Renewing Unilever: Transformation and Tradition

Unilever is one of the world's largest suppliers of fast moving consumer goods in foods, home and personal care. It operates in over 100 countries. Its scope and scale make it a unique global corporation. Yet the story of Unilever is not simply a tale of corporate evolution: Unilever is a corporation that has a big impact on the lives of people round the world. Indeed, a Unilever brand can be found in one in every two households worldwide. Geoffrey Jones, a leading business historian from the Harvard Business School, takes us inside this corporation, which, from its origins in Britain and the Netherlands, has become a worldwide manufacturer of fast moving consumer products. Unilever's operations cover food and home and personal care, and its brands include Lipton, Hellmann's, Birds Eye, Wall's, Surf, Domestos, Comfort, Dove, Sunsilk, Pond's, Signal, Axe, and Ben & Jerry's. In particular the book focuses on the evolution of the company over the last half century. Managing such a firm in the era of globalization posed enormous challenges. The book covers the company's strategies and provides compelling evidence of its decision-making, marketing, brand management, innovation, acquisition strategies, corporate culture, and human resource management. The author has had full access to corporate archives and executives and provides us with a unique insight into the workings and strategies of one of the world's oldest and largest multinationals.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I: Strategy and Performance 1: Heritage and Challenges 2: Managing Diversity 3: New and Old Worlds 4: Rethinking Unilever Part II: Dynamics and Routines 5: Brands and Marketing 6: Risk and Reward in Emerging Markets 7: Trading, Plantations, and Chemicals 8: Human Resource Management 9: Corporate Culture 10: Innovation 11: Acquisitions 12: Corporate Image and Voice Epilogue: Paths to Growth

About the Author :
Geoffrey Jones is Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. He previously taught at the universities of Cambridge and Reading, and at the London School of Economics, in the U.K. He is the author and editor of many books and articles on the history of international business, including British Multinational Banking 1830-1990 (OUP, 1993), Merchants to Multinationals (OUP, 2000), and Multinationals and Global Capitalism (OUP, 2005). He is a former President of both the European Business History Association and the Business History Conference of the United States, is co-editor of the journal Business History Review, and editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Business History.

Review :
Unilever is sprawling business, difficult to describe in 350 pages let alone interpret, and Professor Jones makes a good fist of dealing with the complexity, force-fitting reality into neat chapters without much distortion. Michael Dowdall, The Business Economist Overall, this is a very good book and the author lived up to his promise of carrying out independent and critical research about the period between 1965 and 1990 in the history of the company. Technovation