Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it's not all mixed
up. (Milne, A.)Organization is one important element of the management process. It is next
to planning. In management, organization is both the process as well as the end-product of
that process which is referred to as organization structure. The success of the management
process will be determined by the soundness of the organization structure which binds
together and brings proper adjustment and coordination of their work. It facilitates efficient
administration, direction and control avoiding wastage of raw materials and human efforts.
Every management has to establish its own organization structure for efficient conduct of
business activities.
This report intends to critically examine the organizing process at Unilever Sri Lanka
Limited and would give a comprehensive insight in to the existing organizing process.
2.0
Unilever is in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) market and operates in product
categories of Home Care, Personal Care and Foods. Over the years the company has
expanded rapidly by introducing differentiated product range and has achieved the market
leadership with the currently featuring 26 leading brands in Sri Lanka.
Unilever Sri Lanka Limited (USL) is the local representative of Unilever PLC, one of the
leading multinational organizations in the world, and has established its presence throughout
the continents in the world. Unilever Sri Lanka Limited was incorporated in 1938.
Unilever brands represent household care, fabric cleaning, skin cleansing, skin care, oral care,
hair care, tea, spreads and personal grooming products. Bands marketed by Unilever include
Astra, Flora, Marmite, Knorr, Lipton, Lux, Lifebuoy, Signal, Rexona, Ponds, Pears Baby,
Fair & Lovely, Sunsilk, Dove, Sunlight, Vim, Rin, Surf Excel, Comfort, Close Up and Pureit.
USL provides employment opportunities for more than 1100 employees directly & thousands
indirectly. USL factories are located in Horana, Agarapathana and others are 3P factories.
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3.0
Organizing in management
Organization structure
Organizational objective
Structural
requirement
Strategy
flowing information
continuous processes
Environment
a lot of uncertainty
Human
Resources
Source: Author
The above determinants show that an organization as Unilever requires a flexible and organic
team oriented structure. (Annexure2)
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4.0
According to Robbins (2012), when managers create or change the structure, theyre engaged
in organizational design, a process that involves decisions about six key elements.
4.1
Its the degree to which organizational tasks are subdivided in to individual jobs. (Daft, R.L,
2012). Specialization facilitates division of work into units for efficient performance. Work
can be specialized both horizontally and vertically (Anderson, 1988). When Sri Lanka
continue to see work specialization as important because it helps employees be more efficient,
Unilever use minimal work specialization and instead give employees a broad range of tasks
to do. The major concept gets connected to this is job designing. Job designing approaches
are job simplification, rotation, enlargement and enrichment.
4.1.2
Job Rotation
A simplified and repetitive task leads to monotony and boredom. At Unilever in order to
alleviate boredom jobs get rotated inside same function or different.
Brand managers gets rotated handling different brands, management trainees get rotate
through all the functions to receive the exposure of various aspects of organization better.
Managers will also become more capable and flexible since they are exposed to a series of
different and more challenging jobs and will develop new skills.
4.2
Departmentalization
Functions
Demand Planning, Supply Planning , Sourcing, Third Party
Operations, Logistics Manufacturing, Quality Management
Human Resources
Chain of Command
The chain of command is the line of authority extending from upper organizational levels to
lower levels, which clarifies who reports to whom. (Robbins, 2012). This revolves around the
concepts of authority, responsibility, delegation and unity of command. But Unilever violates
the latter and has both vertical and horizontal chain of commands.
Table 4.1: Concepts of chain of command at Unilever
Concept
Authority
Unilever approach
Example
of hierarchy.
and
Standards of Leadership
Responsibility
Unilever global
performance culture.
authority
Accountability
(Annexure 4)
Concept
Unity Of
command
Unilever approach
Example
concept as irrelevant.
Source: Author
Above details are vital for employees as they are in vertical and horizontal command lines.
