Business Model

Extensiveness and Accessibility: Business model of Unilever Company is explained through the diagram above that can be easily referred to. Corporate responsibility and governance is also indicates that additional information regarding all the aspects of the business model such as consumer insight, sales, collaboration and marketing (Cheng et al., 2014).

Comprehensiveness: The business model of Unilever Company is explained accurately within the report. This model explains several performance aspects in order to attain the sustainable growth objective.

Reporting Critique: Unilever Company’s governance framework explained the company’s corporate governance information, strategies to mitigate risk and explains the way in which the company remunerates its executives. Reporting process of the company is highly transparent.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: Information and transparency depth is observed in Unilever Company’s Corporate Governance Report that explains the way in which corporate governance structure demonstrated the level of responsibility towards its investors and provides transparency to all its readers.

Comprehensiveness: Level of transparency within Unilever Company is deemed to be high as the corporate governance report of the company is in compliance with suitable code of conduct. Annual remuneration report and directors’ responsibility report explained the major concerns and community along with carrying out amendments in board constitution (Fried, Holtzman & Mest, 2014).

Reporting Critique: Risk management framework aspect of Unilever explains the risk aspects and its description regarding brand preference, sustainability, portfolio management along with consumer relationships.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: Principal risks and its description regarding Unilever Company is explained on page 44 of the annual report that has offered readers with updates regarding product segment. Major risks of the Company are explained in the form of the tables and charts along with risk description. 10 major risks are explained in the annual report that ex[plains the business and performance of the company along with explaining ways to mitigate risks.

Comprehensiveness: Considering the risk description of Unilever Company the report has explained major uncertainties and risks. The report has described the company’s strategic objective, risk description, qualitative business impact description along with potential impact of the principal risks (Haller & Van Staden, 2014).

Reporting Critique: The annual report of Unilever Company explains the remuneration framework element and explains the metrics based on which all its executives are rewarded. These metrics includes impact on business and value offered to the company.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: The director’s remuneration report is explained in page number 66. The report has maintained integrity of the company’s website that is audited. The remuneration report explained the strategic links of rewards to performance of business (Hiller, 2013).

Governance

Comprehensiveness: Remuneration report of Unilever Company is observed to remain linked with value objectives of the company. This report clearly explained aspects such as benefits offered, salary, pension, share performance plans and annual incentives offered to the employees every year.

Reporting Critique: Financial assets report of Unilever Company explains its financial health and financial assets value including debt, securities and financial instruments.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: Financial assets are explained in the balance sheet of the company and it explains increased information on the policies of financial assets, debt terms along with other financial assets.

Comprehensiveness: From the financial asset section of the Unilever annual report it is gathered that financial assets are not communicated properly and measured within the annual report and in an elaborated manner. Financial asset explanation does not clarify the performance of the company. 

Reporting Critique: Reporting of financial assets in the annual report of Unilever focuses on efficiency of the assets, future values along with asset book value disclosures.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: Physical assets framework explanation in the annual report of Unilever is prepared in adherence to the set accounting policies. This section o the annual report explained asset recognition techniques along with financial situation of the company.

Comprehensiveness: Physical assets of Unilever are observed to adhere with the quality standards of “Physical assets information”. However, reporting of physical assets of Unilever Company provided good value to all its investors but the such reporting lacks depth (Larson & Ringholm, 2014).

Reporting Critique: Consumer framework element of Unilever focused on consumer loyalty along with revenue and depth of the consumer base.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: All the items within the Consumer section are depicted within the annual report of Unilever Company. Consumer segment information is easily assessable within the selected geographical sectors.

Comprehensiveness: No consumer specific information was mentioned in the annual report of Unilever Company and no detailed information is provided on geographic locations, trends along with consumer outlook (Mmako & Van Rensburg, 2017).

Reporting Critique: People and culture framework aspect of Unilever Company is focused on staff competency degree, advancement opportunity and employee culture.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: Corporate responsibility report of Unilever Company is focused on detailing the accountability and integrity. People development strategies are also explained as a part of the company’s growth strategy.

