Two weeks after Paul Polman had been appointed as Chief Executive, he asked for a review meeting with Cathy Bautista, Head of Unilever’s Knowledge Management Group. At the meeting they discussed Unilever’s achievements in establishing communities of practice and various knowledge repositories. However, he was concerned about the extent to which Unilever’s knowledge creation and transfer processes were aligned to corporate objectives and strategies. His fear was while there may be a lot of learning and knowledge within Unilever, it might be insufficiently focused towards delivering better products and services. He asked Cathy to re-evaluate current knowledge management activities from a strategic perspective and to put forward recommendations that would move Unilever towards a more purposeful approach to its learning and knowledge.
Unilever is one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world with an annual turnover of $40bn. The company employs around 250,000 people based in over 100 countries. It has a large and varied portfolio of foods, home and personal care products including such well-known brands as Flora, Omo, Ragu, Calvin Klein and Dove. Unilever invests around 2.5 per cent of its annual turnover in research and development leading to continuous product innovations and filing of patents each year. It takes learning and knowledge seriously and believes that transferring this knowledge into its products and services is a key source of competitive advantage. The organisation has ambitions to be ‘multi-local’ through understanding and anticipating local needs around the world and producing products and services that fulfil these needs. Internationally Unilever aspires to be a networked learning organisation with its diverse and dispersed workforce and often questions whether it has become more of a top-down ‘teaching organisation’.
Unilever’s Knowledge