Creating and maintaining corporate culture in a multinational organisation

Interviewer: Today, I'm interviewing Dr. Rob Kowalski, Chief People & Organization Officer at Novartis, on the subject of corporate culture, creating and sustaining a culture in large businesses. A link to Dr. Kowalski's biography accompanies this interview. Dr. Kowalski, welcome to the business and management collection, and thank you for sparing the time for this interview. Very much appreciated. Let me set out my stall. The basic question I wish to ask is, should a large multinational company seek to create an enterprise-wide culture? If you say no, I will ask why not. If you answer yes, I will ask, what do you interpret culture to mean in this context? What are the major challenges in creating and maintaining the culture? How are those challenges met? What are the pitfalls, the minefields, the left field surprises that can derail the best intentions? How does a company avoid them all or at least navigate its way through? To start, should a large multinational company seek to create an enterprise-wide culture? Dr. Kowalski. Dr. Kowalski: Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be here today with you. I'll start by saying that at Novartis, we believe that our culture is actually a key enabler of our strategy to both drive innovation and re-imagine medicine for patients in our industry as a pharmaceutical company.