Business And Sustainability Assignment sample

Introduction Of Business And Sustainability

The individual essay deals with the discussion of the evaluation of Unilever's sustainability strategy and its performance. This essay will help in having a piece of proper knowledge about its approaches towards gaining sustainability and proceeding with its work operations. However, the report will also help the reader to perform an evaluation of the sub-topics that are covered in the analysis. Apart from that, the essay is focused on evaluating the sustainability strategies and performances of Unilever. This includes defining the term sustainability and idealizing stakeholder engagement and management. Thus, the essay will conclude with a reflective commentary on the influence of personal behavior.

Overview of Unileverand its Sustainability Approaches

Unilever Plc (Unilever) is a supplier and also a manufacturer of "fast-moving consumer goods". The aspect of the company is that it has a portfolio that comprises of food products, different kinds of personal care, and beauty products. However, the organization has been also constantly providing excellent customer service and also deals with beverages, vitamins, supplements, and home care items also. According to the study by Gomez-Trujillo and Gonzalez-Perez (2020) suggests that the main sustainability goal of the organization is to reduce the overall "waste footprint per customer" usage by more than 30%. Thus, it can be said that Unilever is transitioning towards utilizing 'renewable energy"covering all its operations and finding different kinds of unexplored "low-carbon ingredients" (Unilever.com, 2023). However, the organization seeks to expand its production of different kinds of products that will be plant-based. Apart from this, Unilever constantly seeks to communicate with its customers about its Remuneration Policy.

As per the view of Gudda et al. (2021), the Remuneration policy 2021 of Unilever, AGM was implemented for providing strong support for the management and the workers that will be based on a "performance share planning". Thus, this engagement of the policy allows Unilever to seek improvement and achieve organizational effectiveness which resulted in sustainability. As a matter of fact, sustainable growth of the organization enabled in having long-term growth and enabled a compensation committee. As per the Unilever Annual Report and Accounts 2021, there are different kinds of sustainable measures that have been taken by Unilever and have been encompassed as commitments that will help deliver vision and purpose. This includes Unilever's commitment to Climate action which the organization claims to have almost "Net zero emissions" from their value chains by 2039. "Protecting and regenerating nature"allows in having 100% sources that are sustainable and employ agricultural corps (Raj, 2023). Unilever directly aims in using its influence and scale to help out bringing transformation changes in four different kinds of areas.

These changes will help the organization in making a difference and then represent the widest sustainable opportunities. According to the study by Baragiola and Mauri (2022) Unilever concentrates on bringing "Waste-free world" tothe future generations by decreasing the rate ofvirgin plasticsby50%,which includes an absolute reduction of 100000 tones.Last but not the least, improving the health of people and bringingwellbeingwith confidence is another step of Unilever towards sustainability. This includes providing "Positive Nutrition" and meeting the agenda of€ 1 billion in sales annually of delivering only plant-based dairy and even meat alternatives by the years 2025 and 2027. However, the organization also seeks consideration on building sustainable relationships with their key stakeholders and resources for performing business (Study Material).

The "Business and sustainable development Commission"of Unilever has been successfully delivering different kinds of sustainable development goals.

Evaluation of Unilever's sustainability performance

Sustainability according to Unilever

This part of the study deals with the discussion of the evaluation of how Unilever defines the term sustainability. According to the study by Trigo et al. (2021) suggests that Unilever defines sustainability with the terms “Protect and regenerating nature". However, it can be also seen that Unilever, implements suitability by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing the water footprint by managing the production and wastage of plastics as waste. However, it can be said that the main term of sustainability and its availability is to make endurable living commonplace. This allows the organization to get aid with its business operations and drive out its organizational missions with consistency. Apart from that Unilever follows a cross-marketing strategy during performing business bother domestically and internationally. As per the view of Huang et al. (2020), a cross-market strategy allows for providing products in the market with "a subsidized prize" that is mostly lower than the original retailing priced.

This strategy allows the organization to have a much wider customer base and also get help with promoting sustainability. This is because a much wider customer base will allow in the promotion of a sense of sustainability and increase the rate of action.However, the organization has been also constantly providing excellent customer service. The main sustainability goal of the organization is to reduce the overall "waste footprint per customer" usage by more than 30% (Unilever.com, 2023). Apart from this, Unilever constantly seeks to communicate with its customers about its Remuneration Policy.

