A Research Proposal on

Impact of Strategic Management on the Performance of a Multinational

Company: A Study on Unilever
Introduction
Strategic management is a structured process of deciding by analyzing the market for identifying
opportunities & threats, internal analysis for identifying strengths & weakness, and other analysis
(Hitt and Ireland, 2013). The external environment analysis helps to assess the external forces
and it is known that every challenge brings opportunity and a strategic leader could reap the
opportunity before others. The internal resources identification is supporting elements for any
strategic move. Lots of giant companies are doing their business across the world and they have
to take a daily decision and if they fail to take the right decision in the right time, won't achieve a
strategic outcome, and if it continues, a multinational company will go out of market competition
(Richardson, 2018). For example, Nokia failed to take an appropriate decision which results in
the loss of market share significantly before 2010. Another example could be given that due to
failure to take the right strategic decision by RCA, the company was taken over by the General
Electrics in 1986. RCA started diversity beyond their scope which results in a bad impact for the
company. Therefore, strategic decision is one of the most important jobs for every multinational
otherwise they will not able to do international business.

Unilever’s strategy implementation is based on five steps, which include strategic analysis,
external and internal environmental analysis, formulation of the business strategy, and overall
implementation of the strategy.

According to Hubbard and Beamish (2010), once the core elements of the specific strategy and
the mission and vision statements have been written, implementing the strategy begins.

The core business strategy must be aligned to the corporate mission statements and objectives
based on the company’s existing business model. Here, Unilever’s mission statement consists of
the values, major goals, and objectives.

The mission statement elements provide guidelines to the management and the workforce to
work towards implementing the strategy and to keep the strategy in control to ensure workers do
not deviate from the strategic path.

The mission provides an explanation of the existence of the company, and Unilever’s business
strategy to ‘think-global and act-global’, using the cross-market subsidisation strategies. To
effectively address the situation, the company has formulated finance, acquisition and merger,
human resource, product development, and corporate strategies into the ‘Path to Growth’
strategy.

The research will be conducted in the perspective of Unsilver. It is a leading consumer goods
multinational company which established in 1929 and its headquarter is located in London, UK
and Rotterdam, Netherlands. Beauty and personal cares, foods, the product of refreshment
segment, cleaning products, and others are the main product line of the company. To compete
with the global giants, it is very necessary to make an efficient strategic
decision.

Aim of the Research

The research aims to find out how efficient strategic decision impacts on the performance of
Unilever.
Objectives of the Research
The objectives of the research are following-
To understand the strategic management in the perspective of a multinational company
To assess the strategic decision and its impact on a company’s performance
To identify the influential factors in terms of strategic decisions
To assess the Unilever's various strategic decision over time
To assess the performance of Unilever regarding strategic research
To give the necessary recommendation to the Unilever to improve their performance in
the global arena
Questions of the Research
Is efficient strategic management helping Unilever’s performance?
What are a strategic decision and its relation with an MNC's performance?
How does Unilever achieve competitive advantages?
What are influential factors regarding the performance of an MNC?
How can Unilever improve their efficiency in terms of strategic decisions?

Research Methodology
Philosophy: To conduct the research, the researcher will follow the positivism research
philosophy under epistemology research. The philosophy is appropriate because under the
philosophy a researcher investigates a research statement by identifying the specific objective
and researcher question or hypothesis in the present context.
Approach: Deductive approach means to test the research hypothesis to confirm whether the
hypothesis is right or wrong. It is also called a top-down approach of research because it starts
with theory and ends at the confirmation or rejection. On the contrary, the inductive research
philosophy is called bottom-up approach because it follows on observation, pattern, tentative
hypothesis, and lastly theory. In the research, the hypothesis is
that efficient strategic management has a positive influence on a multinational company’s
performance, therefore, the hypothesis has developed earlier and the researcher will collect data
to test the hypothesis and lastly the test will give results by which it could take decision about the
confirmation and rejection of the hypothesis. Hence, the deductive research approach is highly
appropriate than inductive research approach.
Method: The quantitative research method is going to be followed by the researcher. The
quantitative research method exerts that the research will be conducted by quantitative or
numeric data. The quantitative research method is very structured and easy to test for confirming
a hypothesis. As the research will be on the performance of Unilever in terms of efficient
strategic decision and the research will be dealt with numerical data i.e. sales, COGS, revenue,
and others over the year, the quantitative research will be most appropriate. If the qualitative
research will be considered, there are lots of hassle will have to face because it is in-depth
identification of why and how. Hence, the quantitative method is appropriate to conduct the
research.
Data Collection and Data Analysis Technique: The secondary research will be conducted and
for this, the secondary data will be collected. As the hypothesis is related to the financial
performance and financial data is related to the efficient strategic decision, secondary research is
appropriate. For conducting secondary research, the secondary data will be collected. The
sources of secondary are annual reports of Unilever, various published financial performance
report by the company or the independent institutions, various market reviews, newspaper and
magazine, and other published sources. The data analysis technique will accomplish various
statistical analysis i.e. descriptive, inferential, and others to test a hypothesis. To
analyse the data, the MS Excel, Stata will be mainly followed. If it is necessary, the other
specialized statistical software will be considered.
Research ethics and limitation: The researcher will be very aware to ensure ethical standard
because weak ethical standard decreases the quality of the research outcome. The sensitive
information of the Unilever will not be shared with the public. The data collection jobs will be
conducted by following due ethical manner. The informed consent will be ensured to the
management of Unilever. The research is going to
conduct only in the perspective of the Unilever, so the results will not be generalizable to the
other MNC.

