The impact of Unilever’s corporate social responsibility initiatives

Abstract

Unilever is an Anglo-Dutch, multinational company which operates all around the world with fast-moving consumer goods. The organization holds great responsibility to affect millions of lives through its actions. The following report has aimed to identify whether Unilever is creating a meaningful impact or not through its Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. While doing so, the report has focused on the concept of CSR, the motivation behind working on corporate social responsibilities, the types of CSR, and the impact of engaging in CSR activities.

The key finding from this report was that Unilever mostly engages in philanthropic and value-creating CSR activities, and that is justified because philanthropic activities help in creating a good image and value-creating CSR activities are well suited with large organizations, and they also impact the performance of the organization.

The thesis findings state that Unilever has a bad track of water pollution, deforestation, violating employee safety standards, sexual harassment at the workplace, and, most importantly, the organization has been one of the key polluters in the world through plastic and through emitting CO2. However, through its value-creating CSR activities, the organization has been able to bring impactful changes to its stakeholders around the world. However, when it comes to preserving the climate, which affects all the stakeholders, Unilever has lacked behind greatly by not putting enough effort into reducing emissions and plastic pollution.