The two companies that I choose to discuss in this paper are Procter and Gamble, and Unilever both specialized in consumer goods and fierce foes for decades.

Determine how each corporate culture differs from the other.

As Ravasi and Schultz (2006) stated, organizational culture is a set of shared mental assumptions that guide interpretation and action in organizations by defining appropriate behavior for various situation.
Procter and Gamble gives lots of importance to productivity and is constantly improving its productivity at all levels, to a point that it is part of the company culture.
Their practices and values that have helped build that strong culture are:
1- Lead by example; the top executive team members personify the culture and consistently reinforce it through their actions.
2- Communicate regularly: Communication up, down and across the organization.
3- Transparency: Establish clear roles and responsibilities.
4- Promote for with in: human capital development to ensure consistency and well understood expectations.
5- Make data-drive decisions; Comprehensive financial, consumers and strategies rationales are all part of the decision making process.
Meanwhile Unilever culture is more about what they believe in and how they act collectively. Unilever has an innovation culture.
Some of the practices and values that helped Unilever achieve its goal as an innovative organization are:
1- Focus on company’s core competencies: listen to all employees’ ideas and take advantage of them. Make employees feel they are part of the company.
2- Introduction of incentive system: new management strategy that reward employees and value the human capital of the company.
3- Focused decision-making process: effective streamline decision making everybody within a department take part at the decision making process.
4- High standards of corporate behavior: in terms of people but also towards the environment. Continuous commitment to improve and develop a sustainable business.
5- Ability to develop and grow: employees have an equal right to take advantage of learning opportunities and choose the progress desired in their carrier path.

Analyze three (3) ways that each unique culture has benefited by the other’s competition.

After being an incontestable leader in the market of consumer goods for many years, Procter and Gamble had to go through a restructuration in 2012 and focus on a productivity organizational culture that will help the once giant reclaim its leading role.
Three ways that productivity organizational culture has benefited Procter and Gamble are:
1- Focusing on productivity helped Procter and Gamble concentrate on their available products. While innovation is great to augment market share you have to stay on top of your existing market or you risk loosing it to the competition.
2- Productivities strategies will enable Procter and Gamble to generate superior levels of shareholder returns in both short and long term. That return is shown by productivity improvement in its manufacturing operations and measured by the number of products produce per person per year.
3- But also in the non-manufacturing enrollment a productivity improvement will limit new hiring and strengthen the company’s human capital and also reduce the overhead labor coast.

As a chaser Unilever had to focus on innovation to aspire to get some market shares. Unilever spend lots of money on research and development. Breakthrough technology and innovation is key to success. Entrepreneurs continuously look for better ways to satisfy their consumer base by improved quality, durability, service, and price, which come the fruition in innovation with advanced technologies. Heyne, P., Boettke, P. J., and Prychitko, D. L. (2010)
The three factors that benefited the Unilever innovation culture are:
1- Innovation has helped Unilever get closer to their consumers and listen to their needs. New products are designed to meet the needs of diverse consumers do the importance to identify these needs by interacting with the targeted consumer.
2- Breakthrough technology benefit from bigger market opportunities. Research and development improves the quality and functionality of the products, streamlines manufacturing, and distribution operations and consequently drives cost savings.
3- Innovation improves consumers’ life, but also create a positive impact on the environment, which lead to a better image of the company and a trust relationship between the consumers and the company.
Speculate how each would continue to thrive if its current corporate culture would need to change in the near future. Be sure to state what change(s) you are speculating on and what led you to identify that possibility.

In the consumer goods market innovation plays a tremendous role in the market share structure. If a company wants to appeal to a market it needs to improve and innovate its product. Offering the same product at the same price or even at a price little cheaper won’t make the consumer switch.
Considering the business cycle theory by Finn E. Kydland and Edward C. Prescott economic crisis and fluctuations come from an external shock such as innovation. In that sense Procter and Gamble will have to keep investing in innovation and once they are able to be back to a leader position in the market they will have to go back to a corporate culture based on innovation and breakthrough technology.
In another hand, Unilever needs to keep investing in research and development and use its technology lead to create new emerging market and stay in the new trend of sustainable living, improved nutrition and the impact of their products of the environment.

References:

www.unilever.com

www.pg.com

Ravasi, D., & Schultz, M. (2006). Responding to organizational identity threats: Exploring the role of organizational culture. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 433-458.

Heyne, P., Boettke, P. J., and Prychitko, D. L. (2010). The Economic Way of Thinking. Prentice Hall, 12th ed. Pp. 163, 317–318.

Finn E. Kydland and Edward C. Prescott, "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations" (1982)