Stakeholder engagement and management as per Unilever

The term stakeholder management and engagement is referred to the systematic identification, planning, analysis, and implementation of different kinds of actions. These actions are mainly designed for influencing the stakeholders of the organization and bring an engagement strategy. However, the organization does not differentiate at any cost from interacting with its stakeholders. As per theUnilever Annual Report and Accounts 2021, it can be seen that Unilever has been engaging with its shareholders directly, but on a quarterly basis. The senior leaders and the board members speak directly to the organization’s shareholders and then discuss different kinds of problems and issues. For example, in the year 2021, Unilever presented to its investors innovation and helped in determining alternative approaches towards animal testing (Study material). However, Unilever provides different kinds of reasons for contacting its shareholders. This includes bringing different kinds of engagement activities and putting climate transition action plans before letting its shareholders able to vote for them.

However, Unilever also connects with its customers and consumers with the help of different kinds of research partners like Kantar, Nielsen, and also Ipsos (Study material). This allows Unilever to perform different kinds of surveys and panels that are now seen idealizing the consumer care lines and gaining insights about the experiences of the consumers. Moreover, this allows in idealizing the different terms of sustainability and finding out different kinds of work that can be done on the feedback that is gained and taking appropriate actions. According to the study it can be also seen that Unilever is continuously engaging with its business partners and suppliers, which allows them in conducting annual partner and purpose surveys. This service helps in understanding how the suppliers feel regarding the working operations and finding out different kinds of areas for enhancement.

Moreover, it can be said that the planet and society as a part of its sustainability, need to analyze different kinds of insights from their key stakeholders. As mentioned by Ojala et al. (2021), it can be also said that conducting different kinds of annual surveys for citizens can help in growing a strong interest in environmental and social issues. This way enabled catching up with the consumers and gaining the opportunity for utilizing the feedback from a wide range of stakeholders.

Reasons for Unilever's commitment toward sustainability

This part of the study deals with the discussion of the reasons for which Unilever is committed to sustainability and the type of motivation that directs Unilever in committing to sustainability. According to the study by Ki-moon (2021) suggests that the CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman had decided to take action where there will be different kinds of measures according to the situation that will be addressed. These are addressed for dealing with the quality of organizational structure and leadership for achieving the goal of implementing a sustainable strategy. The main reason that was identified for committing towards sustainability is providing governance to the team and creating high motivation for each of the employees. This allows in sharing a sustainable value for the nation and its key stakeholders. First, it can be said that the plan of Unilever's sustainability deals with embedding a “comprehensive Unilever Sustainability plan” (Unilever.com, 2023). This plan allows in providing a view of equitable and sustainable growth for creating a long term value for its organizational stakeholders. However, Unilever performs transformational change that is beyond the business.

This means that Unilever tries to transform the business and the system by acting as “agents for change. As per the view of Van Zanten and van Tulder (2021), Unilever directly aims in using its influence and scale to help out bringing transformation changes in four different kinds of areas. These changes will help the organization in making a difference and then represent the widest sustainable opportunities. Moreover, it can be said that working across different kinds of sustainable development goals brings continual improvement and collaboration. However, these reasons came directly from Unilever and helped in gaining enormous business achievements. The "Business and sustainable development Commission"of Unilever has been successfully delivering different kinds of sustainable development goals. Apart from that, it creates different kinds of market opportunities that round up to at least 12 trillion United States dollars per year.

However the implication of the different kinds of stable development goals allowed Unilever in partnering with different kinds of activities. These activities allowed in utilizing the sustainable development goals with the help of US LP. As performed, it leads towards looking to new markets and investing upon innovation and creativity. This helped the organization to interact with its customers and take action for preparing a sustainable living report.

Sustainable Development Goals

This part of the study deals with the discussion of why Unilever mostly recognizes its sustainable development goals and how those have effectively contributed words improving contributions. According to the study by Aikhuomogbe (2022) suggests that Unilever believes that it is not possible for achieving long-term business success if it contains poverty, climate change, and constant hunger. So, different kinds of sustainable development goals have been launched by the organization to provide excellence in driving this change. This is the main reason Unilever recognizes sustainable development goals as a critical factor.