Comprehensiveness: People and culture segment of Unilever Company’s annual report offered qualitative information that abides by the policy along with performance. An aspect that is reflected in this segment in the annual report and offers readers with fewer contexts in evaluating performance (Neta et al., 2015). 

Risk Management

Reporting Critique: Brands and intellectual assets framework aspect of Unilever Company in the annual report explained brand recognition and reputation value, intangibles use and brand protection.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: Intellectual property and portfolio of brands section of Unilever Company is depicted in annual report. However, such information is explained in adequate manner that is not accessible to the readers.

Comprehensiveness: In this case, the information is not depicted adequately in the annual report of Unilever and, thus this section lacks comprehensiveness.

Reporting Critique: The supply chain of Unilever Company is based on buying materials, effective manufacturing and the timely product distribution to the customers.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: The supply chain network of the organization is focused on explaining the exposure of potentially adverse events. This might occur in the form of physical disruptions, industrial and environmental accidents (Beattie & Smith, 2013).

Comprehensiveness: The supply chain management of the organization abides by the prevailing laws, since the costs of the underlying materials and commodities have significant impact on the product cost.

Reporting Critique: According to the annual report of the organization, it could be stated that Unilever has depicted yearly bonus by depicting the underlying growth of sales along with the improvement of operating margin.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: The operational performance of the organization is presented in such a manner that it helps in delivering sharper category strategies along with higher focus on the core and sustained investments behind the innovations of the organization. The readers of the financial information of Unilever could find that the sales growth of the organization has been 4.1% along with a step-up in volume growth. In addition, they could identify that the core improvement of operating margin has increased by 0.3 percentage points.

Comprehensiveness: The information pertaining to the operational performance of the organization has been depicted in such a manner that the users could obtain the necessary information and accordingly, the financial position of the organization could be evaluated. 

Reporting Critique: According to the above figure, the organization has depicted the economic performance by depicting its portfolio strategy for increasing its presence in the market.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: It has been observed that the portfolio strategy of Unilever has been sharpened and there is adaptation for increasing the presence of the organization in rapidly growing and greater profitable market segments. In addition, the readers could obtain information about innovations of the organization in new markets, one of them has been the launch of Lux in the Philippines in 2015 (Shin, Colwill & Young, 2015).

Remuneration

Comprehensiveness: The economic performance of Unilever has been depicted in a comprehensive manner, as the users could obtain a fair idea of the same through evaluation of the annual report.

Reporting Critique: The above figure clearly states that Unilever has maintained a sustainable living commonplace, which is the most feasible strategy for ensuring the overall business growth.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: The organization has adopted separate purpose and operational expertise across the business model that has helped in recognizing vision of increasing the overall business growth along with the social effects.

Comprehensiveness: Although the organization has stated its purpose; however, there is lack of comprehensiveness, since sufficient information is not available to the readers for effective evaluation.

Reporting Critique: According to the above figure, Unilever has depicted the environmental impact on the overall community. This includes greenhouse gases, waste, sustainable sourcing and water and the users could obtain such information from the annual report of the organization.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: The users could access information about the reduction of environmental impact by depicting the detailed target, performance of the business operations and the products in use, disposal and lifecycle (Sullivan et al., 2014).

Comprehensiveness: Since the detailed report of the environmental impact has been provided, the users could access the same with greater amount of comprehension.  

Reporting Critique: The above figure clearly states that Unilever has maintained a sustainable flexible business model, which is the most feasible strategy for ensuring the overall business growth.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: The organization has adopted unique portfolio and geographic risk across the business model that has helped in mitigating the exposure to any specific localized risk.

Comprehensiveness: Although the organization has stated its purpose; however, there is lack of comprehensiveness, since sufficient information is not available to the readers for effective evaluation.

Reporting Critique: The innovation aspect of Unilever has been carried out in the form of research and development and the mission is to develop brands with the help of beneficial innovation unlocked on the part of technology and science.

Extensiveness and Accessibility: The users could identify that the organization has incurred €1 billion every year on research and development through employment of 6,000 research and development experts with six major sites.

