Elizabeth Visits Gpc's French Subsidiary

ELIZABETH VISITS GPC'S FRENCH SUBSIDIARY

Elizabeth Moreno is looking out the window from her business-class seat somewhere over the Indian Ocean on Thai Air. She is en route to Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris from the Philippines, where she has just spent a week of meetings and problem solving in a pharmaceutical subsidiary of the Global Pharmaceutical Company (GPC).

GPC has the lion's share of the worldwide market in pharmaceutical products--drugs that can be purchased only through a physician's prescription. In the United States, GPC has research and manufacturing sites in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan. The company also has subsidiaries in Canada, Puerto Rico, Australia, the Philippines, Brazil, England and France. GPC has its administrative headquarters in Pennsylvania.

Because of the geographically dispersed locations of its subsidiaries, GPC's top scientists and key managers log thousands of miles each year visiting various offices and plants. Its top specialists and executives regularly engage in multi-site real-time video and telephone conferences, and they also use email, faxes and traditional mail to keep in touch with key personnel.

Despite these technological advances, face-to-face meetings and on-site consultations are used widely. In the case of the French subsidiary, nothing can take the place of face-to face communication. The French manager is suspicious of figures in the balance sheet, of Skype, of his subordinates, of what he reads in the newspaper, and especially of what Americans tell him. This is the reason GPC regularly sends its scientists and executives to France.

Elizabeth Moreno is one of the key specialists within GPC. Her expertise in chemical processing is widely known not only within her company but also in the pharmaceutical industry worldwide. She has been working at GPC for more than twelve years since finishing her advanced degree in chemistry from the Ohio State University. While working for GPC, she has been given more and more responsibilities leading to her current position as vice president of chemical development and processing.

From a hectic visit in the Philippines, her next assignment is to visit the French subsidiary plant for one week to study a problem with shelf-life testing of one of its newest anti-allergy capsules. It seems that the product's active ingredient is degrading sooner than the expiration date. During her stay, she will conduct training for chemists in state-of-the-art techniques for testing and for training local managers in product statistical quality control. These techniques are now currently used in other GPC locations.

To prepare for her foreign assignments, Elizabeth attended a standard three-hour course given by her company's human resource management department on dealing with cross-cultural issues. Moreover, she recalls reading from a book on French management about the impersonal nature of French business relations. This was in stark contrast with what she just experienced during her visit to the Philippine subsidiary. She believes that her expertise and her position as vice president will see her through the technical and interpersonal aspects of the meetings that are lined up for the few days she will be in Paris.

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