Analysis on the Recovery of MNEs from the Financial Crisis: A Case Study of Unilever

Abstract

This paper mainly aims to explore the potential methods for recovering from the financial crisis, and the potential strategic actions to enhance a firm's financial performance based on perspectives of corporate governance and strategic management. This paper takes Unilever as a case study analysis to identify how Unilever dealt with the 2008 financial crisis. The data for analysing the performance of Unilever is all secondary data from the annual reports. The findings of this case study show that a firm could improve the financial performance after the financial crisis through implementing corporate social responsibility, modifying the corporate structure and changing the current business strategy. For recovering from the negative influence of financial crisis, it is also important for firms to reduce agency problems by increasing the independence of boards and using stock options.