联合利华CEO意欲拯救世界，他会成功吗？

迎着英格兰北部寒冷的毛毛雨，步入利物浦郊外的联合利华(Unilever)工厂。明亮的自动化装配线闪闪发光，与外面的阴暗形成鲜明对比。数以千计的瓶子沿着一条传送带咔嗒咔嗒地奔涌向前，犹如一道明亮的紫色光带。仔细些看，你会发现一个重要的细节。相较于另一条装配线上高挑的老款，新瓶子更加粗壮，分发器更小。其标签解释称，这款金纺(Comfort)织物柔顺剂适用于38次洗涤，较上一代包装的33次显著增加。讯息再明确不过：广大客户需要帮助节省地球上最宝贵的资源——水。

这看上去可能是这家全球顶级消费品公司一个颇具心思的营销手段。当然是，这一点毫无疑问。但对于联合利华来说，其更新版浓缩液体也是一个关键创新。它是这家英荷公司在全球300多家工厂中进行的无数调整之一。联合利华旗下拥有400多个品牌，服务于25亿客户。这个令人惊叹的数字意味着，地球上每三个人中就有一个人在使用联合利华的产品。联合利华决心借助这些变化，向投资者和其他公司传达一条信息：大公司需要迅速改变其营商方式，否则它们将稳步萎缩，直至死亡。

当大多数消费者一边在超市转悠，一边将本杰瑞冰淇淋(Ben & Jerry’s)、多芬香皂(Dove)、立顿茶(Lipton)、好乐门蛋黄酱(Hellmann’s)和其他联合利华产品扔进手推车的时候，他们最不关心的可能就是这个星球的处境。很难想象，生态灾难有可能导致这些物品在将来某一天从货架上消失。但对于为解决危机而生的联合利华来说，灾难袭来的可能性似乎足够真切。19世纪80年代，联合利华从这个风景如画，位于利物浦郊外的红砖村庄阳光港(Port Sunlight)——它得名自该公司创始产品：世界上第一款有包装的品牌香皂——迈出第一步。彼时正值极度贫困，污秽不堪的维多利亚时代。因此，从创建之日起，这家公司就背负着遏制流行病和儿童死亡的重任。近130年后，联合利华仍然敏锐地感觉到，这个世界需要修复。

60岁的保罗·波尔曼是这种紧迫感的首要营造者。过去八年来，这位身材高大，声音柔和的荷兰人一直担任联合利华首席执行官。在利物浦以南200英里，位于泰晤士河畔的伦敦总部，波尔曼端坐在一张扶手椅上，飞快地说出一连串经常回荡在联合国大会上的数字。它们似乎不该出自一家年销售额高达580亿美元的公司掌门人之口。事实上，法国政府在去年11月份授予波尔曼一枚骑士勋章，并不是为了表彰他推动公司利润的能力，而是对他在全球各地竭力遏制气候变化的嘉奖。

当我在2月份一个寒冷的早晨见到波尔曼时，他刚刚在几天前发布了联合利华2016年的收益报告。但他似乎对讨论公司业绩不太感兴趣。（2016年，联合利华的销售额增长放缓，共录得57亿美元净利润。）在他看来，另一组很可能让联合利华和其他公司陷入危险的数据来得更为紧迫。他说，世界上有1.6亿儿童营养不良。每年有800万人死于污染。世界上最富有的10亿人消耗了75%的自然资源。“我们正在浪费世界上30%到40%的食物，而数百万人每天还饿着肚子睡觉。”这一幕似乎让他非常惊讶。“为什么我们没有道德勇气去攻击这种现象呢？”

波尔曼递了一份文件让我看。这是商业与可持续发展委员会发布的一份报告。该组织由首席执行官和非政府组织组成，旨在倡导通过实施联合国发展目标来推动业务增长。2012年，时任联合国秘书长潘基文选择波尔曼加入一个26人团体，为该组织制定17项目标——他是其中唯一一位商界领袖。联合国于2015年发布的可持续发展目标(SDG) 包括消除贫困和性别不平等。当我问波尔曼，相较于游说政客和国家元首，或者在非政府组织、世界经济论坛、斯坦福大学商学院和其他机构发表演讲，他通常在联合利华的业务上花费多长时间时，他一脸茫然。“对我来说，这是一回事。”他抿了口绿茶。“我不会把这两件事分开。我认为这是经营企业的一部分。”

证明这一点现已成为波尔曼和联合利华的主要挑战。有充分的证据表明世界陷入大麻烦。本世纪，全球变暖的趋势骤然加速，贫富差距急剧扩大。但目前不太清楚的是，波尔曼是否可以成功地让其他商界领袖相信，解决这些问题是他们的职责所在——或者至少说，他能否在联合利华CEO的剩余任期做到这一点。当该公司去年任命马尔金·德克斯出任新董事长时，投资者普遍认为，其首要职责就是为波尔曼找一位接班人。

