture.

Collaboration. Teamwork is an integral part of PepsiCo’s organizational culture. The company believes that collaboration enables the business to achieve excellent performance. While PepsiCo recognizes the strengths of individual employees, its corporate culture sustains the use of these strengths through collaborative efforts. For example, teams are used throughout the organization. Through this feature of the organizational culture, PepsiCo supports synergy in its human resources, instead of just relying on separate individual efforts.

PepsiCo’s Organizational Culture: Advantages & Disadvantages

PepsiCo’s organizational culture has the advantage of motivating employees. The emphases on purposeful action and internal leadership development give meaning to employees’ contributions to the business. In addition, collaboration optimizes employee morale, which reduces PepsiCo’s employee turnover rates. However, a disadvantage of PepsiCo’s organizational culture is that it has limited support for autonomy and individual flexibility, which partly determine employee morale, motivation, and performance. While PepsiCo recognizes the importance of task delegation, its organizational culture does not specifically include autonomy or individual flexibility.

References

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