Organizational Behavior Report: Unilever, Culture, and Teams

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of organizational behavior, with a specific focus on the multinational company, Unilever. The introduction establishes the significance of organizational behavior in understanding human interactions within the workplace, emphasizing the importance ...Read More

ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Analyze the influence of culture, politics and power on the behaviour of others in
organizational context..................................................................................................................3
Evaluate how to motivate individuals and teams to achieve a goal............................................6
PART-2........................................................................................................................................8
Assessing the advantages of working in a team and identifying the skills, experience and
knowledge mandatory in a team in order to fulfil its organizational functions...........................8
Benefits of working as a team leader and a member and examining how are the conflicts dealt
and roles developed during the difficult times in a team.............................................................9
Critically evaluating development theories in order to discuss the team effectiveness towards
achieving the goals of the company...........................................................................................10
Determining the relation between two organization behaviour models and team effectiveness
in context to Unilever.................................................................................................................11
Analysis with critical reflection on the value and relevance of effective team working for
influencing behaviours in the workplace...................................................................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14

INTRODUCTION
Organizational behaviour is a study which express the human behaviour at the workplace
and describes how people interact with each other. To run any business or organization, the
management is having a responsibilities and duties to understand the environment of the
workplace and create a surrounding which can encourage the employees to perform the tasks in
appropriate way and can achieve the results accordingly (Kaur, Malhotra and Sharma, 2020).
Unilever is the multinational organization which is headquartered at London, united
Kingdom where they are required to understand the role of organizational behaviour. Also, it
highlights different areas such as job performance and satisfaction, encourage innovation and
even leadership management. The current report will illustrate the concept and significance of
the organization behaviour and establish the purpose of organization culture and motivation at
the workplace which puts the impact over the organizational performance. Also, different models
and theories of the motivation and culture will be performed and will discuss the power, culture
and politics with relevant examples (Hosseini, Arabi-Jeshvaghani, Akbarzadeh and Habibi,
2020). In second part, it will demonstrate the benefits of team working and different theories of
organizational behaviour and group development theories over the organization.
MAIN BODY
Analyze the influence of culture, politics and power on the behaviour of others in organizational
context
Influence of culture on Unilever organization
Organizational cultural classification includes several components such as that of power,
task, role, and person.
Power culture
As per organizational culture expert Handy, the power culture that persists in any
organization mostly works in the form of a complex and continuous circle – one that is capable
of impacting different people in various ways. In the context of the UK based Unilever
organization, it can be said the power culture of the place includes resource controlling team and
the HR department of recruitment and salary that exerts a heavy pressure on the employees
(Meng and Berger, 2019).
Task culture

This element of organizational culture as seen and observed in the Unilever consumer
goods organization is either job or activity oriented in nature. Here a lot of project based
departments work in cohesion along with the core emphasis of the management team on the
work completion deadline and structural designs of the assigned workforce personnel. Some
business records also state that Unilever's task culture approach at times also focuses on
changing its short term objectives where new tasks are allotted.
Role culture
The major vertical segments and sections of the business organization of Unilever like
associated retail businesses, service sector company shareholders, social media teams, etc.
require an ideal and virtue based culture to function. In such a scenario various departmental
teams and cliques of the company are given specific roles to complete such as taking strong-
headed decisions, formalization of workplace communication that seem to have some
detrimental effects on the performance behaviour of workers (Van der Lippe and Lippényi,
2020).
Person culture
The person culture attribute of workplace cultural influence consists of unusual instances
of leading lives where in place of focusing on the larger benefit of the entire Unilever firm, the
company individuals instead emphasize on their own selves. In such a work culture the important
aspect of team working and helping nature along with a cohesive workplace structure gets lost
and it ends up negatively affecting several employees and staff members. At times interpersonal
relationships are destroyed and the senior management' control mechanisms become active.
Influence of organizational motivation
The Unilever firm could try to improve its organizational environment to satisfy its
employees through motivation. Several motivation practices influence and improve
organizational culture in the following ways :
Builds strong employee relationship
Motivation is very necessary to build strong employee relationship for a healthy
environment. The growth of the organization is depended on the employees work. If the relation
between the employees and their higher authorities is not good it will affect the growth of
company (Elvie, 2019).
Help to increase business growth