Comprehensiveness: Since the detailed report of innovation has been provided, the users could access the same with greater amount of comprehension.  

Reporting Critique: Strategy and objective framework element is observed to provide accurate statement of its strategic objectives and goals. The framework of Unilever Company offers short, medium and long-term targets.

Financial Assets

Extensiveness and Accessibility: Strategies of Unilever are explained in a prominent way for the readers of annual report. Moreover, business strategies and objectives on page 4 of the annual report are assessable and communicated in a better manner both quantitatively and qualitative way. Chairperson’s message section on page 7 of annual report indicates that the company has linked key performance indicators and organizational strategies (Schnipper et al., 2016).

Comprehensiveness: The chief executive officers review on page 11 of Unilever’s annual report indicates that it links with stakeholders’ value, strategies and opportunities and increased consumer focus. Moreover, chief executive officers’ review explained remuneration report, strategy development and 2016 target.

Unilever Company focuses on producing and offering a range of FMCG goods that ensures to enhance and protect standard of living of all its consumers globally. Annual report of the company clarifies that, Unilever Company’s corporate responsibility is emphasized on employee development and engagement, health and safety, corporate responsibility and sustainability and ethics and human rights. Several Key Performance Indicators are developed on the part of the company that signifies its importance of corporate responsibility and business success (Unilever.com, 2017).

Materiality refers to clarity of information disclosed by a company to its shareholders. Unilever Company’s materiality approach is observed to generate increased reader focus and information to increase comprehension through:

• Proving information that is considered to be important by shareholders
• Presenting the highlights at the beginning of the annual report

References

Beattie, V., & Smith, S. J. (2013). Value creation and business models: refocusing the intellectual capital debate. The British Accounting Review, 45(4), 243-254.

Cheng, M., Green, W., Conradie, P., Konishi, N., & Romi, A. (2014). The international integrated reporting framework: key issues and future research opportunities. Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting, 25(1), 90-119.

Fried, A., Holtzman, M. P., & Mest, D. (2014). Integrated reporting: the new annual report for the 21st century?. Financial Executive, 30(4), 24-32.

Haller, A., & van Staden, C. (2014). The value added statement–an appropriate instrument for Integrated Reporting. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 27(7), 1190-1216.

Hiller, J. S. (2013). The benefit corporation and corporate social responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 118(2), 287-301.

Larson, J., & Ringholm, L. (2014). Governance Disclosures According to IIRC’s Integrated Reporting Framework-Are Annual Reports of Swedish Listed Companies in Line with the Framework?.

Mmako, N., & van Rensburg, M. J. (2017). Towards integrated reporting: the inclusion of content elements of an integrated annual report in the chairmen’s statements of JSE-listed companies. South African Journal of Business Management, 48(1), 45-54.

Neta, G., Glasgow, R. E., Carpenter, C. R., Grimshaw, J. M., Rabin, B. A., Fernandez, M. E., & Brownson, R. C. (2015). A framework for enhancing the value of research for dissemination and implementation. American journal of public health, 105(1), 49-57.

Schnipper, L. E., Davidson, N. E., Wollins, D. S., Blayney, D. W., Dicker, A. P., Ganz, P. A., … & Mulvey, T. (2016). Updating the American Society of Clinical Oncology value framework: revisions and reflections in response to comments received. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 34(24), 2925-2934.

Shin, K. L. F., Colwill, J. A., & Young, R. I. M. (2015). Expanding the scope of LCA to include ‘societal value’: a framework and methodology for assessing positive product impacts. Procedia CIRP, 29, 366-371.

Sullivan, S.D., Mauskopf, J.A., Augustovski, F., Caro, J.J., Lee, K.M., Minchin, M., Orlewska, E., Penna, P., Barrios, J.M.R. and Shau, W.Y., 2014. Budget impact analysis—principles of good practice: report of the ISPOR 2012 Budget Impact Analysis Good Practice II Task Force. Value in health, 17(1), pp.5-14.

Unilever.com (2017). Unilever global company website | Unilever Global. [online] Available at: https://www.unilever.com [Accessed 23 Sep. 2017].