Unilever is a multination corporation which was founded in 1930 by Dutch and British company

joint venture. Unilever is well-known in the home and personal care as well as food industries.
They own more than 400 brands and operate in more than 100 countries. Unilever employed
173,000 and generating sales of 51 billion in 2012.
Question 1.
Peter Drucker is the most popular consultant and author in the 20
th
century. He is analyse and
look at what the manager should do and he summary it as seven tasks of tomorrows manager.
Unilever has adopted Druckers seven tasks of tomorrows manager well in order to develop the
company.
The first task is to manage by objectives. In 2010, Unilever set a ten year plan which named
Unilever sustainable living plan. The objective in 2020 are improve health and well-being,
reducing environmental impact, enhancing livelihoods as well as more sustainable growth.
According to Sigismondi, he is Unilevers chief supply chain officer, that Unilever will looking
for long-term relationship, so suppliers can more provide ideas about how to reduce cost. In
2012, the sale grew 6.9% while they continued to fulfill the objective as the table below.

Source: Unilever Sustainable living plan website
The second task is take more risks, over a longer time period and also allow this to happen
further down the organisation. Unilever recorded less than 2% growth in retail value sales of tea
in 2012, compared with 12% in emerging markets. Unilever realize that if they want to growth,
they need to take more risk. Therefore, they decide to create its own tea pod machine which is
named tea fusion by Lipton. It can create more demand for the tea category as well as add
more value to it so it can accelerate the growth rate and increase the profit. However, it also has a
risk that the new tea pod machine might not success due to the growth rate is very low so the
number of new customer want to buy tea pod and the machine will also low. Moreover, there is
also a strong competitor in the market which is Nestles Special.T and it has been released for 3
years. Therefore, they can make a huge loss in this invest if they do not have a good marketing
campaign.
The third task is take strategic decisions. As a huge multinational corporation, Unilever took
many strategic decisions to ensure the long-term develop. Recently, Unilever invested over 95
million in a new ice cream factory in Turkey. It enabled Unilever to increase its production
capacity and match their grow ambition. Unilever also decide to sign the agreement with
Tanzania government to accelerate the growth for tea. Unilever is the market leader in tea
category so they want a more sustainable supplier to concentrate on the plan that increases the
growth rate and profit. Moreover, they cut down the number of brand from 1600 to 400 and they
sold many brands such as Soft & Beautiful, TCB, Pro-Line Comb-Thru, Wish-Bone and Western
because they want to reduce the cost and the difficulty in management. Most of these strategic
decisions are made to help Unilever develop more sustainable and receive more capital in order
to invest in another category.
The fourth task is to build an integrated team, in which members are capable of assessing their
own performance in relation to common objective. Unilever has many divisions which are
financial, marketing, supply chain, R&D All of them are working separately and they only
specialize in some skills. Therefore, Unilever had formed them into an integrated team to work
and support each other in a campaign. For example, the Unilever sustainable living plan is a huge
campaign and it involve many brands, production, human capital so it need most of the divisions
working together. Unilever leadership executive also form an integrated team to manage and
observe the progress of the campaign.
The fifth task is to see the organisation as a whole and understand his/her role within it. As you
know, Unilever is a joint venture of a British and Dutch company. They have their own brands
and market so it is very hard to see it as a whole. However, both of them have some mutual
brands, equal share value and equal treatment for shareholders from both companies. Unilever
CEO has seen them as a whole and make them become one Unilever.
The sixth task is understand the external environment and the significant factors, which impact
on the organisation, its products and services, and the sector as a whole. Unilever has understood
the external environment very well and adopt a huge campaign in the right time. They
understand that people now interested in the change of the environment and care more about
their health. Therefore, Unilever started Unilever sustainable living plan in order to improve
health, reduce the environmental impact. It can improve the brand awareness, develop more
sustainable and generate more profit.
However, Unilever is lack one of the task which is communicate quickly and clearly and have a
motivating influence on staff at all levels such that their participation, in a responsible manner, is
obtained. Unilever employed more than 170,000 and they also have numerous brands and
divisions to manage so they are having trouble to communicate quickly and clearly to all the
staffs. Unilever is a multinational corporation and it operates in more than 100 countries.
Moreover, Unilever is a joint venture from two companies. Therefore, it will take a lot of time to
deliver something from the CEO to the region manager.