Literature review
Unilever has a long history of success and its strategy is supposed to be quite wise because it
purchased the rival companies on the market and gradually became the leader in the production
of the consumer goods, though in 2000 the union of “Procter & Gamble” and “Gillette” left the
company on the second place. Unilever is a successful company which owns such well-known
brands which are recognized all over the world as the perfume Calvin Klein, soap Dove, the
products of personal care like Timotei, Axe, Rexona, Domestos, Sunsilk, etc. Nearly 44% of the
company’s sales are organized in the developing countries and Unilever satisfies 2/3 of the
personal care product demands in these parts of the world. The personnel of Unilever is about
174 thousand employees.

Unilever is the example of a successful development of a company and the student is able to
learn about it more and suggest their own research approach towards the analysis of its activity,
strong and weak sides. It is a plus if the student suggests his own original points and questions
for the research in order to make the research proposal interesting and worth professor’s
attention. The young professional can generate the best methods for the research on Unilever and
choose the most adequate sources to accumulate reliable and up-to-date facts and arguments. The
student’s research is expected to be constructive, quality and touch upon the relevant issues of
the functioning of the company.

Hubbard and Beamish (2010) argue that the process of implementation is the most difficult part
because it involves taking actions on different levels of the organisation, which include the
provision of leadership, changing the organisational culture, organisational structure, and
organisational controls to support and accommodate the new changes (Clark, 2000).
The company’s implementation of the ‘Path to Growth’ strategy was formulated and started in
2000 with the aim of sustaining the firm to achieve growth, reduce the cost of doing business,
reduce the dependence on less qualified human resources, and to align the company to the goals
and objectives defined in the strategy (Hubbard & Beamish, 2010; Fleisher, & Bensoussan,
2003).

The elements defined in the growth strategy include concentrating on product innovation,
marketing better performing brands in the global market, concentrating on investment, reducing
the brands to concentrate on profitable brands, and strongly focusing on brand development to
achieve the projected annual growth of 6% and the profit margin of 16% (Hubbard & Beamish,
2010).

Organisational culture

Organisational culture is one of the tools the company uses to implement its growth strategy.
Typically, organisational culture is “the specific collection of values, norms, beliefs and attitudes
that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact
with each other and with stakeholders outside the organisation” (Von Krogh, Nonaka & Aben,
2001).

Unilever uses culture as one of the strongest tools to achieve coordination and integration of
different strategies, which include financial strategies, human resource strategies, acquisition and
mergers when they happen and when they are necessary, product development and innovation
strategies, and the cooperate strategies in the pursuit of the growth strategy.

According to Hulland (1999), financial strategies enable the company to operate within the
available resources, keep the debtors; stock as little as possible while ensuring that the working
capital is appropriately maintained at the desired levels, adhere to the authorised accounting laws
and practices, ensure that the sales revenue are consistently maintained and within the target, and
ensuing that the purchasing function is kept at appropriate levels (Hulland, 1999).

Other the supporting strategies such as the corporate strategy is achieved and maintained by
managing good relationship with governments where the company has its assets and operations,
and becoming a leader in the consumer goods market (Hubbard & Beamish, 2010).

Towards the pursuit and fulfillment of the growth strategy, the company provides the
management and the workers with the ability to effectively communicate decisions, guide the
daily business relationships, and to develop a collective identity.

The core values of the organisation are controlled by a belief system, which controls the core
values of the Unilever Company, which are linked to its growth strategy in a multicultural
environment (Hubbard & Beamish, 2010).

Conclusion
In conclusion, it has been established that strategy implementation is the most difficult part of
strategic management because organisations, which operate in multicultural environments with
different values, and beliefs find it difficult to provide leadership for strategy implementation. In
addition, strategy controls to realign the company to its mission and mission statements are
additional sources of difficulties.