4.4 Span of Management / Span of Control
It is the number of subordinates who report directly to a specific manager. (Aquinas, 2009). It
directly impacts the number of hierarchical levels in organization. The trend in recent years
has been toward larger spans of control because it reduces costs, speeds up decision making,
increases flexibility, gets closer to customers, and empowers employees. Unilever is also
moving from tall structure to a flat structure with appropriate span of control. The structure
has minimized to only 6 departments. With the recent changes undergone in the structure of
USL all directors are in charge of many functions and having wide range of responsibilities
as shown below.
Table 4.2 Unilever top management move to wider span of management
Previous functions
Current function
Supply chain
Activations
Source: Author
As shown in the above table, all the current functions are headed by respective functional
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The term decentralization and centralization refers to which decision making is concentrated.
Both the concepts should be treated as relative and not extreme concepts. Unilever demands
the application of a combination of both these concepts in a relative manner. Therefore
cannot be totally centralized or totally de-centralized.
Unilever believes that when individual characteristics of both are put to effect together would
function effectively will prove beneficial to the organization.
Table 4.3 Centralization and Decentralization of functions at USL
Centralization
Decentralization
Financial operations
Manufacturing
Source: Author
Centralized functions on the above table are governed by senior managers or the regional
managers. Decentralized functions are governed by middle / low lever managers.
Teams in these department make their own decisions based on their knowledge and skills
while aligning them to the co-operate goals. Line managers also oversee the teams and offer
suggestions when needed. All departments may need resources from each other and therefore
organizational level decisions cannot be made by just one department or an individual.
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Disadvantages
Time consuming decision making at the
Source: Author
Details of the above table show the advantages and disadvantages when the structure is partly
centralized and partly decentralized.
4.5
Formalization
It is the degree which an employees role is defined by formal documentation. Uses below
formalizations that bring about coordination by specifying expected behaviors in advance.
Table 4.5: Unilever ways of formalization
Formalizations
Policies
Unilever approach
Reward Policies
Examples
Work Level Policy, Base Salary Standard,
Employee Advances Standard, Annual Bonus
Standard, Management Co-Investment Plan
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Formalizations
Unilever approach
Examples
Policies
Benefit Policies
Learning Policies
General Policies:
PDP Policy
Medical &
Occupational health
Policies
Leadership and
Development
Policy
Procedures
Functional S&OP
Rules
Behavior guidelines
Job
During the
descriptions
recruitment
Organizational culture
Unilever is passionate about their brands and products. Regardless of where they work in the
business, everyone has an opportunity to share in the excitement of seeing the launch of a
new product. They will really learn how a FMCG business operates from an initial idea,
through the creation of a product, to it appearing on the supermarket shelf. But passion
doesnt stop there. Employees are able to see how the product impacts the consumer.
At Unilever, they value the team environment where people treat each other with integrity
and respect. There is great passion, innovation and commitment to working together to fulfill
ambitious goals and realize true potential. At the mean time cultures at the factories of
Horana, Agarapathana and other 3P factories are quite different to the main office at
Colombo. But Unilever try to work with the identity of One Unilever amidst of the
differences.
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5.1
Diversity at Unilever
Research by Forbes Insights surveyed 321 organizations in US, UK and China and found that
81% of these had called out gender diversity as a key deliverable. This highlights that the
organization is more successful when it retain a good balance of men and women. Unilever
focuses on the gender balance and diversity inside the organization.
This task is mainly delivered by balancing own teams and supporting and driving targets.
Also by encouraging and valuing diversity, becoming aware of inclusive behaviors,
promoting agile and flexible working, providing development and mentoring opportunities
Successful practices highlights the great concepts utilized to deliver performance effectively.
Approach
Agile Working
Global Mentoring
Program
Flexible working
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6.0
A skilled, motivated and engaged workforce is essential to achieving our growth ambition.
