Abstract
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.
