UNILEVER

Unilever

Abstract

This paper aims to focus on the analysis of leadership competencies in a particular multinational company, namely Unilever. Being a multinational organization with 400 brands under its umbrella, Unilever has displayed a culture-contingent nature in its ability to provide effective leadership. Its organizational goals have never strayed from the research done at Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness that is known for being effectively applicable to multinational organizations. This describes Unilever's history, its organizational culture, goals and leadership and management attributes that have ensured the organizations success for this long. It has managed to build strong leadership competencies that have been easily adaptable with variants of the rules and regulations and code of conduct in other countries that play host.

Table of Contents

Abstractii

Introduction1

Mission Statement2

Industry Analysis2

Issues that have impacted the organization3

Company Leadership, Management, and Organization Behavior4

Other Issues5

International Strategy5

Conflict management6

Internal Politics6

Communication Processes8

Importance as a learning organization8

Ethical Issues9

Leadership and Management Strengths and Weaknesses9

Milestones, Structure, Style and Employee Satisfaction10

Company Leadership, Management and OB Analysis11

Corporate strategy and Organizational Behavior13

Major strengths and weaknesses14

Recommendations15

Conclusion16

Bibliography17

Unilever

Introduction

Leadership traits in a multinational corporation, along with a good management system, allow for long term goals to be efficiently set and acted upon. In Unilever, leadership is given very acute importance as it plays a distinct role in focusing the energies of over 4000 outlets around the world onto a singular organizational goal. The need for leadership and management arises because the role of organizing and facilitating a group of people must only be appointed to one individual who possesses the ability to take control. In this paper, the analysis of the impact that organizational communication has on the leadership aspect of management of Unilever will be conducted. Unilever will be critically analyzed in the context of success in their leadership, management, people as well as organizational behavior.

Company Background

Unilever is a world renowned consumer goods organization that is British-Dutch in origin. It is a multinational organization, and everyday more than 200 country's occupants use its products which range from food, beverages, cleaning agents and finally, personal care products. More than 400 brands come under the umbrella of Unilever, which makes it easy to see why it became the third largest consumer goods organization in the world. Unilever started off in 1884 with “Sunlight Soap”. Right from the bat it had admirable goals behind the product.

By 1941, Lever and Co. had managed to build quite a following with their hygiene related products, and expanded towards food rationing. In 1955, fish fingers were introduced which was quite an innovative idea for the time. By the 70's, beverages were introduced, and in the 80's a beauty care expansion was utilized. In 1995, it started an initiative called “Sustainable Agriculture”, which became a great example of giving back to the community and several other multinational organizations followed. Several third world countries were provided with agricultural initiatives in order to provide them with secure employment and to add to the natural resources that they were lacking. Since then, many milestones have been reached in each sector of ...