Winning with Talent is our Unilever way of outlining how we need to grow talent as leaders
today, tomorrow and in the future. Enjoy it and embrace it. (Polman, P. CEO of Unilever
PLC)
6.1
Unilever is increasingly an agile, flexible and diverse business with people who are
motivated by doing good while doing well. Unilever is building capability and leadership
among our people and are attracting some of the best talent in the market place to a
sustainable profitable growth.
Unilever business strategy is called the Compass (Annexure 7). It sets out the ambitious
Vision and Purpose, and defines four Winning with pillars within the business that will help
to achieve both. One of Unilever Winning with pillars is Winning with people. This is
because developing and retaining the right quantity, quality and diversity of people is crucial
to the growth strategy.
Unilever talent and organization readiness assessment programme helps to ensure people
have the right skill sets to manage the business through a period of growth. They assess the
areas of the most crucial to the strategy, identify gaps and focus on
6.2
Investing in learning
Unilever highly invest in employee training and learning to meet the market place with
knowledge, leadership and general skills.
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Learning
System
Learning
Objective
Management
System (Lms)
Learning
passport
Development
Unilever
Learning
Academy
(ULA)
Source: Author
Details above indicate that Unilever has a strong plan for employee training and development.
6.3
Promoting sustainability
In support of the Sustainable Living Plan, Unilever intends to increase the number of
training programmes that are delivered virtually. This helps to reduce the need for air travel.
Also intend to introduce new learning resources which make the most of social media and
mobile technology to deliver training.
6.4
Employee engagement
Unilever put great effort into engaging with employees to find out whether they understand
the companys mission and their role within it, what their views of Unilever are and what
they believe needs to change to achieve ambitions.
We gather feedback from our employees through our biennial Global People Survey (GPS)
covering all our employees, and through interim Pulse surveys of all managers. (Appendix 6)
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Unilever believe that the Sustainable Living Plan and values are significant factors in
keeping employees fully engaged in the business and therefore driving performance.
7.0
This section highlights the issues of organizing at Unilever and suggested the
recommendations along with expected output and outcome.
Table 7.1 Issue analysis and recommendations for organizing
Issue
Recommendations
Output
Outcome
Potential confusion
Clear instructions of
Less conflicts
employee reporting
responsibility due to
should be given to
the organization
system
processes
recruitment.
Indifference of the
Locally compatible
Simplification of the
Greater innovations
agreements that
internal processes
practices in the
market complying
organization
should be introduced
internal
via HRM
communication
regional practices.
Over emphasis in
Conduct virtual
Effective decision
group decision
meetings to receive
making in the
making (Frequent
information on
on meetings and
organization
meetings) through
make a productive
local aspects.
when explaining
strategy
implementations and
issue analysis.
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Issue
Recommendations
Output
Outcome
Excessive focus on
Focus equally on
Positive stakeholder
Gain competitive
internal relations
management
advantage in the
relations
business
Slow response to
More delegation of
Relatively quick
Sustainable growth
change as the
responses to the
hierarchy to the
changes in the
responsible middle
market, competitors.
factors change.
consuming
Source: Author
Details above indicate that the company has to improve organizing in terms of the above
aspects taking the suggested recommendations.
8.0
Conclusion
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9.0
List of References
Aquinas, P.G. (2008), Organization Structure & Design: Applications And Challenges, New
Delhi: Excel Books
Centralization and Decentralization: The Need for Coexistence. Retrieved from
http://clomedia.com/articles/view/centralization_and_decentralization_the_need_for_coexist
ence) on 2nd March 2014
Daft, R.L. (2012). New Era of Management, 10th ed., New Delhi: Cengage Learning India
Pvt. Ltd.
Ebert, R. & Griffin, R. (2012), Business Essentials, Canada: Pearson Education
Gabbaro, J (1992), Managing People and Organizations, II series, New York: McGraw- Hill.
Robbins, S. (2012), Management, 11th ed., New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
Unilever Sri Lanka Limited (2014). Retrieved from http://www.unilever.com.lk/ on 21st
February 2014
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