UNILEVER UK AND IRELAND

Management and Leadership at Unilever UK and Ireland

Introduction to Unilever1

Management Styles at Unilever UK and Ireland3

Leadership Styles at Unilever UK and Ireland5

Leadership at Unilever UK and Ireland versus Leadership at Unilever Global6

Suggestions for Improvement7

Points for PowerPoint Presentation8

Conclusion10

References11

Management and Leadership at Unilever UK and Ireland

Introduction to Unilever

With revenues of over 51 billion Euros for the year 2012, Unilever is the third largest consumer goods company of the world, in terms of revenues. Unilever enjoys direct presence in more than 100 countries of the world and employs more than 0.2 million people. Furthermore, the company indirectly generates employment for several thousand of other distributors, suppliers and contractors. Unilever takes immense pride in the fact that, at any given day, more than two billion people use Unilever products to “look good, feel good and get good out of life (the mission of the organization)”. Unilever believes that innovation and even more innovation can help the organization to succeed in an increasingly competitive and cutthroat marketplace of tomorrow; therefore, the company spends more than a billion Euros every year on research and development (Unilever, 2013d).

Although, it was on the first day of the year 1930 that Unilever formally came into existence, the company traces its existence to the late 19th century, when Jurgens and Van den Bergh, opened their businesses as butter merchants. It was in the early 1870s that a new product, margarine caught their eye as a cheap substitute for butter and opened first factories for mass production of the same. On the other hand, Lever and Company, a successful family business run by the family of William Lever came up with the innovative idea of a new soap that uses copra or pie kernel oil instead of animal fat, which allows the soap to lather more easily than other traditional soaps. Unlike the other soaps at that time, Lever decides to give the product a unique brand name, Sunlight and unique packaging. By the late 1880s, Lever and Company was producing more than 450 tons of Sunlight Soap. Considering this progress, Lever and company decides to become a public limited company; Lever Brothers Limited, a name that will remain the identity of this growing and thriving corporation for more than a century. For much of the next three decades, these companies continue to thrive and expand until the late 1920s when the Great Depression made it troublesome for these organizations to survive and continue their expansion. These businesses initially decided not to stay out of the market of their counterpart, but they end up merging to create Unilever (Unilever, 2013c).

During the decade of 90s, in an attempt to provide a new direction to the company, Unilever began to pursue acquisition of several brands and companies from all over the world, in an attempt to diversify and achieve aggressive growth (Unilever, 2013c).

The organization divides its brand into the three categories of food and drink, home care and personal ...