Workplace motivating factor is known to positively influenc the culture of organization
as it comprises the existence of strong interpersonal relationship among workers and leaders.
Employees are the valuable assets for the company if the employees of the company is satisfied
with their work then the working environment in the organization is also good.
Creation of positive employee experiences
The employee experience is very important in the organization for its growth. The
positive employees experience means their working experience in the organization. If the
employees are getting there salary time to time, are encouraged intrinsically, getting medical
benefits, paid leaves, and other benefits then it gives a positive job satisfaction to the employees.
Giving rewards to employees
The management of an organization will encourage their employees by providing the
rewards which helps to motivate them. For the growth of the business it is necessary that the
economic environment will be good. If the employees are getting this types of rewards it will
increase employees extrinsic motivation (Maryanti and et.al., 2022).
Practice flexibility
Nowadays many companies providing flexibility of work time for their employees. It can
reduce work pressure of employees and helps them to work in shift as per their suitable hours.
And also by providing work from home opportunities to employees. These types of work
flexibility encourage the workers.
Promote a team atmosphere
The team atmosphere is necessary for a healthy environment can be built through
organizational motivation as an individual employee gets tired after work. But if the management
will promote team work there is no doubt that the employees will not tire from their work, and
they become more efficient and productive and committed towards their work.
Application of Hofstede's cultural theory of dimensions
In the context of cross cultural psychology in organizational workplaces such as the
Unilever firm, various aspects of its international market growth and business structure can be
gauged and measured through the application of Hofstede's diverse range of office cultural
factors (Zainuddin and et.al., 2018, December). The following displayed values not only impacts

the employees but also the entire workforce personeel and their operational activities. Here is
how its behavioural tendencies affect Unilever firm's behavioural features.
 Power distance: This particular dimension relates to the less affluent section of society
and in terms of organizational behaviour it means those working individuals who have
less to no power or say at all in the workplace functions. It also creates the feeling of
inequality.
 Avoidance of uncertainty: As the name itself suggests, this dimension of organizational
culture implies that people in such a working structure are in abhorrence of ambiguous
nature of others as well as they hate hypocritical values.
 Individualism v/s collectivism: This area specifically deals with people's choice of
whether they prefer working alone or want to include themselves in a close knit group
structure.
 Masculinity v/s femininity: The masculine value in a cultural aspect means that people
praise the dominant, assertive and success values and links these with males whereas the
female traits for them represent a much more soft, modest and submissibe attitude. Long-term v/s short-term orientation: In the context of organizational culture this
value pertains to the fact that either the people are inclined towards upholding virtues or
they are in favour of factual truth.
Evaluate how to motivate individuals and teams to achieve a goal
There are several kinds of motivational theories but only two main types of categories of
encouragement. These are intrinsic (internal) and extrinsic (external) motivation. The former
means that the encouragement of employees through satisfying their internal desires such as
conducting activities that make them happy, development of skills, etc. The latter, ie. Extrinsic
motivation refers to several external rewards, salary upliftments, memberships, etc that are given
to workers.
One of the main motivational theories used by Unilever organization in its workplace
scenariof for the upliftment of its employees is Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory
which states that there are certain levels of basic survival and professional individual needs that
is required of business firms to incorporate in their structure for keeping their employees
motivated (van der Kolk and et.al., 2019). It consists of:

 Physiological: These are very basic needs such as whether the consumer goods
organization is providing its staff with refreshments, sanitary needs, etc.
 Safety: It relates to the secure conduct of workers ensuring that they reach office and
their homes safely. Also it's important to keep their rights as persons and workers aslo
safe from harm.
 Love and belongingness: This aspect falls under intrinsically keeping employees happy
by encouraging their work-life balance and building friendly relations.
 Esteem: Every individual requires confidence in self and in professional settings the
management such as that of Unilever takes efforts to boost their esteem levels.
 Self-actualization: This need aspect deals with the maximizaion of a person's own
potential of work completion and commitment and the firm helps him realize that.
Motivation through teamwork and its impacts on the organization
The culture of a business play a very important role on employees' motivation and teams
and teamworm play an important role in this. The culture of organization depends on the
management. A strong organizational culture blended with effective team helps to improve
employees efficiency. The supervising team will help the employees by understanding there
needs and try to full-fill their needs which gives motivations to employees. The team leads of
Unilever organization motivates their employees by providing them rewards for there worThe
growth of the organization depends on the employees, if the employees are satisfied with
organization environment they help to achieve organizational goals (Snongtaweeporn and et.al.,
2020).
Also, the relationship between the leaders and employees are necessary for a healthy
environment. Generally the leaders misbehaves with the employees which de-motives their
employees. So it is essential to main a good relation with the employees. Sometimes forcing the
employees for work is not good because at that time the worker boost productivity but it will
drop its motivation. Workers can only be happy when the work load are not so much on them.
The management have to provide rest period for their employees, so they can take rest and with a
fresh mind they can work easily. Training and development by efficient team leaders is also
necessary for employees to improve their skills which they can use when they are working skills
enhancement makes an employee more capable and confident and increase its work efficiency
which helps the organization to achieve the goals.