如果波尔曼很在意他的工作地位的话，他并没有显露出来——也许是因为他正在聚精会神地推动其发展战略见到成效。作为一位CEO，他的逻辑似乎无可辩驳。从存储数据，到制造洗涤剂，再到种植茶叶，对于业务运营的几乎每一个部分来说，环境风险和贫困现象都是一个根本性问题。他相信，越来越多的客户将开始回避那些认识不到这一点的公司，而那些实践性别平等和环境保护的企业将不可避免地变得更加有利可图。就这个意义而言，他认为联合利华可以指引其他公司沿着最佳路径前行。“你知道的，我们讨论的可不是一家慈善机构。我们在经营一家企业。”

波尔曼坚持以可持续发展作为核心管理原则，由此显著提升了联合利华的国际声誉。在2017年度《财富》全球最受赞赏的50强公司榜单上，这家消费品公司位列第38位，较2016年的第41名有所提升。今年是联合利华连续第六年跻身这份根据对数千名高管和分析师的调查结果而确定的榜单。

但在无情的股市世界，相较于盈亏底线，联合利华的良好意愿几乎可以忽略不计。在过去12个月，该公司股价下跌2%以上，而标准普尔500指数同期则上涨25%。“我交谈过的少数投资者根本不在乎联合利华的可持续生活计划。” 杰富瑞集团驻伦敦分析师马丁·德布这样说道。2010年，波尔曼为联合利华制定了这项简称为USLP的发展蓝图。现如今，它已渗透到该公司全球业务的方方面面。USLP包含50项令人眼花缭乱的目标，比如让所有无害废物不再进入垃圾填埋场，培训500万名妇女，将工厂废水减少一半，等等。

德布说，过去两年来，由于全球经济停滞不前，联合利华的销售额增速随之放缓。一些投资者开始质疑该战略是否应该优于其他因素。联合利华表示，80%的投资者认为这种策略有助于提高该公司的长期价值。尽管如此，德布暗示他觉得波尔曼已经演变为经典的达沃斯人，更专注于解决全球性问题，而不是业务运营的细节。事实上，波尔曼本人也是这样说的：“我真的对发展问题更感兴趣。就推动发展而言，没有比借助公司的力量更好的方式了。”至于他的老板身份，波尔曼说，“我从来不想成为一位CEO，我真的不在乎这个头衔。”他多次拒绝增加其127万美元的底薪。

Step out of the frigid drizzle into Unilever’s factory outside Liverpool in northern England, and the brightly lit, automated assembly line gleams in stark contrast to the gloom outside. Thousands of bottles shoot down a conveyor belt with a click-clack sound, in a streak of bright purple. Look more closely, and there is an important detail. The new bottle is squatter than the older, taller style on another assembly line, with a smaller dispenser and a label explaining that this version of Comfort brand fabric conditioner is good for 38 washes, rather than the 33 of the last-generation package. The message is clear: Customers need to help save one of earth’s most precious resources—water.

This might appear to be a clever bit of marketing by one of the world’s biggest consumer product companies, and marketing it surely is. But to Unilever, its updated, concentrated liquid is also a crucial innovation. It’s one of countless tweaks underway by the Anglo-Dutch company in its more than 300 factories across the world, which churn out more than 400 brands for 2.5 billion or so customers—an astonishing one in every three people on the planet. Central to these changes is a message Unilever is determined to convey to its investors, as well as to other companies: Big corporations need to change the way they do business, fast, or they will steadily shrink and die.

To most of Unilever’s customers, the state of the world is probably the last thing on their minds as they push their shopping carts through the supermarket, tossing in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Dove soap, Lipton tea, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and other Unilever products. It’s hard to imagine that eco-disasters might someday lead to those items disappearing from shelves. But to Unilever, which was born as a solution to a crisis, the potential for calamity seems real enough. The company got its start in the 1880s, right here in this picture-perfect redbrick village near Liverpool called Port Sunlight—named after the world’s first packaged, branded bar of soap and the company’s founding product. It was created in an effort to stop rampant epidemics and child deaths amid the grinding poverty and squalor of Victorian England. Nearly 130 years later, there is still an acute sense at Unilever that the world needs fixing.

The person most responsible for that feeling of urgency is 60-year-old Paul Polman, the tall, soft-spoken Dutchman who has led Unilever as CEO for the past eight years. Folded into an armchair more than 200 miles south of Liverpool, in the company’s London headquarters on the Thames River, Polman rattles off figures more commonly heard in the UN General Assembly than the C-suite of a company with $58 billion in sales. Indeed, this past November the French government pinned a knighthood on him, not for his ability to drive profits but for his vociferous global campaigning to rein in climate change.

