MGMT8430 Essay: Indra Nooyi and Sustainable Leadership at PepsiCo

This essay examines Indra Nooyi's leadership at PepsiCo and her focus on sustainability. It highlights her transformational leadership style and how she integrated sustainability into PepsiCo's business strategy. The analysis covers her efforts to promote healthier products, environmental responsibility, and community support. Nooyi's vision of 'Performance with Purpose' is explored, emphasizing her commitment to long-term sustainable growth and addressing societal issues like obesity. The essay also discusses her influence on other companies and her skills in communication, relationship building, and ethical decision-making, which enabled PepsiCo to successfully navigate a shift towards healthier products and sustainable practices. The essay concludes that Nooyi's leadership was instrumental in changing the global perspective towards healthy food and promoting sustainability within a large corporation.

Running head: SUSTAINABILITY
SUSTAINABILITY
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note:

1SUSTAINABILITY
The aim of this essay is to discuss the sustainability factor associated with the well
reputed Global company PepsiCo and it’s so Indra Nooyi whose vision have changed the
perceptions of the Global food companies in achieving sustainable growth. PepsiCo has recently
revealed its Global corporate agenda which emphasizes social accountability and health. This
may seem like difficult for a company which till now is best known for promoting junk food.
However, after Indra Nooyi became the Chairman and CEO of the company, she is committed to
make the products healthy r cover encouraging that environmental responsibility and
empowering its employees.
Indra Nooyi was born in October 28, 1955 in India, consistently tanks among the world’s
100 most powerful women since 2014. She served as business executive and board of director in
Amazon the largest E-Commerce business by net revenue. In 2018 the International Cricket
Council has announced that she will be joining the ICC board as the first independent female
director. PepsiCo in 1994 and got the CEO position in 2001. In 2006 she was the president of the
company and directed The Global strategy of PepsiCo leading its restructuring (Rubens, Leah &
Schoenfeld, 2016). The strategic directions of company under Nooyi has been proved successful
largely. She had classified the products of the company into three categories which include “fun
for you”, “be for you” and “good for you”. The aim of her sustainability strategies in the
company was to reduce the issues of obesity among the American people. She does not like
obese consumers that burden Public Health system. Therefore, she started the nutrition
movement within PepsiCo. She understood sustainability of the company’s business depends on
the investment in healthy future for the consumers. This perfectly aligns with the demand of
healthy food and Lifestyle growing among the recent American consumers and for that matter in
the whole world.

2SUSTAINABILITY
PepsiCo’s mission statement comments to invest its people, company and the
communities to promote long term and sustainable growth where they operate. Its mission is to
provide the consumers around the world with affordable, delicious, convenient as well as
complimentary beverages and food starting from breakfast to snacks and evening treats. The
vision statement of PepsiCo is to integrate sustainability with its business strategy and leave a
position in society as well as the environment. The company calls it performance with purpose
which allows the company provide a range of food and beverages from intelligent to nutrition. It
conserves precious natural resources as well as foster the environmental responsibilities
(PepsiCo.com, 2019). In addition to this the company also support communities in the places it
works, by career generation. These Vision and Mission statements of PepsiCo have influenced
Indra Nooyi to focus on making the products healthier than before. It is the way to gain
sustainability and fulfilling responsibilities towards the customers. In Indra Nooyi believes in
detailing every information of the products honestly to the consumers and sale only those
products which can make them proud. It is the main aim of the company to care for the
customers as well as the world it lives in.
Indra Nooyi as a leader, has perfectly captured the consumers and their consumption
preferences to promote the growth. She finds these two factors are evidently the key to
sustainable development of the company. She possesses a transformational leadership style
where changes become quite easy and acceptable (Pio, Kilpatrick & Le Fevre, 2017). She has
made the business think of the situation where a sizeable number of the product will not be
accepted by the consumers if not have any healthy message with it. With her leadership style, she
has perfectly caught the consumption trend of buying green products and made strategies to
bring overall changes in philosophy of the company (Rao & Purkayastha, 2017).

3SUSTAINABILITY
Indra Nooyi has attempted to motivate other companies by pointing out the leading
behavioural changes of the buying patterns of the customers and larger communities. PepsiCo’s
predicaments have been challenged by many what doing had begun to club with small clutch of
global source and post them in the sustainability envelope relentlessly. She joined Paul Polman
of Unilever, Bill Ford junior of Ford motor and Andrew Witty of GlaxoSmithKline for
addressing the consumption issue and access like never before (Karunakaran, 2019). However,
now the things have changed a lot and many food and beverages companies are following the
footsteps of Nooyi, realising there is no way of attaining sustainability other than this.
As mentioned before Indra Nooyi has a transformational leadership trait which promotes
her through communication relationship building and a strong moral compass. The specific skills
identified of Indra Nooyi is her communication capabilities. This serves one of the 5cs of
leadership theirs. She follows trait theory of leadership which enables her to build relationship
with any stakeholders starting from the employees to the customers. Nooyi’s relationship
building also supports her leadership also supports her decision-making process. She has faced
tremendous pressure from the stakeholders and competitors when decided to change the course
of servings of the company (Venkataraman, Summers & Venkataraman, 2017). The organisation
which was famous for its products with excessive sugar and salt ratio to make those tasty and
attractive to the customers, it is not easy to suddenly stop the process and focus on health factors
of the customers. Her style of tactical and strategic decisions making has helped the company to
stand successfully even after completely changing the product structure. It is the ethical and
moral positivity in Nooyi’s nature that has taken the company to the epitome and made her one
of the most powerful women in the world.

4SUSTAINABILITY
Therefore., It can be concluded that the sustainability realization and approaching it
through the strategic changes of the large company like PepsiCo would not have been possible if
Nooyi did not feel the urge. Through her realization of changing the Global perspective towards
the healthy food, have largely changed the food habit of many people in the world. Her
capabilities as a leader has given moral support to the stakeholders to bring into sustainability
factors.

5SUSTAINABILITY
References:
Karunakaran, N. (2019). CEOs like Pepsi's Indra Nooyi nudge consumers to make sustainable
choices. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-
trends/ceos-like-pepsis-indra-nooyi-nudge-consumers-to-make-sustainable-choices/
articleshow/12334952.cms
PepsiCo.com. (2019). Mission and Vision. Retrieved from
https://www.pepsico.com/about/mission-and-vision.
Pio, E., Kilpatrick, R., & Le Fevre, M. (2017). Navratna–the nine gems: Illuminating enablers,
barriers and vignettes of South Asian women leaders. South Asian Journal of Business
Studies, 6(3), 380-394.
Rao, A. S., & Purkayastha, D. (2017). Sustainable development at PepsiCo. In Case Studies in
Sustainability Management (pp. 77-98). Routledge.
Rubens, A., Leah, J., & Schoenfeld, J. (2016). Using Biographies to Teach Leadership Skills: A
Classroom Example. Journal of the Academy of Business Education, 17.
Venkataraman, S., Summers, M., & Venkataraman, S. (2017). PepsiCo: The Challenge of
Growth through Innovation. Darden Business Publishing Cases, 1-22.