La gestión de la responsabilidad social corporativa: el caso Unilever España

Abstract

In the last years we have seen that, in our country and at international level as well, some corporate scandals has raised-up, which has created an up-growing lack of confidence from the citizenship towards corporations. This lack of confidence, in addition to other changes in the corporation environments, has led organizations to change their way to behalf, due to the fact that they have understood that they are not isolated entities, but that they belong to the society and their existence at long-term depends on the legitimation of the society. And for that it is essential to recover the trust of the citizenship. Against this challenge, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a way to re-establish the balance between enterprises and society. This is the reason why it is essential understand how it has to be managed. In this sense, the present thesis has as object of study to analyse of the CSR management on the corporations from the point of view of the corporate communication discipline. In that way, an investigation has been carried out based on the case study, specifically in the CSR Unilever Spain case. Technics and instruments of data collection has been: documentary revision, eleven interviews with key agents on CSR management, and seven observations. Results proof that CSR at Unilever implies a strategic mind-set perfectly aligned with the vision, the mission and the values of the company. Even though it´s management belong to the communication department, it involves all the departments, that´s way it is managed in an transversal way inside the corporation. As matter of fact it´s been demonstrated that CSR management at Unilever Spain is done following the basic principles of transparency, materiality, verifiability, wide vision, continuous improvement, and social nature of the organization.

Date of Award	19 May 2016
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	Francisca Morales Serrano (Tutor) & Ana Maria Enrique Jimenez (Director)