When I meet Polman on a chilly February morning, it’s just a few days after he has released Unilever’s 2016 earnings. Yet he is not particularly interested in discussing the results. (Unilever reported $5.7 billion in net profit for the year on slowing sales growth.) The figures that seem more pressing to him are ones that he’s convinced have greater potential to put his and other companies in peril. More than 160 million children in the world are stunted from malnutrition, he says. Eight million people die prematurely each year from pollution. The world’s richest 1 billion people consume 75% of its natural resources. “We’re wasting 30% to 40% of the food in this world, whilst millions of people go to bed hungry,” he says, as if amazed that the situation is even possible. “Why do we not have the moral courage to attack that?”

Polman hands me just one document to read: a report of the Business & Sustainable Development Commission, a group of CEOs and NGOs that advocates business growth by applying the UN’s development goals. In 2012, Ban Ki-moon, then the UN Secretary-General, picked Polman as one of 26 people to craft 17 goals for the world body—the only business executive in the group. Introduced in 2015, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, include eliminating poverty and gender inequality. When I ask Polman how much time he spends on Unilever business compared with lobbying politicians and heads of state or addressing NGOs, the World Economic Forum, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and others, he draws a blank. “To me it is the same,” he says, sipping a cup of green tea. “I don’t separate that. I think it is an integral part of the way we run our business.”

Proving that point is now Polman’s—and Unilever’s—major challenge. There is certainly ample evidence that the world is in trouble. This century has seen an acceleration of global warming trends, as well as an extreme widening of the gap between the world’s richest and its poorest. But it is less clear whether Polman can succeed in convincing his peers in the business world that it’s their job to fix those problems—or at least, whether he can succeed in doing that during his remaining time as CEO of Unilever. When the company named Marijn Dekkers as its new chairman last year, investors concluded that his first task would be to find a successor to Polman.

If Polman is concerned about his job status, he doesn’t show it—perhaps because he is so intent on making his development strategy work. To the CEO, his logic seems irrefutable. Environmental risks and poverty are fundamental problems for almost every part of business operations, from storing data to manufacturing laundry detergent to growing tea. More customers will begin to shun companies that fail to grasp that, he believes, while businesses that practice gender equality and environmental preservation will inevitably become more profitable. In that sense, he thinks that Unilever can play a vital role in showing other companies the best path forward. “This is not a charity we’re talking about here, you know,” he says. “We are running a business.”

Polman’s embrace of sustainability as a core management principle has helped bolster Unilever’s reputation globally. The consumer goods company ranks No. 38 this year on Fortune’s list of the World’s Most Admired Companies Top 50 All-Stars, up from No. 41 in 2016. It’s the sixth straight year Unilever has made the list, which is determined by surveying thousands of executives and analysts.

But in the unsentimental world of markets, Unilever’s good intentions count for little compared with its bottom line. And over the past 12 months, the company’s stock has slipped by more than 2% while the S&P 500 has soared 25%. “A minority of investors I speak to give two hoots about Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan,” says Jefferies analyst Martin Deboo in London, referring to Polman’s signature blueprint for Unilever, dubbed USLP. Polman introduced the plan in 2010, and it now informs every aspect of the company’s sprawling worldwide operations. The dizzying array of 50 goals includes stopping all nonhazardous waste going to landfills, training 5 million women, and halving the water waste in its factories.

As a stagnant global economy has hit Unilever’s growth during the past two years, Deboo says, some investors have begun to question whether the strategy should trump other factors. Unilever says 80% of its investors see the approach as boosting long-term value. Still, Deboo suggests that there’s a sense Polman has morphed into the classic Davos Man, more intently focused on fixing global problems than the nitty-gritty details of operations. Indeed, Polman says as much. “I am really more interested in development,” he says. “And there is no better way than using companies like this to drive development.” As for being the boss, Polman, who has refused increases on his base salary of $1.27 million, says, “I never wanted to be a CEO, and I don’t really care about that.”

尽管这番话可能发自肺腑，但它也可能向投资者表明，波尔曼的精力并非完全专注于他的公司。“前几年，当财报数字很好看的时候，人们听任联合利华实施它的USLP计划。现在，他们想听到一些与收入和回报相关，更强有力的语言。”

在联合利华任职近十年后，波尔曼的宏伟计划究竟影响几何，目前仍无定论。他是否可以在竭力拯救世界的同时，还能销售足够多的肥皂、零食和其他产品，以取悦股东？他的联合利华版本是否会成为跨国公司的新榜样？

气候变化

最让波尔曼激情澎湃的，当属气候变化问题。在2015年12月于巴黎举行的全球气候谈判期间，波尔曼向商界领袖和政治家竭力灌输一个观点：企业要想生存下去，就必须设法避免环境灾难。波尔曼相信，否定者正在输掉这场大讨论——尽管特朗普政府对气候变化持怀疑态度。他将其归功于强烈关注地球命运，时常上网，有见解的年轻一代。他也注意到，CEO群体的态度也在发生戏剧性变化。波尔曼说，“五年前，我无法让任何一位CEO参加气候变化小组讨论。他们担心被那些留着长胡子，拖着凉鞋的嬉皮士攻击。现在，许多人都在讨论气候变化。”