Sustainable development goals

One of the most effective SDGs that has been considered by the organization and has been continuously taking effect is “protecting and regenerating nature”. As per the view of Zabey and Thissen (2023), the “protect and regenerate nature”- Sustainable development goal helps in taking a stand for regenerating nature and increasing deforestation-free supply chains. Moreover, it can be also seen that it allows the regulation of having sustainable deforestation-free palm oil extraction objectives. These objectives allow the organization to bring out sustainable resourcing and a regenerative environment (van Wassenaer, 2023). The main ambition of this sustainable development goal by Unilever is to take more than 4 million hectares of land for growing raw materials. These will be then used for the production of Unilever products and they will be used by 3.4 billion individuals per day. So, it can be said that this sustainable development goal of Unilever makes them bring out a sustainable living in common places and regenerate the natural world by protecting and preserving it.

However, there are different kinds of regenerative agricultural principles that allow the organizational operations to get designed for enhancing the existing sustainable agricultural codes.However, the most ineffective or the inadequately addressed SDG of Unilever is “Decent work and economic growth” (Su et al. 2022). This is considered to be the most problematic sustainable development goal because this sustainable goal targets mainly 7% of the annual and economic growth. This targeting and growth does not balance of the “resource finite world”, it brings out a recipe that leads to environmental degradation. However, this could be improved by making some contribution towards the sustainable development goal and by helping in developing the overall economy and identifying solutions for development challenges in this sector.

Conclusion

The essay concludes evaluation of a sustainability strategy that is followed by Unilever and based on its performance. It can be said thatUnilever is transitioning towards utilizing 'renewable energy" covering all its operations and finding out different kinds of sustainable methods. However, different approaches taken by Unilever brought sustainable growth for the organization and enabled in having long-term growth. Moreover,Climate action,"Net zero emissions", and "Protecting and regenerating nature" are some of the identified sustainable development goals that have been continuously employed by Unilever. This allows itin making a difference and then represents the widest sustainable opportunities accordingly. Apart from that, Unilever also collaborates with its stakeholders to implement several actions and thus brings acommitment toward sustainability.

The three stages of Maon et al.'s(2020) CSR development have three different stages that deal with cultural embedment, cultural reluctance, and cultural gasp. So, it can be said that how Unilever is able to achieve an equitable but inclusive culture reluctance within itself. It can be said that this has been performed by eliminating any sort of discrimination and bias in the organizational work culture and with their customers also. According to the study by Rozenthuler (2020) suggests that Unilever has been able to make a "top-level" fidelity towards both sustainability and respecting social responsibility. This is referred to as cultural embedment where it allows in bringing up corporate culture and helps define "long-term relationships". Moreover, it can be said that having "long-term relationships" allows for bringing in good quality products and leads to sustaining good quality jobs.

According to Lapuente and Van de Walle (2020), if an organization is willing to make changes in its definitive policies, it will bring collaboration despite of any "root causes of labor problems". So, this aided Unilever in having a cultural grasp and helped to gain a "potential leading position" for achieving its UNGP (Assets.unilever.com, 2013).

Personal Commentary

This part of the study deals with the personal commentary that is required to be made on this topic. The most important thing that I learned from this is that the aspect of sustainability is very much critical for any organization. Moreover, it can be said that having system-level practices allows for bringing out different kinds of opportunities and brings out different kinds of attitudes and behaviors. However, it can be said that Unilever's sustainable strategy and its performance allowed it to advertise different kinds of approaches to its work operations. I learned from this section that, sustainability is referred to a system that deals with three different types of concepts. These concepts include environmental social and economic pillars that they needed to be made strong for having a complete focus. To summarize, I even visualized, that sustainable development allowed me to continuously seek the importance of achieving economic and social progress. This was performed in different kinds of ways by Unilever from which I realized that we must be able to develop different kinds of methods for meeting everyday needs.

Apart from that, I will say that I found this interesting because sustainability consists of different kinds of factors needed for fulfilling needs. These needs are fulfilled for the current generations without even compromising the optimistic needs of the future. Apart from that, I found this interesting, because it helped me in ensuring and balancing environmental care with economic growth. So, it helps me in having a complete idea about social well-being and defines such generality in my terms. Thus, I will say that this module has helped me already in discussing the different aspects of sustainability and gaining a proper idea about the key concepts. These key concepts are social, environmental, human, and economic, and are also considered the four pillars for bringing sustainability. From this analysis, I have gained the ability to analyze my personal behavior and also idealize the influence of organizational approaches.

Unilever has been putting different kinds of sustainable approaches that had sent me to make a difference and then represent the widest sustainable opportunities. Moreover, the main thing I felt is that it will help me change my behavior and my attitude towards some topic or some aspect. I found this very interesting as I got to know about different kinds of factors that have been affecting the environment and about stakeholder engagement strategies.

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