Unilever's Organizational Strategy and StructureIntroductionUnilever is one of the largest consumer packaged goods companies specializing in hundreds of different brands. Unilever is headquartered in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and is jointly owned by Unilever NV and Unilever PLC. Both companies have the same board of directors but operate as a single entity and list shares separately. In 2000, Unilever restructured its board of directors, electing new faces to the board and seeing other key members, such as Jan Peelen and Robert Philips, retire. Miles and Snow stated that there are four types of organizational strategies pursued by companies; Defenders, Seekers, Analyzers and Reactors. Unilever is a company that uses the "Prospectors" type of organization. Prospectors are organizations that almost continuously search for market opportunities and regularly experiment with potential responses to emerging environmental trends, particularly when Vis was appointed to the food executive committee and began to emphasize more environmental and sustainable development in response to changing trends and requests from consumers, giving them greater confidence. (Miles & Snow; pp29) In my discussion, the main types of organizational strategies and structures and how they have affected Unilever's performance improvement and growth in recent years will be listed. Organizational strategies and structures and their impact on Unilever's performance • Restructured Approach:1. Identifying Market Opportunities: A key part of an organizational strategy is identifying market opportunities by finding a niche or gap in the market that they can pursue to put their company ahead of all competitors. An organisation... at the heart of the paper......ification as we move towards our target IT architecture and further strengthen our global market presence,” said Neil Cameron, chief information officer at Unilever Unilever's steady underlying improvement in Europe continued, with growth of 2.8% for the year. The fourth quarter was particularly strong, at 5.5%, compared to a weaker comparator in the Americas grew 4.1% over the year, with Brazil and Mexico improving over the year, while the United States grew solidly at 3.2%. countries and categories throughout the year, up 11.1%. This shows that merging with globalized, technologically advanced companies like SAS, and leveraging their expertise, is paying dividends for Unilever Unilever, 2007) (Drinks Business Review, “Unilever Selects SAP as Standard for Global IT Strategy,” May 2007)