即使如此，许多公司还需要在心理上迈过一道坎，才有可能皈依波尔曼的主张（即帮助解决这些问题是企业界的责任）。大多数公司通常会把环境和贫困等问题与创收业务分开，转而将其纳入企业社会责任计划(CSR)。在波尔曼看来，这种区分毫无意义。2009年，在金融危机最严重的时刻，他从瑞士竞争对手雀巢集团空降联合利华，出任CEO。刚一上任，他就废除了CSR部门，并指示16.9万名员工将该公司的社会承诺嵌入其业务目标之中。正如联合利华可持续发展计划主管基斯·韦德在一个LinkedIn帖子中描述的那样，这项战略扩展到该公司的“每个品牌、每个市场。没有例外。”

这是一项大胆改造计划的组成部分。波尔曼说，他的目标是将收入从400亿美元增加到800亿美元，同时将公司的环境足迹减半。联合利华表示，这些积极的目标为公司上下灌输了一种“增长心态”；尽管目前还没有实现翻一番的目标，但自波尔曼到来后，联合利华的收入已增加了100亿欧元以上。（但其中约有40亿美元源自剧烈的汇率波动。）

波尔曼很快就明白，USLP计划需要历经多年才能显现切实的成果。此外，其中一些目标也可能与增长背道而驰。因此，他决定不再向投资者发布季度业绩指引，他说这种制度“极其荒唐可笑”。波尔曼支持其他抨击者的观点，即严酷的季度目标诱使上市公司持续不断地为投资者提高股价，进而牺牲了更长期、更复杂的使命，比如改善工作条件和环境。

“你的问题是，‘你是不是在为社会经营这家公司？’”波尔曼说。“企业的真实使命向来是拿出对社会有意义，让社会变得更美好的解决方案。”

完美村庄

在联合利华的伦敦总部，激励性壁报和健康食品餐厅随处可见。数千英里之外，波尔曼的战略正在实时展开。活生生的现实不仅揭示了他所说的不可避免的增长潜力，也暴露了这种战略面临的巨大障碍。

在一些歧视性政策由来已久，有害于环境的经营方式普遍存在的国家，这些障碍尤为严峻。联合利华拥有约7.6万家供应商，在190个国家从事生产或销售（全球仅有6个国家除外）。近60%的营业额来自亚洲、拉丁美洲和非洲的新兴市场——这项比重远高于它的宿敌，总部位于辛辛那提的宝洁公司（不到40%）。这些地区拥有人数急剧飙升的中产阶级购物者，他们代表着联合利华一大块增长潜力。但同样是在这些区域，联合利华的可持续发展目标面临最棘手的考验。

While that might be sincere, it could also suggest to investors that Polman’s energy is not entirely focused on his company. “People indulged Unilever on USLP in the early years when the reporting numbers were going well,” Deboo says. “Now they want to hear more muscular language about earnings and returns.”

Nearly a decade into his tenure at Unilever, the jury is still out on the lasting impact of Polman’s grand plan. Can he help save the world and still sell enough soap, snacks, and other goods to please shareholders? And is his version of Unilever going to be the new model for successful multinationals?

It is on the subject of climate change that Polman is most passionate. During the global climate talks in Paris in December 2015, Polman drummed home the point to business leaders and politicians that companies’ survival depended on averting environmental catastrophe. Polman believes that naysayers are losing the argument on climate change—notwithstanding the climate skeptics in President Trump’s administration. He credits a wired, savvy younger generation that’s intensely concerned about the planet. Among CEOs, too, Polman says he has noticed a dramatic change in attitude. “Five years ago I could not get a single CEO to be on a panel about climate change,” he says. “They were worried about being attacked by people in beards and sandals. Now many can talk about climate change.”

Even so, Polman’s argument that it is the job of businesses to help fix these problems requires a mental shift for many companies. Typically, most have carved off issues like the environment and poverty into corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, separating them from revenue-generating business. To Polman the distinction makes no sense. In 2009, when he landed as CEO at Unilever from its Swiss competitor Nestlé in the depths of the financial crisis, he scrapped the CSR department, instructing Unilever’s 169,000 employees instead to embed the company’s extensive social commitments into their business targets. The strategy extends companywide, to “every brand, every market. No exceptions,” as Keith Weed, who heads Unilever’s sustainability program, described it in a LinkedIn post.

It was part of a bold makeover. Polman said his goal was to double revenues from $40 billion to $80 billion, while halving the company’s environmental footprint. Unilever staff say that the aggressive targets helped instill a “growth mentality” within the company and that, although revenues have not doubled, they have increased more than 10 billion euros since Polman arrived. (But only about $4 billion because of dramatic currency fluctuations.)

