MGT201 - Unilever Case Study: Leadership, Culture, and Change

This case study analyzes the strategic changes undertaken at Unilever, focusing on the leadership of Paul Polman and the impact on the company's culture. The assignment evaluates the situation, the need for change, and the effectiveness of different leadership styles in driving organizational transformation. It examines the challenges faced, such as maintaining growth and addressing economic pressures, and details the strategies implemented, including the "compass strategy" and its focus on brand innovation and market development. The report also explores the importance of organizational ambidexterity and various levers for managing strategic change. Furthermore, the analysis considers the impact of culture on performance and discusses the need for a strong, ethical culture. The study concludes by assessing the success of the changes and suggests initiatives like turnaround and leading strategies to improve implementation, referencing models and concepts from strategic management literature. The report provides a comprehensive overview of Unilever's strategic evolution, offering insights into the complexities of leadership and organizational change.

Running head: UNILEVER CASESTUDY
UNILEVER CASESTUDY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Evaluation of situation...............................................................................................................2
Need for change.........................................................................................................................4
Impact on culture........................................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
Reference..................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
In this report, the analysis and systematic evaluation of change in Unilever Company
is projected. The company’s situation and need for change with impact on culture and its
effectiveness of the leadership styles is described. The case study of Unilever uses various
techniques that is used by team leaders for effective change in culture (Barth, 2013). It
determines the change that occurred in the organisation and implements various strategies
that can help the company to be more productive and increase the competitive advantage. The
context for change can be analysed in the organisation with the help of the change
kaleidoscope and force field analysis. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the problems
related to death by planning, behavioural compliance, broken agreements and violation of
trust, disconnectedness, loss of focus and misreading scrutiny and resistance. This is to
implement different leadership style according to the situation.
Evaluation of situation
This case study focuses on the Paul Polman changes that initiated in Unilever
Company. This change was to bring better performance in the company as it was when Paul
Polman was not the CEO of Unilever. The challenges that Unilever Company faced was to
maintain a progression and improve on solving for economic pressures. The strategy that
Unilever was focusing upon was leading positions and to be in high growth market world
(Bradley, 2016). The company was segmented into four groups such as personal care,
refreshments, foods and home care. The business level situation of Unilever delivers value
and continuous development of brand across various countries to address customer needs. It
focuses on innovations and brand concepts in the global world. The strategy that lowers the
cost of sourcing, manufacturing and distribution process ensuring quality product. Polman’s

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new strategy states that the activity results in high performance organisation. Unilever faced a
decline in turnover rate which phased an underlying growth, disinvestments and acquisition.
Polman focused on the importance of profitable volume growth. It is observed that the input
of cost inflation and disposals for various non- core business have same turnover rate for
years. Polman’s new approach was known as the compass strategy which focuses on winning
of company in leading market. The company would win in brands and innovation,
widespread appeal and better and faster innovation (Doppelt, 2017). It will win in the
marketplace by leading market development and can win with winning customers. It can win
through continuous improvement in fast and flexible and increase in competition for best
return on brand and customer investment.
The objective of case analysis are-
 Increase the understanding of what managers should do to guide the business
for success.
 To build effective skills to improve the company’s resource strengths and
minimize the weaknesses by practicing strategic analysis in various industries
and analyse competitive situations.
 To determine practices in identifying strategic issues that need to be
addressed, to evaluate alternative strategic practices, and formulate in work
plans with effective action.
 To enhance analytical skills for handling critical situations.
 To gain in-depth exposure for different companies by acquiring innovative
strategies for effective business experience.

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Need for change
There is a need for change to maintain and improve the organisation’s performance.
The organisational ambidexterity includes both searching of new capabilities with
exploitation of existing capabilities. It is mainly achieved by structural ambidexterity, with
diversity not focusing on conformity, with the help of culture of questioning and challenge
may achieve organisational ambidexterity (Verhulst, 2015). Levers are important for
managing strategic change that includes building a case for change, implements challenges to
be taken for granted, and focuses on the changing operational processes, establishes routines
and symbols, schedules various political processes, maintains accurate timing and analyses
for succeeding in quick wins (Frost, 2014). By adopting different leadership styles, and by
tightening or losing the system organisational ambidexterity can be achieved. To determine
the situation and take corrective actions successfully needs regular analysis of the critical
situations, effective judgment in deciding what appropriate action plans needs to be taken for
good business and effective implementation of the corrective actions is also required for
analysing and solving the situation.
There is a need for change as unhealthy cultures can impact the organisation’s
productivity, value and performance. The unhealthy cultures includes politicized cultures;
that states the change for resistance in cultures. The incompatible subcultures such as insular,
inwardly focused cultures such as greed-driven cultures and unethical cultures. These are
some of the major changes needed to be implemented as this may lead to poor strategy
execution and results in poor performance. There is a need for development of strong culture
as a strong culture can help the organization to build strong values and improves the level of
commitment that the firm provide through ethical behavior (Gupta, 2014). A strong leader or
founder can only develop strong culture to withstand critical situations and can handle
effectively for sustainable growth approaches. Some of the forces that cause the culture of the

