Corporate Turnaround of Pharmacia & Upjohn

Since the very beginning, the merger of Pharmacia and Upjohn failed to get on to the right track. According to Hassan, "Pharmacia was a European company that did not have a very cohesive culture to begin with; it was the product of a merger between a Swedish and an Italian company. And it was merging with Upjohn, a very conservative company from Kalamazoo Michigan."Employees from Upjohn feared that the merger would affect the people-oriented culture and family style management of the company. In Upjohn, job security was high as the company gave prime importance to the employees, even while taking business decisions. The differences between the companies were so prominent that it was beyond the ability of the management to arrive at a consensus...

His first task as the CEO of Pharmacia & Upjohn was to address the employees. At a press conference in New York, he informed the employees that the company would be moving in a new direction under him. Hassan's next move was to visit the pharmaceutical product centers across Europe, where he interacted with the centers' employees. He held one-on-one meetings with some of the senior management personnel. These meetings helped him realize that morale among the employees was low and that there was a growing distrust among them. He found that the managers were not willing to work with employees from the other countries, and that the employees were viewed as outsiders...