Polman quickly understood that it would take years for the company’s sustainability plan, the USLP, to show concrete results, and that some of its targets could run counter to growth. So he scrapped quarterly earnings guidance for investors, a system he calls “absolutely ridiculous.” Polman sides with those who argue that the tyranny of quarterly goals traps public companies into continually trying to drive up share prices for investors, while downgrading more long-term, complicated missions, like improving working conditions and the environment.

“The question you ask is, ‘Do you run this for society or not?’” Polman says. “The real purpose of business has always been to come up with solutions that are relevant to society, to make society better.”

Thousands of miles from the London headquarters, with its motivational wall posters and health-food canteen, Polman’s strategy is playing out in real time, exposing not only the growth potential he says is inevitable, but also the big obstacles to making it work.

The hurdles are especially steep in countries with a long history of discrimination and environmentally bad practices. Unilever has about 76,000 suppliers, and it produces or sells in 190 countries—all but six in the world. Nearly 60% of its turnover now comes from emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, and Africa (compared with under 40% for Cincinnati-based competitor P&G). Those regions are home to a soaring number of middle-class shoppers, who represent much of Unilever’s growth potential. They’re also places where putting Unilever’s sustainability goals into action has proved tricky.

在波尔曼到达联合利华后不久，非营利性组织乐施会开始调查该公司工厂的工作条件。它选择越南作为测试案例——早在1995年，联合利华就开始在该国运营业务。今天，大约有1.5万名越南工人为联合利华制造卫宝香皂(Lifebuoy)和家乐浓汤宝(Knorr)等产品。乐施会于2013年发表的研究结果显示，这些工厂常常忽视联合利华宣称的原则，包括为工人支付体面的薪酬。该研究项目主管瑞秋·威尔肖指出，“人们挣的钱远远低于他们摆脱贫困所需。”他说。许多工人不得不打第二份，甚至第三份工，才能勉强维持生计。这项发现让联合利华大吃一惊，它原以为所有工人都在享受公平的待遇。“联合利华不明白的是，尽管他们开的薪酬高于最低法定工资，但还远远不够糊口。”

尽管波尔曼怀抱着良好的意图，但让供应商遵守伦敦总部的指南并非易事。2015年，在波尔曼的推动下，联合利华发布了其首份工厂人权报告——非常类似于美国国务院发布的年度人权报告。在印度的承包商中，该公司发现数百个工厂的健康和安全条件非常差，还存在少付工资现象。根据联合利华的报告，只有13%的案例得以解决。

工会官员和非政府组织都表示，联合利华似乎在认真地解决这些在跨国公司生产链中屡见不鲜的问题。在乐施会的越南报告发布之后，该公司悉心审视了全球各地工厂的工资水平，并对供应商提出了更严格的要求。威尔肖对此称赞有加。她说，“由于最高领导层极为重视，这家公司始终用开放的心态对待我们提出的问题。”

乐施会的报告没有提及的是，这些改进可能也会提高联合利华在越南的销售额。在这样一个拥有9000万人口，中产阶级迅速成长的国家，联合利华可能无法承受恶劣工作条件引发的公众不满。开拓类似越南这样拥有数百万新客户的市场，是这家消费品公司在新兴市场实现增长的关键所在。三年前，联合利华与越南政府合作，推出了一项名为“完美村庄”的计划。在大约1000个村庄，它通过一系列以卫生为主题的活动推广其产品。其措施包括向当地学校免费发放厕所清洁剂和牙膏等产品，建设游乐场，升级诊所，不一而足。联合利华越南公司客户开发副总裁阮氏碧表示，“我们的影响力和品牌渗透率由此获得大幅提升。”在这些完美村庄，联合利华的销售额增速远快于该国的其他地区。比如，在学校，“我们教孩子们使用产品。”回到家后，他们经常“和妈妈讨论这些品牌。”

一边做善事，一边推广产品，并非联合利华独有的策略。对于该公司来说，它的应用范围远不止越南。2008年，联合利华在50多个国家启动了全球“洗手日”活动。波尔曼亲力亲为，经常飞赴农村地区，用香皂洗手——当然是联合利华的香皂，其香皂品牌卫宝现已跟全球“洗手日”紧密地联系在一起。到2020年，联合利华希望抵达10亿消费者，该目标据说已完成了近一半。在南非，一场严重干旱让许多社区遭受重创。联合利华随即建立起一批用桶装水制作的“阳光”广告牌，并将这些水分配到干旱地区——此处的关键讯息是这个洗洁精品牌。