PART-2
Assessing the advantages of working in a team and identifying the skills, experience and
knowledge mandatory in a team in order to fulfil its organizational functions
Teamwork is defined as a work that is done in a sync by number of associates in a
company or in an organization. Its is a collaborative working that is done towards a common
goal and objective of a company (Driskell, Salas and Driskell, 2018). When a team work is done
in a right direction and with positivity in a team, it generally leads to better outcomes and
efficiency (Tripathy, 2018). Therefore, a teamwork turns working into fun. There are number of
benefits of teamwork in an organization, of which, here are some:
 Personal growth
 Boosts individual as well as company's productivity
 Enhances the problem solving skills
 Fewer burnouts
 Boost innovations
 Promotes Growth
 Enhances the understanding level
Though, there are number of benefits that are derived from a team work, but forming teams that
can work together towards the growth of a company is not always easy and therefore can turn out
to be a stressful task (Mubaraz and Heikkilä, 2022). There are number of skills, experience and
knowledge which are required by the teammates in order to form a good team that can perform
tasks successfully and boosts the productivity of the company. Below are some mandatory
knowledge and skills mentioned:
 Time Management
 Critical Thinking
 Communication
 Listening Skills
 Problem Solving
 Leadership Skills
Here, Unilever already has some very good teams working in the company for different
departments such as for the sales, advertising, accounting etc. but for the sake of enhancing the
outcomes and productivity of the teams, the company can also consider evaluating these essential

things as that will only lead to a good future of the company and the company can derive great
profits out it.
Benefits of working as a team leader and a member and examining how are the conflicts dealt
and roles developed during the difficult times in a team.
Teamwork provides a whole new experience to each and every individual that is working
in the team. Be it the members or the leaders in the team. Working collaboratively induce a sense
of confidence, enhances one's communication skills, develops individuals critical thinking and
above all, it develops the understanding level of the people working in the team be it leader a or a
member. The more the people work with each other the more it is said that it increases the
intellectual of each individual. Similar to a member, a leader also has number of advantages such
as, the one can increase the personal understanding power related to each and every member of
the team, the one can develop an understanding of how the members should be dealt and how to
identify the hidden conflicts in a team and solve them. A leader learns a lot of things including
how to motivate every individual towards the achievement of the goals of the company and how
to make the members work together in a sync. Where the leaders learn how to handle the
conflicts and address the issues of every member, a member learns how avoid issues and
conflicts while working and develop a respect and integrity in the work. Both things go hand in
hand when a team wishes to work effectively and efficiently towards its goal.
As it is said, it's not always a sunny day, some times it also rains. Likewise, the teams
also have tough times to face, it is not always fun working in the teams. Here, during the tough
times there are a lot of problems that come in the way of team leaders as well as the members.
The difficult times bring along a lot of problems such as, the leaders start facing troubles in
delegating the work to the team and the member also start to face criticisms for the work that has
been done by them, sometimes it is done by the members themselves and sometimes it is done by
the leaders.
Unilever being one of the most successful company, has great teams working for itself. It
understands the benefits of a teamwork, as the teamwork has shown immense growth to the
company in the past years. It has benefited the company in terms of improved outcomes, fast
resolutions, creativeness, motivation and great problem-solving skills that has boosted the
productivity of the company.

Critically evaluating development theories in order to discuss the team effectiveness towards
achieving the goals of the company
Team development comes with a great responsibility, as it is the task of finding and
putting together the talented individuals into a group and motivate them to work together and
stay together for the sake of achieving the goals of the company. But to actually accomplish the
task of developing the teams here are the two models:
 Tuckman Model of Team development
 Belbin's Model of Team development
BELBIN MODEL-
This model is concerned with understanding the roles of each individual in a team and
also developing and managing the personal strengths and weakness in order to contribute the best
of the abilities to a team (Bednár and Ljudvigová, 2020). The model is widely used by the team
of experts in order to form balanced teams. Belbin's model encompasses number of team roles
and groups which are described below:
Action-oriented roles-
 Shaper- These people are the challengers of the team. They generally tend to offend the
other members of the team because of their argumentative nature.
 Implementer- Implementers are the people who are engaged in execution of the ideas.
These people sometimes tend to be inflexible and resistant towards the changes.
 Complete finisher- Finishers refer to the people who generally undergo the work that has
been done and also ensure that the work is completed on time (Lynch, Lynch and
Clemens, 2019). These people tend to worry and hesitate when it comes to the delegation
of the responsibilities.
People-oriented roles-
 Coordinator- Coordinators are the people who bring an order in a team and sometimes
also take act as a team leader in order to provide guidance to the team.
 Team worker- These are the people who cooperate and provide support to a team. They
hold a weakness I.e. being indecisive.
 Resource investigator- Resource investigators are indulged in developing outside
contacts. They are innovative but sometimes can lose enthusiasm at a very early stage.