Companies find it difficult to determine the strategy to implement among different strategies,
employees do not understand the big picture of strategy to implement, lack of details on the
approach to implement the strategies, leaving the product portfolio untouched, and failure to
communicate and prepare people to get involved in strategy implementation.

Results from the study show that the organisational culture should be factored into the decision
making process when starting the strategy implementation process to accommodate the
organisational culture when new changes are introduced into the company.

In addition, the study shows that for Unilever to be successful in strategy implementation, the
company should adopt and integrate the concept of total quality management into the strategy
implementation process. It is important for organisations to communicate strategy change and
the need for change, organisations can better prepare employees to be proactively involved in
strategy change.

Ethics

The technique utilized supports ethical research norms. To guarantee anonymity, there is
adjusting of any quotations from respondents to remove mistakes. Also the research itself
guarantees anonymity such that it is a confidential research as well as an anonymous research.
By this, the client is confidential and any personal information needs protection. Maintaining the
confidentiality beyond the focus group is also another aspect and the samples must be free from
bias as much as possible. For interviews over the phone, placing a bugging device is unethical.
Additionally, the focus of this study is not on personal, sensitive data that might compromise
respondents' privacy as the information can be used for personal gains therefore the
research aims at collecting the non-personal data as well as data that is not
Sensitive.

References
Aaltonen, P., & Ikävalko, H. (2002). Implementing strategies successfully. Integrated
Manufacturing Systems, 13(6), 415-418.

Aladwani, A. M. (2001). Change management strategies for successful ERP implementation.

Business Process management journal, 7(3), 266-275.

Atkinson, H. (2006). Strategy implementation: a role for the balanced scorecard?. Management
Decision, 44(10), 1441-1460.
Barney, J. B., & Hesterly, W. S. (2009). Strategic management and competitive advantage. New
York: Pearson Education.

Bartlett, C. A., & Ghoshal, S. (2002). New organizational responses. Strategy: Critical
Perspectives on Business and Management, 3(1), 468.

Clark, D. N. (2000). Implementation issues in core competence strategy making. Strategic

Change, 9(2), 115-127.

Cleland, D. I., & Ireland, L. R. (1999). Project management: strategic design and
implementation. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Cravens, D., & Piercy, N. F. (2008). Strategic marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

DeLong, T., & Srivastava, M. (2010). Hindustan Unilever Limited. HBS Case, 9(2), 410- 422.

Eisenstat, M. B. I. R. A. (2000). The silent killers of strategy implementation and learning. Sloan
Management Review, 2(2) 10-22.

Fleisher, C. S., & Bensoussan, B. E. (2003). Strategic and competitive analysis: methods and
techniques for analyzing business competition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Graetz, F. (2000). Strategic change leadership. Management decision, 38(8), 550-564.

Hill, C., & Jones, G. (2007). Strategic management: An integrated approach. New York:
Cengage Learning.

Hubbard, G & Beamish, P. (2010). Strategic management: thinking, analysis, action.

Sydney: Pearson Australia.

Hulland, J. (1999). Use of partial least squares (PLS) in strategic management research: a
review of four recent studies. Strategic management journal, 20(2), 195-204.

Iguchi, C., & Hayashi, T. (2009). Knowledge Creation and Global Collaborative R&D Systems
—Comparative Analysis of Kao Corp., P&G., and Unilever. International Journal of Global
Business and Competitiveness, 4(1), 1-14.

Inamdar, N. S., Kaplan, R. S., Jones, M. L. H., & Menitoff, R. (2000). The balanced scorecard: a
strategic management system for multi-sector collaboration and strategy implementation.
Quality Management in Healthcare, 8(4), 21-39.

London, T., & Hart, S. L. (2004). Reinventing strategies for emerging markets: beyond the
transnational model. Journal of international business studies, 35(5), 350-370.
Maon, F., Lindgreen, A., & Swaen, V. (2009). Designing and implementing corporate social
responsibility: an integrative framework grounded in theory and practice. Journal of Business
Ethics, 87(1), 71-89.

Morgan, N. A., & Rego, L. L. (2009). Brand portfolio strategy and firm performance. Journal of
Marketing, 73(1), 59-74.

Pearce, J. A., & Robinson, R. B. (2000). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation,

and control. New York: Irwin/McGraw-Hill

Stevenson, W. J., & Hojati, M. (2007). Operations management. Boston: McGraw- Hill/Irwin.

Swayne, L. E., Duncan, W. J., & Ginter, P. M. (2012). Strategic management of health care
organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Von Krogh, G., Nonaka, I., & Aben, M. (2001). Making the most of your company’s
knowledge: a strategic framework. Long range planning, 34(4), 421-439.

Yusof, S. R. M., & Aspinwall, E. (2000). Total quality management implementation

frameworks: comparison and review. Total Quality Management, 11(3), 281-294.