这种战略让人回想起利弗勋爵在1880年代为该公司设计的首个商业模式，其目的是改善英国家庭的卫生状况。彼时的成果令人印象深刻，利弗获得的利润亦是如此。联合利华希望历史重演。“当时的卫生问题相当可怕，”波尔曼说。“今天，世人才刚刚开始关注撒哈拉以南非洲和印度的卫生状况。”

千禧一代

要想打败竞争对手，联合利华需要做的，远不止在新兴市场销售洗衣皂和厕所清洁剂那么简单。投资者表示，最重要的是，联合利华要设法吸引成熟市场的千禧一代。从纽约到柏林，再到东京，数百万年轻人以闪电般的速度，彻底颠覆了几十年来的消费习惯。他们越来越多地选择本地小品牌，而不是传统的大众市场产品，而到目前为止，联合利华的大部分产品恰恰属于后者。尽管联合利华每年的研发预算超过10亿美元——包括最初的阳光港研发中心在内，它在全球拥有六个研究中心——该公司根本无法发明足够的新产品来满足其增长需求。因此，波尔曼越来越倾向于通过收购实现增长。

在过去两年中，联合利华动用其充沛的自由现金储备（去年约为51亿美元）收购了一系列零售价更高的小品牌。2015年，该公司相继收购美国高端护肤药妆品牌Murad和Dermalogica。联合利华表示，这两家加州公司去年均实现了两位数增长。去年7月份，它斥资10亿美元收购位于加州威尼斯的男性护理品按月定购服务商Dollar Shave Club。9月份，联合利华再次出手，收购总部位于佛蒙特州的环保洗涤剂和清洁产品制造商Seventh Generation公司。一位知情人士当时向《财富》透露称，这桩交易价值6亿到7亿美元。

尽管这些收购案令人振奋，但在1月下旬的分析师电话会议上，当波尔曼公布该公司2016年度盈利状况时，他听上去几乎有些沉闷。当天早上，各大报章都在兴高采烈地宣布道琼斯指数前日突破2万点大关的消息。但联合利华的收入同比下降1%。（该公司表示，剔除美元走强等汇率变化因素之后，其销售额增长了4.3%。）该公司希望今年削减10亿美元成本。聆听完电话会议后，一些投资者总结称，在一定程度上，联合利华正在通过提高利润率，而不是提高销量的方式推动增长。法国兴业银行驻伦敦分析师沃伦·阿克曼指出，“联合利华的问题是，他们拥有一个主要面向大众市场的消费产品组合。”除了获得Seventh Generation等公司的高端产品之外，“他们真的需要创新来增加销量。”

Soon after Polman began at Unilever, the nonprofit Oxfam began investigating working conditions in the company’s factories. It picked as its test case Vietnam, where the company had operated since 1995. Today about 15,000 Vietnamese work for Unilever making products like Lifebuoy soap and Knorr broth granules. Oxfam’s findings, published in 2013, showed that factories routinely ignored Unilever’s stated principles, including Polman’s dictate of paying workers decently. “People were earning much less than they ought to have been to work their way out of poverty,” says Rachel Wilshaw of Oxfam, which led the study. Many workers pieced together second or third jobs to make ends meet, she says—a surprise to Unilever, which believed it was treating its workforce fairly. “The company didn’t understand that though they were paying above the minimum legal wage, it was far below a living wage.”

For all of Polman’s good intentions, getting suppliers to comply with guidelines from London has not been easy. Driven by Polman, Unilever issued its first human rights report on its operations in 2015—much as the U.S. State Department does each year. Among its contractors in India the company found hundreds of cases of poor health and safety conditions in factories, as well as workers being underpaid. Only 13% of cases were resolved, according to Unilever’s report.

Both union officials and NGOs say Unilever seems serious about tackling the problems, which are common in the supply chains of giant corporations producing across the globe. After Oxfam’s Vietnam report appeared, the company reviewed its factory workers’ wages globally and introduced tougher requirements for suppliers, according to Oxfam, which published a follow-up study last year. For that, Wilshaw credits Polman. “Here was a company where, because of the leadership, it was open to the problems we threw at them,” she says.

Absent from Oxfam’s report was just how those improvements might also boost Unilever’s sales in Vietnam. There, with 90 million people and a fast-growing middle class, Unilever could ill afford a public backlash over poor labor conditions. Tapping into those millions of new customers in markets like Vietnam is key to growth in emerging markets. Three years ago Unilever rolled out a program in Vietnam it called “perfect villages,” in partnership with the Communist government there. In about 1,000 rural communities it now promotes products through programs around hygiene—for example, by handing out free packages to schools that include toilet cleanser and toothpaste while building playgrounds and upgrading clinics. “You can see the impact in terms of more penetration of our brands,” says Van Nguyen Thi Bich, Unilever’s vice president of customer development in Vietnam. The perfect villages, she says, are much faster-growing markets for Unilever than other parts of the country. At the schools, for example, “we teach them to use the products,” and children then “talk about that with their moms.”