Thought-oriented roles-
 Plant- They are the innovators who introduce new idea to the team and prefer to work
alone. These people are the introverts of a team.
 Monitor Evaluator- These are the people with critical thinking skills in a team. They have
a responsibility of analysing the ideas and innovative plans of a team.
 Specialist- Specialists are referred to the ones who are specialized in understanding the
concepts. They generally have a pride on themselves for the skills and abilities they hold.
TUCKMAN MODEL-
This model pays attention to encourage shared leaderships with the maturity and abilities
that the members in a team hold amongst themselves (Jones, 2019). The model has following 5
steps:
Forming- As per the requirement of acceptance, ambiguous and conflicts are avoided in this
step. Here the structure of the team is put together.
Storming- This step is dominated by the structural leadership, power and issues as the step is
engaged in observing the interpersonal problems during the tasks.
Norming- This step is concerned with shared leadership as here, the members are demanded to
bring new ideas and develop trust on each other.
Performing- This step involves encouraging the team engagement (Serenhov and Kaldera Hollu
Pathiranage, 2021). Here major focus is paid on the tasks that are beneficial for the business of
the company.
Adjourning- When the task is completed, the step is engaged with breaking up of the group.
Here the model used by Unilever is the Belbin's Model. This model make the teams of
the company to come up with creative and unique ideas for the sake of making the company out-
stand. With the help of this model different challenges are overcomed even before their arrival
by the planters with their innovative minds.
Determining the relation between two organization behaviour models and team effectiveness in
context to Unilever
Team effectiveness is factor that plays an important role because if a team is not
effective enough, it cannot serve the purpose of nay kind. Unilever has some definite effective

teams which serves the company with great profitability in the regular intervals. To keep the
productivity on, the company has undertaken two models namely:
1. Collegial model
2. Supportive model
The collegial model pays emphasis on making the employees of the company feel a sense
of belonging and so for this very sake, the collegial model encourages shared leadership in the
teams of the companies as that involves number of employees to participate in the decision-
making and other processes. Here in Unilever, the company also follow this model for the
purpose of maintaining a harmony in their operations.
The supportive model is concerned with understanding the factors that inspires and
motivate the people in the companies the most. This becomes an important model to followed in
the teams of the company as motivation plays an important role in making a team effective.
Unilever uses this model in its teams because it encourages every member to contribute and
share their innovative ideas with the team. Thus, both these models have played a very important
role in the success of the company.
Analysis with critical reflection on the value and relevance of effective team working for
influencing behaviours in the workplace
Unilever is a well-known and reputed organization who has to understand the
significance of the team work for influencing an individual employee behaviours at the
workplace. Working as a group will lead the people at the organization to reduce the conflicts
and encourage the interaction and proper communication between them from where the
appropriate result and outcome can be obtained (Fridell, L.A., Maskaly, J. and Donner, C.M.,
2021). However, it helps to resolve the problem and helps to increase the potential for innovation
and deliver the proper satisfaction to the employees and staff people of the company. It has been
known that working as an employee over any organization, they need positive working culture
which motivates individual to perform the workings in successful manner which can result
beneficially. Moreover, it has been identified that it also decreases the level of stress and work
loads over the employees of Unilever and gives more opportunities to them to perform well and
boost up the productivity.

CONCLUSION
The above mentioned report has concluded the significance of the organizational
behaviour and how its puts the impact over the company's performance and productivity level.
The culture and motivation plays a crucial role in the development of the organization and
employee performance where it includes the different theories and models of the culture and
motivation. Also, it provides the overview of organization culture, power and politics and its
impact on the performance of the company. However, the report also performed the benefits of
team working and conduct the various theories and models of group development and
organization behaviour. It is important for the management to understand the effectiveness of the
team working where they can achieve the set goals and targets in efficient manner and can drive
the company to obtain successful outcome.

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