Analysis of Unilever's Corporate Social Responsibility Approach

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Unilever's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) approach, as discussed in the provided article. It begins by defining CSR as a model of self-regulation in business, aiming for social and environmental accountability alongside financial performance. The report then delves into the reasons behind the perceived failure of Unilever's CSR, highlighting issues such as sexual harassment allegations, environmental controversies, and the prioritization of public image over addressing core business challenges. The analysis contrasts Unilever's struggles with the successes of other companies, such as Deloitte, IBM, Lego, and Microsoft, that have effectively implemented CSR initiatives. The report emphasizes the importance of independent oversight, fair practices, and rewarding companies that prioritize employee well-being and environmental sustainability. Finally, the report recommends that companies implement CSR, with a focus on strong board oversight, transparent communication, and collaborative efforts to address social and environmental issues. The report is based on the provided article by Borelli (2017) and incorporates additional research to support its claims. The overall conclusion suggests the need for a robust and well-managed CSR strategy to ensure both business success and positive societal impact.

Running Head: UNILEVER AND ITS CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
UNILEVER AND ITS CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Corporate Social Responsibility (henceforth, CSR) is a model of self-regulation in
business. It attempts to make a company socially reliable and accountable for itself, its
stakeholders as well as the public. This is a management concept that looks at the social as
well as environmental factors besides correlating the interactions between the business
operations as well as the stakeholders. It is usually aimed to achieve a balance for the
company that in the aspects of economy, social imperatives, environment (the Triple-Bottom-
Line Approach) and company labor structure. The CSR of a company is responsible for
making strategic business decisions to uplift the company’s structure and market positioning
or reputation. With the advent of globalization and ease in international trade, CSR has
emerged as an essential segment of any organization, especially a multi-national company
that is large in size and holds a considerable proportion of the market share. The Small and
Medium Enterprises (henceforth, SMEs) are also promoted to adopt the CSR segments,
however, they remain extremely expensive and not all organizations are able to adopt these
initiatives. However, after the appropriation of the Triple Bottom Line (henceforth, TBL) tool
by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), it was proven that the
adoption of CSR by the SMEs in the developing nations has proven to be very helpful. These
were by meeting the standards of the society as well as the environment while striking a
balance, keeping in mind the economic structure. This does not compromise with the
competitiveness of the company or its sustainability.
Discussion
Unilever’s CSR Approach:
In case of Unilever, the CSR of the Company failed miserably as charges of sexual
harassments and environmental controversies surfaced on an international level. The article

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depicts situations where the people can surprisingly overthrow an elite government when it
fails to meet the needs of the people and chooses to satisfy their own needs before the
people’s who had voted them to power. The situation is very visible in case of Brexit and the
American Presidential election where Trump came to power (Forbes.com, 2019). It just does
not stop there, shareholders also need to protest and toss the CEOs in case they put their own
interests before the investors. This is evident from the instance where Howard Schultz, the
CEO of Starbucks put forth his personal politics before the shareholders and challenged the
various policies that has been promoted by the United States (henceforth, U. S.) President,
Donald Trump. However, it took no time for the supporters of Trump to gather and protest
against Starbucks with the slogan #boycottStarbucks that became the topmost trending
hashtag on Twitter (Forbes.com, 2019). The backlash from the Trump supporters did not
affect Howard Schultz but the CEO of Starbucks and the Company, affecting its sales.
In comparison to the Unilever CEO, Paul Polman, this was nothing as he had severe
charges pressed against him that tagged him as “a poster child of a CEO gone rogue”
(Forbes.com, 2019). He has been leading the Company since the year 2009 and is, hence,
responsible for the grave issues of environment as well as harassments at workplace across
the countries and not just in one country. The issue becomes serious when Polman refuses to
consider himself accountable for these and adopts superficial policies that only leave a ‘feel
good’ sense of things while ignoring to intake any sound decision to tackle the problem or
suit the upliftment or reputation of the business. Rather, he refuses to be shy about touting his
twisted priorities. Polman continues to be a person who seeks approval from the various
global elites. He continues to bask in the glory of being titled as a “sustainable evangelist” as
well as being crowned by the title of world saver due to his efforts in addressing global
climatic and social issues. This shows that Unilever has clearly gone off the rails.

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Reason for Unilever’s CSR Approach to be unsuccessful:
It was only a few years back that Unilever had settled down with more than 600
workers over issues relating to the exposure of mercury from a thermometer plant, which is
now shut, following a lawsuit in the year 2006. This was over the toxic release of mercury
that caught global attention only after an Indian rapper used this issue for his song, the music
of which was modified by Nicki Minaj for the tune ‘Amaconda’ where the lyrics addressed
the mercury problem (Forbes.com, 2019).
Followed by this, it was in the year 2011 when the Irish Times published a news that
surfaced the underlying sexual harassments existing in the workplace of Unilever with claims
from the African workers, stating that they had to bribe their supervisors in order to stop their
unwanted advances (Forbes.com, 2019). However, especially the Non-Governmental
Organizations (henceforth, NGOs) did not accept Polman’s efforts aimed at addressing the
claims of sexual harassments on the global front and neither did the people or other social and
not for profit organizations.
In the year 2014, there was a report by the Centre for Research on Multinational
Corporations, based in Netherlands that claimed that the existing structure of the checks and
balances has contributed to nothing when it came to stoppage of the abuses of the employees
at workplace in Unilever’s Kenyan address (Gitau, 2017). This comprised of the poor
housing conditions as well as the sexual harassments. The Competition Commission of the
country pressed the South African base of Unilever with accusations of collusion with one of
its competitors. There could have been an imposition of fines, going up to an annual
percentage of 10 on the Company’s turnover (Forbes.com, 2019). This did not take place
depicting the fact that decay begins from the top. Polman focused more on the social matters
that kept him distracted from addressing the major challenges in the business that surfaced
the international market and vehemently affected the Company’s reputation (Fraile, Jiménez,