The tactic of pushing its products while doing good is hardly unique to Unilever, and for the company it extends far beyond Vietnam. In 2008 it helped launch a global “handwashing day” in more than 50 countries. To promote the effort, Polman regularly flies into rural areas and scrubs his hands with soap—Unilever soap, whose Lifebuoy brand is now closely identified with the campaign. The company aims to reach 1 billion people by 2020, and says it has already reached nearly half that number. In South Africa, where a severe drought has devastated many communities, the company erected Sunlight billboards made from drums of water—essential, of course, to using Unilever’s soap—and distributed the water to drought-stricken areas.

The strategy harks back to the company’s first business model, crafted by Lord Lever in Liverpool in the 1880s to help improve hygiene among English families. The results back then were impressive, as were Lever’s profits. The company is hoping history will repeat itself. “The problems were horrendous,” Polman says. “Today they have just moved to sub-Saharan Africa and India.”

For Unilever to beat its competitors, it will need to do a lot more than sell laundry soap and toilet cleanser in emerging markets. Crucial, say investors, is appealing to millions of millennials with money to spend, from New York to Berlin to Tokyo, whose demands have upturned decades of consumer habits at lightning speed. Increasingly they are opting for local, smaller brands rather than the traditional mass-market items that until now have constituted most of Unilever’s offerings. Despite Unilever’s more than $1 billion annual R&D budget—it has six research centers around the world, including the original one in Port Sunlight—the company simply cannot invent enough new products to match its growth demands. So Polman has increasingly turned to acquisitions.

In the past two years, Unilever has used its mountain of free cash (about $5.1 billion last year) to snap up small brands—ones that sell for higher prices in stores. In 2015 it bought Murad and Dermalogica, a pair of California skin-care companies, both of which Unilever says had double-digit growth last year. In July it spent $1 billion to buy Dollar Shave Club, a Venice, Calif., company that mails its subscribers monthly shaving products. And in September it bought Seventh Generation, a Vermont company producing eco-friendly detergents and cleaning products, in a deal worth between $600 million and $700 million, according to one source who spoke to Fortune at the time.

For all that excitement, Polman sounded almost somber on the telephone with analysts in late January when he announced the company’s 2016 earnings. The newspapers that morning were giddy about the Dow breaking 20,000 the day before. But Unilever’s revenues were down 1% year over year. (Unilever says corrected for currency moves such as a strengthening dollar, its sales grew 4.3%.) The company hopes to cut $1 billion in costs this year. After listening in on the call, some investors concluded the company was partly driving up growth from higher margins rather than higher volume. “For Unilever, their issue is that they have quite a mass-market consumer products portfolio,” says Warren Ackerman, an analyst at Société Générale in London. In addition to acquiring high-end products from companies like Seventh Generation, he says, “they really need innovation to grow volume.”

但这仅仅是挑战之一。在电话会议上，波尔曼告诉分析师，联合利华正在遭受一些似乎从天而降的事件的鞭笞。去年5月的英国脱欧公投导致英镑兑欧元和美元汇率暴跌20%。几个月以来，作为联合利华的一大市场，巴西一直在经历经济动荡。去年11月，印度政府废除了许多人用来购买日常生活用品的500和1000面额卢比纸钞。据波尔曼预测，未来还将涌现一系列其他问题。他向投资者列举了其中一些：“经济增长缓慢，地缘政治形势日趋紧张，反全球化和技术浪潮，地球环境压力加剧，消费趋势、购物渠道和媒体的分裂化。”在随后的几小时内，在伦敦上市的联合利华股价下跌了4.4%。

几天后，我问波尔曼，为什么他会勾勒出一幅如此严酷的世界图景。他回答说，“没什么新鲜事吧？大家如此吃惊，反倒让我觉得很惊讶。”

在他看来，旨在遏制气候变化和改善工作条件的运动似乎还不够——还有更大的问题正在威胁企业的生计。其中一大问题是，全球金融系统似乎只是让少数人受益。乐施会在1月份报告称，全球最富裕的8个人现在拥有世界一半人口的财富之和。波尔曼认为，这个系统注定要失败。他说，现在需要的是“一种更好的资本主义形式。”

“全球治理已然破裂。自金融危机以来，我们向全球经济注入63万亿美元。但如此巨额的资金压根就未能带动增长。”波尔曼说。

尽管这一切听起来令人阴郁，但波尔曼仍然对未来抱有乐观的期许。他仍然坚信，联合利华的可持续发展计划，包括劳工权利和零碳排放等方面的倡议，将不可避免地推动业务增长，即使这两项使命并非总是保持同步。

