Intercultural Management - GlaxoSmithKline

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Glaxo smithkline GSK glaxosmithkline intercultural management

Résumé du document

Analyze the intercultural management issues that GSK had to face at the time of the merger between Glaxo and SmithKline.

Working with collaborators from different countries and nationalities is today a business reality. Globalization and development of new technologies are speeding up this phenomenon that is integrated in the professional and international environment. But trades between different people can hide some incomprehension and misunderstandings. These conflicts are not limited to language misunderstandings but are more often due to cultural differences that highlight ways to do business and to think proper to each culture.
Working in a multicultural context is synonym of cultural differences sense of time value or personal space, individual or collective behavior, relations to hierarchy are values that are specific for each country and each culture. The evolution of companies towards globalization contributes to a new intercultural dynamism that points up the real need of an intercultural management. Anticipate the cultural issues for a better communication requires tackling the intercultural dimension of management directly within the firm and with its relations to clients, national and international providers etc...
In this context, we are going to analyze the merger of two companies with different cultures: Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. Both companies merged in 2000 after many years of talks and procedures. Among major reasons of this merger were named enhanced marketing power, improved R&D productivity and increased financial strength. GlaxoSmithKline is now the largest pharmaceutical company outside the U.S. and the second largest worldwide.

Extraits

[...] The more roles are differentiated between genders, the more the society is masculine. On the opposite, the more roles are interchangeable between men and women, the more the society is feminine. Avoidance to incertitude: This parameter refers to the how a society deals with risk taking. Some cultures encourage risk taking whereas other culture avoids risk taking. It also measures the relation that people have with the future. Attitude to time: Long-term vs short-term orientation. This measures to what extent people of a culture deal with the time factor. [...]

[...] This merger has been a total success considering that the group continues its development, and people working in show significant satisfaction in the new corporate culture as the company is no more profit-driven but customer-driven. Also the company focuses on “celebrating and rewarding achievement, utilizing people's skills and abilities”. What we can say about this merger is that is wasn't that difficult because cultural differences were not that obvious. If we take for example the merger of French car manufacturer Renault with Japanese Nissan, the cultural differences are very strong. Japan and France are almost opposed on every Hofstede parameter. [...]

[...] This survey was distributed to all the levels of management all over the world. The surveyed people were asked to scale from 1 to 5 all the different items of the survey being a very small extent” and 5 a very great extent”. The survey was attended with a cover letter from the CEO and translated into 10 different languages. About of the surveyed people returned the survey properly filled. Analyzes of the survey showed interesting results. The more highly rated items were concerning the work climate and the co-operation methods between co- workers. [...]

[...] Finally in 1989, after many mergers and acquisitions, SmithKline Beckman and Beecham Group merged to form SmithKline Beecham PLC, and the headquarters were relocated to England. c. International context. In the early 80's, many pharmaceutical companies were merging. This phenomenon came along with globalization and with the will of laboratories to become more diversified, to gain market shares and to increase their revenues. The mentality was to merge as many laboratories as possible to form big pharmaceutical groups. In order to stay competitive and to survive in the global marketplace, both entities had to find someone to merge with. [...]

[...] There are five indexes on the Hofstede model: Power distance Index: Hofstede's Power distance Index measures the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept and expect hierarchy inequalities. It is measured by the perception that the subordinate has of his direct superior. Depending on the culture, the subordinate accepts more or less authority; in some cultures people look for this authority. Individualism index: it measures the degree to which people are integrated to group or not. The opposite is collectivism. [...]