Gsk

It is important to understand the reasons why GSK undertook the merger in 2000 as this is essential for analysing whether it was a success or not. This report will look at the merger and decide using the works of Porter and Prahalad and Hamel the motives for the merger. It will be argued that the merger was carried out to use the work of Prahalad and Hamel in order to make research and development the core competency of GSK. It will argue that this is the case using three tests that Prahalad and Hamel put forward to help in identifying a core competency, as this was successful the ideas of Porter and activity mapping can be rejected as the decision to focus on research and development does not relate to all five forces that porter put forward.

The second part of the report looks at GSK's performance post merger and therefore a good understanding of the merger helps answer the question. The expectations that Garnier had were met to a certain extent with earnings growing by 21% in the fourth quarter. Despite this growth however it is not guaranteed than the growth in earnings