Question 2.
In order to develop the company, the managers have to understand and manage the driving forces
effectively. Driving forces is divided into internal forces and external forces. It can influence and
change the decision and strategy of a company. In Unilever, there are many driving forces and
we will discuss some internal and external driving forces.
Firstly, Unilever has to change because of the resource which is an internal driving force. In
2000, Unilever had more than 1600 brands. However, the resource was limited so Unilever could
not share it equally and efficiency to all of their brands. It could slow down the growth rate and
create more unexpected cost. Therefore, they decided to cut down from 1600 brands to 400
brands and dismissed 25,000 employees. It reduced the cost from inefficient brands and received
a huge capital from the sale of those brands. Therefore, Unilever could focus more on other
brand and develop more sustainable.
Secondly, Unilever has changed its CFO in 2010 and it also an internal driving force. In 2009,
Jim Lawrence resigned due to personal reason and it was believe that he wanted to become CEO
but Paul Polman took it. In early 2010, Unilever appointed Jean-Marc Huet to become new CFO.
Hence, Unilever has to change some plan and have to wait for the new CFO familiar with his
new job.
Thirdly, Unilever has to change the growth plan to a greener plan due to the impact of climate
which is an external driving force. Unilever CEO Paul Polman said that the climate impact cost
them 200 million a year. The flood and drought destroy the Unilevers farms and it lead to the
lack of raw material in production. Therefore, he promoted a project which named Unilever
sustainable living plan and it had many green activities, develop sustainable supply chain, built
new green markets, 100% raw material from sustainable sources. It can reduce the impact of
climate and impact to the environment.
Finally, Unilever change the way they marketing their brand due to the brand awareness which is
an external driving force. According to Wall Street Journal, Unilever brand is not popular as its
own brands such as Ben & Jerry, Lipton, Omo Therefore, the customer may buy products
from another company along with Unilevers product. Hence, they launched project sunlight in
order to boost Unilever brand awareness. It can make customer know more about Unilever and
their products so they will buy all the product line from Unilever rather than another company.

Question 3.
In order to take advantage in competitive, Porter define three strategies which are cost
leadership, differentiation and focus. We will examine the current position of Unilever.
Unilever is definitely a cost leadership in the market. They are competing with other company in
a mass market with low price strategy. They set the price based on the cost so they can earn
above average profit. They invest in many farm and factory in developing countries where the
labour cost is low so they can keep the cost as low as possible. They invest in many farm and
factory in developing countries where the labour cost is low so they can keep the cost as low as
possible. Therefore, they can have the best quality product with low cost.
Unilever also use differentiation strategy in order to get advantage in mass market. Unilever is
providing their product with unique features such as Deep Care Complex of Dove, unique tea
taste of Lipton, unique flavor of Ben & Jerry Moreover, Unilever innovate their product
frequently and they also build up their brand as a green company and pay attention to protect the
environment and human health.
Unilever is a company that specializes in fast-moving consumer goods so their product is offered
to wide range of customer. Therefore, they use cost focus strategy in order to compete with other
competitors. Unilever focus on R&D and new technology to produce better product with lower
cost.
In my opinion, I agree with Unilever current choice of strategic position because their choice is
appropriate with the market and they still generate a huge profit from it. They have some change
in their plan but in overall, they still stick with their current choice and it keeps them as a fierce
rivalry of P&G or Nestle.

Question 4.
(I)
The biggest goal of running an organisation is to earn more and more profit and Unilever also
need to generate a huge profit in order to operate properly. Therefore, as a member of shadow
management team, I will discuss how to improve the profitability.
Unilever is well-known for home caring and personal caring products so the brand awareness is
very important. There are many competitors in the market and their product is quite the same as
Unilever. Hence, we need to increase our brand awareness and build up the company morale as
well so we can increase the profit.
We will sponsor some charity events so we can show our brand and the company name to the
customer. It is not only to show the social responsibility but also raise the brand awareness. The
customer will prefer to use the brand that has social responsibility and they will pay extra for the
company that give back to the society according to Nielsen (2012).
We also hold some charity events which are related to our product. We will use our personal
caring product such as lifebuoy or Close-Up in our charity events. These products are essential
for people health however many poor people cannot use it. Therefore, our charity events will
give these products to the poor people and help them to protect their health and get a better live.
These events will build up our brand image and attract more customers to try and use our
products. Therefore, we can improve the profit for Unilever.
(II)
Staffs are the backbone of any organisation and the organisation works well or not depends on
the staff performance. Hence, one of the elements that can improve the staff performance is
motivation. As a member of shadow management team, I will show some solutions to motivate
the staff effectively.
Firstly, we will increase the wage level for some staffs that have a good amount of contribute to
Unilever. We will set a goal for the staffs and if they reach the goal, their wage level can increase
a reasonable amount.
Secondly, the manager should praise and encourage the staffs more when they are perform well.
Moreover, the manager should respect the staff and keep the peaceful atmosphere in the
company. It will make the staffs work harder and perform better.
Finally, we can reduce the working hour and hold some events for the staffs. Through reduce the
working hour, we can reduce the stress of staff and they will feel happier. We also hold some
event to entertain the staff and make them feel refresh after hours of working.
Word count: 2016





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