Context of Business Assignment - Unilever

Context of business

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Brief history and summary of the business..................................................................................1
Vision, leadership style, management practices and the organisational culture..........................2
How management style and culture influence business functions and strategies .......................3
Recommendation for improvement.............................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Business context defines the background and the factors of an organisation such as its
framework, strategies, environment and all types of situations in which an organisation
performs. This report is based on Unilever that is a British Consumer goods provider company
whose headquarter is in London, UK. This study will show about different leadership style and
the best style which the chosen company follow (vom Brocke, Zelt and Schmiedel, 2016). It will
also shows and analyse the impacts of the culture, management practices and style on the
operations and performance of Unilever. Further this report will shows some recommendations
for the future growth and improvement of the company.
Brief history and summary of the business
Unilever is a dual listed British Dutch transnational consumer goods company. The
headquarter of this company is in Unilever house, London, United Kingdom Rotterdam,
Netherlands. It is consumer goods industry which was founded by William Lever, 1st Viscount
Leverhulme, James Darcy Lever, Samuel Van Den Bergh, Georg Schicht and Singrose on 2
September 1929 around 89 years ago. It has been stated that Unilever is 1 of the oldest
multinational company and its serves and operates around the world with its 400 brands. in the
context of operations and products it is divided into 4 divisions such as Refreshment that
includes ice cream tea based beverages, Home care which includes liquids, powders, soap bars
etc., Personal care hair care products, deodorants etc. and the last one is Food which includes
snacks, mayonnaise, soups etc. This company serves and offers all these products to its
customers includes with higher quality (Murphy and Murphy, 2018).
In the context of revenue and profits this company's revenue was £50.982 billion at the
end of the year of 2018 and operating cost was around £12.535 billion. It has also stated that the
total asset of Unilever was £59.456 and net income was £9.808 billion at the end of the year
2018 as it serves and offers its products in around 190 countries.
This company has around 155,000 number of employees in different countries and are the
key because they help the company in achie4ving their pre determined goals and objectives. In
the context of legal structure it has 2 holding companies such as Unilever N.V and Unilever Plc.
The head office of Unilever N.V is in Rotterdam, Netherlands and Unilever Plc's registered
office at Port sunlight in UK. In the advertising and promotion activities it invested around £6
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