乐施会的调查团队清楚地意识到，波尔曼的美好愿景需要一种很难把握的平衡术。在越南，一些供应商似乎不确定联合利华的哪项要求处于优先地位：究竟应该以迅速且便宜的方式，还是以有利于可持续发展的方式交付产品。“联合利华希望在恰好的交货时间，以非常实惠的价格获得产品，他们也希望工人享有更好的工作条件和薪资水平。”乐施会的威尔肖说。“但这两项要求并不能完美融合。”通常情况下，“最终赢出的还是商业要求。”

威尔肖认为，在波尔曼离开联合利华之前，他应该奖励那些改善劳动标准的供应商——这可能会产生显著的影响。然而，她怀疑该公司最终能够实现波尔曼所说的“更好的资本主义形式”。

“说到底，联合利华毕竟是一家由股东拥有的企业，而股东们对利润的渴望是无止境的。”她说。

波尔曼修复世界的使命还远远没有完成。但这需要时间。就连实现联合利华的可持续发展计划目标，也是一个非常复杂的长期任务。去年，该公司承认直到2030年，它才能将其排放的温室气体减少一半，大约比原本期望的时间延长了十年。

到那时，波尔曼早已挂印而去。然而，他仍然相信他的理念最终将改善该公司的业务形态。他说，联合利华已经在招聘千禧一代方面取得了巨大成功。这些年轻人希望为一家致力于改善世界的公司工作。他说，联合利华每年收到大约180万份求职申请。

在我们的谈话临近结束之际，波尔曼再次强调，他的经济发展目标肯定会改善联合利华的运势。一个尤为重要的原因是，该公司的命运取决于数亿人是否有足够钱购买生活用品。他说，“如果8亿人不再挨饿，这将是我们销售食物的大好机会。如果我们竭力改善他们的处境，并产生好的结果，我们的股东也将斩获足够好的收益。” 哪怕这需要花费许多年。（财富中文网）

作者：Vivienne Walt

译者：Kevin

That is just one challenge, however. Polman told analysts on the call that Unilever was being whipsawed by events that seemed to come from nowhere. The Brexit vote last May caused the British pound to plunge 20% against the euro and dollar. There have been months of economic upheaval in Brazil, a big market for Unilever. And in November, India’s government scrapped the 500- and 1,000-rupee notes, which many people used to pay for regular household products. Polman foresaw a litany of other problems ahead, he told investors, listing these: “subdued economic growth, geopolitical tension, the resultant backlash against globalization and technology, a planet under increasing environmental stress, and the fragmentation of consumer trends, shopping channels, and media.” Within hours the share price plunged 4.4% on the London Stock Exchange.

When I ask Polman a few days later why he painted such a stark picture of the world, he replies, “What’s new? I’m surprised that people are surprised.”

For him, the campaign to rein in climate change and improve working conditions no longer seems enough—there are even bigger problems threatening businesses. Those include the way global financial systems appear to benefit a minority of people. In January, Oxfam reported that the richest eight people now hold as much combined wealth as half the world’s population. To Polman, the system seems doomed. What is needed, he says, is “a better form of capitalism.”

“Global governance is broken,” says Polman. “Since the financial crisis we have put $63 trillion into the global economy. We have got zilch back in growth.”

As gloomy as all that sounds, Polman is nevertheless optimistic about the future. He remains convinced that Unilever’s sustainability plan—including the initiatives on labor rights and zero carbon emissions—will inevitably lead to business growth, even if the two imperatives are not always in sync.

The difficult balancing act that Polman’s vision requires became clear to the team that investigated the company’s Vietnam operations, where some suppliers seemed uncertain which Unilever demand took precedence: delivering quickly and cheaply or delivering sustainably. “Unilever wants a product at a very good price at a good delivery time, and they want better standards for their workers,” Oxfam’s Wilshaw says. “But these two don’t fit together neatly.” Usually, she says, “the commercial demands win out.”

Wilshaw believes that before Polman leaves Unilever he should try to reward suppliers who improve labor standards—something that might have a marked impact. Still, she doubts that the company can ultimately deliver what Polman calls “a better form of capitalism.”

“At the end of the day Unilever is a shareholder-owned business, and shareholders are voracious for profits,” she says.

Polman is nowhere done trying to fix the world. But it will take time. Even achieving Unilever’s sustainability plan goals is an intensely complicated, long-term task. Last year the company admitted it would take until 2030 to halve its greenhouse gases, about a decade longer than it had hoped.

By then, Polman will be long gone. Yet he remains convinced his ideas will leave business in better shape. Already, he says, Unilever has seen big success in recruiting millennials, who want to work for a company that is engaged in the world; he says the company receives 1.8 million applications a year.

As our conversation wraps up, Polman emphasizes again that his economic development goals will certainly boost Unilever’s fortunes too, especially since the company depends on hundreds of millions of people having enough money to buy staple items. “If 800 million people no longer go hungry, that is a big opportunity for us to sell our food,” he says. “If we fight for them and do it well, our shareholders will do well.” Even if that takes many years more.