Organisational Behaviour in Unilever

Organisational
Behaviour

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
Organisational behaviour is the study and application of knowledge about understanding,
predicting and influencing behaviour of individuals in an organisation. Organisational behaviour
includes detailed analysis of behaviour of an individual in an organisation and with their
colleagues and behaviour of organisations themselves (Arnold and et. al., 2015). This is
important to be studied so that employee satisfaction and organisational goals can be
accomplished efficaciously. For understanding this report in detail, Unilever is taken which is a
brand dealing in household products since 1929 and was founded by merger of soap makers
Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie. Its business deals in a variety of sectors with more than 400
brands, including food products, home care and personal care products. In this report the
influence of culture, politics and power on behaviour of individuals in an organisation is
explained which will help in making an immediate and positive contribution in the workplace.
TASK 1
P1
An organisation's culture, politics and power determine its rate of growth, stability and
continuous success in market. Power and politics are related to management and leadership of
the organisation and helps in managing behaviour of individuals and team so that their
performance can be made efficient to achieve organisational objectives (Bester, Stander and Van
Zyl, 2015).
Influence of organisational culture :
Organisational culture includes values and behaviours that contribute in making the
social and psychological surroundings of an organisation. It represents the aggregate values,
beliefs and principles of all the organisational members. Work cultures that exist in organisations
can be understood by Handy's cultural typology model which is described as follows: Power culture: This culture exists in small start-ups or new businesses where the power
is centralised with the founder who is a charismatic leader. Employees are loyal to the
leader and organisation is highly flexible. Role culture : This culture is highly job-oriented and usually exists in government
organisations. Strict rules and regulations, obligations, agreements and procedures are
followed. Roles of individuals determines their powers (Burrell and Morgan, 2017).

 Task culture: Many project based organisations have this culture and is mainly result
oriented. Employees are professional in their work with a lot of experience and are
oriented towards solving problems. Expertise and flexibility is the most important
character and coordination among the members depend on task or project requirements.
 Person culture: This culture is found in professional organisations where employees
have complete independence, are highly educated and work with their own expertise.
Law firms for example have this type of culture.
Unilever follows Task culture where emphasis on employee output is important to ensure high
performance of human resources.
Influence of organisational politics :
Organisational politics means use of informal strategies and power to obtain preferred
outcomes. Managers of Unilever need to take appropriate decisions so as to control and influence
people in the company so that objectives can be achieved and a cooperative environment can be
maintained. Influence of organisational politics on individual and team behaviour are described
below: Decrease in overall productivity: This is because people waste much of their time on
criticizing their co-workers and become more involved in gossiping about issues that are
not related to work. This reduces their concentration on work and employees fail to
achieve targets on time (Chen, and Wong, 2015). Spoils the ambience: Politics lead to discouraging environment at workplace and
deteriorates decorum among individuals.
 Demotivated employees: Employees feel demotivated when others get the credit for work
they have worked hard on due to mere politics. This leads to serious employees losing
interest in their work.
Influence of organisational power:
Power is the capability of managers to modify the conduct of individuals and teams in
order to achieve assigned tasks on time. Power is the ability of changing other's behaviour even
if they are unwilling to do so. Following types of powers can exist in an organisation: Reward power: This is the power to give appreciation and value to the employees based
on their performance. In Unilever this power is exercised by departmental managers who