Online Custom «The Unilever Company» Essay Sample

Unilever is among the largest firms in the world. The progress of this company has been a result of its organizational culture. Coupled with activities and policies, which have been implemented by firm’s leaders, it has been a great source of development for Unilever. The research has shown that the culture of the organization, its leadership, and human resources are interrelated to a certain extent (Rosenzweig & Jitendra, 1991). Unilever is a global company that embraces the organizational culture, and a single change in a certain area leads to a transformation in other sectors. This paper will analyze the culture of the Unilever Company and the way in which it has affected its leadership.

Description of the Organization and its Culture

Looking at the culture at Unilever, it is based on a few characteristics, which include consistent focus on performance, quality and the efficiency of producing products for the market (Gorelick & Tantawy-Monsou, 2005). The culture at the company has been observed since its establishment as a small business up to now when it has matured to become a large enterprise. As for the quality of products that Unilever produces, it is clear that standards upon which the culture is based are put to work in the manufacturing process. It is the main reason why company’s goods are always competitive despite the fact that there are many competitors at the market. Unilever has managed to maintain a grip in the industry due to the culture of high performance that its employees embrace in their operations. Workers are also focused on ensuring the efficiency of production processes, which results in high-quality products and competitive advantage of the firm.

Description of the Leadership Style Most Common in the Organization

One of the main causes of success in the Unilever Company is the character of leaders. The latter have shown consistency in ensuring that they support the culture that has been in the firm for years, which is a culture of quality and better performance. Leaders in this firm have developed their own tactics of dealing with performance issues (Rosenzweig & Jitendra, 1991). They have managed to use market results, as well as result-oriented approach to ensure that they stimulate better performance. Market-based information is data gathered from the market, and results-based information shows whether the company has hit its goals during a certain period of time or not (Rowlinson & Procter, 1999). These tactical strategies used by the Unilever leadership make the company obtain another culture of integrity, which in turn makes the firm very successful when it comes to mergers with other organizations. The leadership at Unilever has ensured that the culture of the firm is upheld even in the latter case, and this scenario is the same even after a merger with other company ends.

Leaders at Unilever are influenced by the culture that they have embraced over time. It has also affected human resource practices. Company’s leaders have also been at the forefront in ensuring that the organizational culture is upheld by employees at all times (Van Beek, 2010). Since the culture at Unilever deals with quality and performance, it therefore affects the leadership in a manner that encourages evaluation and monitoring of workers regularly. The culture has also fostered a style of leadership that is based on commitment and support to ensure that the objectives of the company have been met. The results collected over time from consistent evaluations and monitoring processes are then used as a guiding path for leaders as well as the human resources department to show them the way forward and to focus on areas that require improvement. It makes Unilever be always on track with its objectives (Gorelick & Tantawy-Monsou, 2005).

Analysis of How Culture Affects the Leadership Style

The culture that is embraced at the Unilever Company is the one of quality and high performance. Therefore, every element of the business is based on the improvement of its financial capacity (Rosenzweig & Jitendra, 1991). The culture also supports the improvement of the quality of products that are produced. However, the culture of performance has affected the leadership at Unilever in such a way that an individual employee works on the improvement of performance under constant monitoring by leaders. It has made sure that leaders of different departments in the company collaborate and work in unison making sure that Unilever’s objectives are achieved easily (Van Beek, 2010). Therefore, company’s culture ensures that the performance of the firm and individual employees is boosted enormously. The culture of the Unilever is the main cause of the growth that the company has experienced since it was formed.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, it is very obvious that the company’s culture has the ability to boost or destroy its image. In Unilever’s case, the fact that the company has embraced a culture of high performance and quality ensures that it enjoys great performance outcomes from its workers since even leaders are affected and become more committed to their duties. It shows that the culture also affects the leadership style that is to be used in the firm and thus brings about the type of workers that will drive Unilever to fulfilling the set objectives. If the company fosters a good culture, it ensure that the firm gets qualified leaders and at the same time proper workers. it will in turn lead to proper working conditions that are necessary for the development of the organization.