Question:
Unilever's New Global Strategy: Competing through Sustainability. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.
In January 2009, when Paul Polman was appointed CEO of Unilever, he inherited a company in long-term decline at the beginning of a major global financial crisis. As the first outsider ever recruited to lead the company, Polman lost little time in challenging the existing strategy and organization. But the biggest change he made was to introduce the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), a commitment that placed three "sustainability" goals at the core of the company's strategy: to help 1 billion people improve their health, to halve the environmental footprint of making and using Unilever products, and to enhance the livelihood of those in its value chain. The case describes how the new CEO then had to convince skeptical internal and external stakeholders why a struggling company in a tough competitive environment should embrace such bold nonfinancial goals. It then follows how he translated his radically different vision into strategies and priorities that could be implemented by a global company with 170,000 employees. In the process, the case explores how Unilever's top team had to adapt and adjust is structures, systems, processes, people, and culture in order to implement USLP. The case concludes as Polman and his top team face some key decisions in 2015. Should they double down on their original 2020 US LP objectives? Should they scale back in the face of some strong economic headwinds? Or should they pivot to a new transformational strategic agenda?
Learning Objective
To analyze the appropriateness of a radically different transformational global corporate strategy; To review the requirements for effective organization transformational change; To explore the nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR), including the power, challenges, and feasibility of integrating it at the core of corporate strategy; To evaluate the effectiveness of a CEO and a corporate leadership team; To evaluate future options, decide on action, and translate broad strategic proposals and a specific action steps.