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& Delgado, 2017). It was in a recently given interview to the Fortune magazine where
Polman expressed his greater interest in supporting the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals (henceforth, UNSDG) than the 2016 financial reports of Unilever
(Forbes.com, 2019). It was vital because the growth in Unilever’s business was suffering as
the Company struggled to attain an increase in the growth rate only by a number of 2.2
percent against the 2.8 percent, predicted by the analyst. Unfortunately, this was even lower
than the growth rate of the previous year. Sales in the year of 2016 was only 3.7, which was
even lower than Wall Street’s growth estimates of 3.9 percent (Forbes.com, 2019). Even
Bloomberg went ahead to mention that the growth problems that rested with the Company,
Unilever, was mostly due to the Company’s personal care unit.
The greatest of the blunders was the current rejection of a takeover worth $143 billion
from the company, Kraft Heinz. The stocks owned by Unilever shot up to 15 percent after
this news came into the public view. However, it dropped down to 8 percent when Unilever
rejected this takeover offer. This decision by the Company left wall Street perplexed as the
offer of $50 each share clearly depicted an 18 percent rise for Unilever from its share prices,
alone (Forbes.com, 2019). This was before the bid and could increase the valuation of the
Company to a multiple of 24 times of the valuation of the Company in the year 2016.
Polman, based entirely on his personal agenda of politics, rejected this offer that could have
been extremely beneficial for the Company. The article even goes on to state that the
shareholders of Unilever should now mimic the trend of anti-embellishment and banish
Polman as the CEO of Unilever, cornering him to play his politics on his own dime.
Other Companies where CSR Approach works:
In the modern times, the CSR policies are gaining popularity with the increasing
requirement of the same in the international domain to promote an environmentally
sustainable and socially as well as individually viable practices and strategies. Caring is

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gaining priority in the rapidly changing corporate domain. A list of several organizations has
successfully adopted the CSR policies towards the development of a better work culture. This
boosts the success stories of these companies in terms of their market reputation as well as
the business development. Deloitte has incorporated a pro bono work culture that has
positively impacted in the job satisfaction, marking significant gains in developing relevant
job skills (SmartRecruiters Blog, 2019). Citizen IBM, popularly known as IBM has supported
a range of wide efforts that the Company has put in order to support the efforts for diversity,
education, economic development, disaster relief, global health and more. It has also helped
the cancer treatment research by combining the computing power of idle computers as well as
the mobile phones, reducing the computing time of 167,000 years (SmartRecruiters Blog,
2019).
A latest analysis, comprising of 170,000 company ratings sheds light on the
companies located in 15 countries with understanding the most responsible companies, in
terms of social responsibilities. The annual study by Reputation Institute (henceforth, RI),
which is a Boston-based reputation-management consulting firm compiled a study to track
the CSR of the various organizations by counting on factors like positive influence on the
society, consumers’ perceptions of governance and treatment of the employees within the
company. This is measured by the RepTrak acore.
Lego tops the year’s roster of top CSR companies in the year 2017 from the fifth
position in the previous year, scoring 74.4 RepTrak, for its ethical behaviors, fair business
practices, transparency in the operation, protection of the environment and supporting causes
that are worthy enough (Forbes.com, 2019). It has taken initiatives like ‘Build the Change’
and ‘Sustainable Materials Center’ by partnering with the World Wildlife Fund (henceforth,
WWF) and emerged as a push for sustainability for the Danish toy company.

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Microsoft scores the second position, scoring 74.1 RepTrak for its CSR initiatives in
terms of social and environment responsibility (Forbes.com, 2019). Microsoft fosters the
growth of education and enhancing the same by bringing up the inability to access education
as a global human issue.
Google remains at the third position, scoring 73.9 RepTrak by taking efforts to
counter comments made by the United States President, Donald Trump about the Muslims, to
bring out the public issues on a global level that raises hostility and differentiation against
religion and ethnicity (Forbes.com, 2019).
Recommendation
The issues of harassments and bias practices in workplaces exists even in the modern
times despite the rise of literacy to a high extent. These differences are not just limited to
race, ethnicity or religion but gender discrimination is a serious issue that creates situations of
hostile work culture and inefficient results in work (Grosser, McCarthy, & Kilgour, 2017).. A
third body that functions independently should analyze these very closely. Proper analysis of
these situations will help in taming the situation at work. Imposition of fines and pressing
criminal charges with due protection of the complainant and financial security of the same
shall be ensured. Companies who ensure the protection of the employees, provide care, are
socially responsible and develop environmentally sustainable practices shall be recognized
and rewarded for their efforts. This shall not only boost the Company reputation but also
encourage the Company and its employees. The reduction in the rate of harassments and
environmental damages should not be the prime examining criteria but the number of cases
where the respective company had taken initiatives to punish the one at fault after thorough
and fair analysis.

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Conclusion
The Board of Directors should head the CSR practices and at least conduct monthly
meetings to check the progress and identify the issues, thereby solving them. CSR practices
need to be essentially well articulated and communicated with collaborative workforce. The
measures and initiatives need to percolate deep down and this enforcement shall be reassured
and checked from time to time to attain efficient management. A well-structured CSR
approach can enhance the distribution as well as the access to the markets and the capital
besides increasing profits and sales, savings by managing operational costs, improving the
quality and productivity (Fraile, Jiménez, & Delgado, 2017).

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