External and Internal Analysis of Glaxo SmithKline

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: A, University of California, Berkeley , language: English, abstract: The common goal of any organization is to achieve its objectives which revolve around profit, survival and prosperity. Robert M. Grant (1991:22) identifies two routes to achieve their objective which includes the location of an industry favorable to earn a rate of return above the competitive level and attain a position of advantage over its competitors within the industry, allowing the company to earn return more than the average return of the industry. Duane Ireland et al (2005) mentioned that internal and external analysis is important for the managers in order to develop and the implement the best strategy by evaluating the capabilities and resources of the firms and customer preferences in the market. Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) with a long history dating back to 18th century produce 9 billion Tums tablet, 6 billion Panadol tablets and 600 million tubes every year with more than 200 million customers worldwide and spends more than £300,000 every hour into research and development for innovation in medicine. The company has been able to compete in the industry with strong customer base all over the world, just because of its business strategy which is aimed at increasing growth, reduce risk and improve GSK’s long term financial performance which include growing a diversified global business, deliver more products of value and simplify GSK’s operating model. The present study aims at identifying the key drivers for change, critical success factors, key business strategies over the past five years using Porters generic strategies and resource and capabilities of GlaxoSmithKline over the past ten years so as to analyze the business strategies.