Building Capabilities for Multi-Stakeholder Interactions at Global and Local Levels: The case of Unilever

Domenico Dentoni and Margreeth Veldhuizen

International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, 2012, vol. 15, issue B, 12

Abstract: Managers of Unilever discuss the processes that led the company to develop and implement a corporate sustainability strategy working with multiple stakeholders. Major learning points include: 1) interactions with stakeholders are crucial to secure strategic resources in developing countries; 2) developing multi-stakeholder platforms must be rooted in the corporate culture and based on principles of innovation; 3) the overarching sustainability strategy, Sustainable Living Plan, launched in 2010, set broad objectives, while empowering local and regional managers—and even individual employees—to start and scale bottom-up initiatives if they find consensus within the organization. The discussions promise to fuel the debate on how organizations can effectively manage “wicked problems” through multi-stakeholder engagement.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; International Development; Productivity Analysis; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ifaamr:142299

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.142299

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