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firm to evolve are the new revolutionary technologies, rapid growth of firm in the market,
diversification of new businesses and with merging two business units or acquisition of other
firm into the business, by shifting the internal conditions that may impact in the lower
performance of the firm, analyses new challenges into the market. A company has stated
some core values and focused on ethical principles that fosters the work climate where the
business shares business personnel and those strongly held convictions about the criteria of
company's business that needs to be conducted (Hamidu, 2015). To provide company
personnel with guidance for jobs that steers the company towards both doing the things in a
right way and doing the right thing at the right time.
The Kotter’s eight steps for change describes the need for change in an organisation-
 Establish a sense of urgency
 To form a powerful guiding coalition
 To create a vision
 To communicate the vision
 To empower others to impose vision
 To create short- term wins
 To increase the gain and builds for more change
 Stratifies the new approaches
Impact on culture
Polman described the culture that provides value to life in the company. The change
in culture is the change that the organisation faces while change in behaviour of the people at
different levels in the organisation. The cultural change can be observed in two sections, they
are performance target setting and remuneration. The performance target setting have several
key performance indicators who drives the target such as underlying sales growth (USG),

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underlying volume growth (UVG), Operating margin (OM), underlying operating margin
(UOM), core operating margin (COM), ungeared free cash flow (UFCF), free cash flow
(FCF), return on investment (ROI), and total shareholder return (TSR) (Mitchell, 2013).
Targets are mainly of long term aspects and needs operational control for achieving it
successfully. The impact of culture by Polman stated that the underlying operating profit to
the core operating profit have provided disciplined and difficulties in restructuring spending.
This objectifies for improvement in prioritising the resources between competing
restructuring projects and other investments (Laursen, 2016). The company have invested in
supply chain capabilities and also in capital investments to transform the under- invested
decentralised structure to produce a highly efficient centralised and consumer focused global
supply chain. The remuneration system helps to support the vision of the company and
focuses on strategic implementation. The purpose of remuneration system is to double the
size of the organisation and increase social impact through brands and various operations.
Effectiveness of the leadership styles and techniques used by team leaders in the case
study
The leadership styles is related to strategic change. There are two categories of
leaders; Transformational leaders and transactional leaders. The transformational leaders
builds a vision for the organisation and identity of the organisation builds collective values
and beliefs to achieve the vision effectively. The transactional leaders emphasises on targets,
design system, financial incentives and project management. Situational leadership helps to
encourage the strategic leaders to adopt with the situation by portraying different leadership
style (Millar, 2014). The effectiveness of leadership styles can help to determine the vision
of the organisation, and empower strategic roles in the organisation to improve confidence.
Has the change been successful?

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The approaches to leading change is depended on the organisational context. The
leading change in the organisation differs in large corporation. The change kaleidoscope
helps to focus on time to complete the task quickly, scope is to analyse what changes are
required in the organisation, preservation for resources and characteristics that needs to be
maintained, diversity for determining homogeneous staff groups in the organisation,
capability of managers to implement certain changes, capacity to determine the degree of
change for the resources available in the organisation, readiness for any specific change,
power that the change leader imposes (Millar, 2013). Evolution is the change in strategy that
results in organizational transformation, but gradually. This is the most challenging type of
strategic change as it involved in building on and exploit of strategic capabilities with regard
to development of new strategic capabilities.
Two initiatives that can improve the implementation of the strategy
Turnaround strategy- Turnaround strategy helps to speed the change and minimizes the
cost of the company and generates higher revenue. There are several elements of turnaround
strategies such as crisis stabilisation, management changes, gaining stakeholder support,
emphasizes on target market and core products and financial restructuring (Tideman, 2013).
The turnaround strategy in order to increase the revenue and reduction of cost ensures that the
marketing mix for the market segment is determined. It reviews the pricing strategy in order
to maximize the revenue. It also focuses on several organisational activities, which fulfils the
needs and demands of target market customer (Lewandowska, 2016). With the help of
initiation of opportunities in creation of revenue in the target market and also by investing
funds from cost reduction in new market growth. By reduction in labour cost and reduction in
cost of senior management, the company can have reducing costs. It must focus on
improvement in productivity. By reducing the marketing costs and not focusing on the target
market. The organisation must have financial controls and strengthen the cash expenses. It

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must establish competitive bidding for suppliers that would defer in creditor payments and
flexible debtor payments. With reduced inventory can reduce the cost of the company. By
eliminating non- profitable products or services can lead to reduction in cost.
Leading strategy- the leading strategy execution needs updated information regarding
changes and happenings in the organisation and current market. It closely monitors for the
progress and adds for constructive pressure on the firm in order to execute the strategy
effectively. This helps to achieve operating excellence (Limwichitr, 2015). The leading
strategy initiates for corrective actions for improvement in strategy execution and effectively
achieve the targeted performance margin of the organisation.

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Conclusion
This report concludes that the analysis and systematic evaluation of change in
Unilever Company that is projected led to analyse the critical aspects for change. The
company’s situation and determined the need for change with impact on culture and its
effectiveness of the leadership styles. The case study of Unilever utilized various techniques
and leadership style that is used by team leaders for effective change in culture. It determined
the change that occurred in the organisation and implemented various strategies that could
help the company to be more productive and increase the competitive advantage. The context
for change analysed in the organisation with the help of the change kaleidoscope and force
field analysis resulted in effective performance of the organisation. The purpose of this paper
is to analyse the problems related to death by planning, behavioural compliance, broken
agreements and violation of trust, disconnectedness, loss of focus and misreading scrutiny
and resistance. This is to implement different leadership style according to the situation.

10UNILEVER CASESTUDY
Reference
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