Managing the integration process of two disparate organizational cultures is a challenging task whether it’s the merger of two large organizations to take the lead in market share in an industry or merging two organizations to acquire new product lines. GE Healthcare was active in the anesthesia business in China producing high end anesthesia machines. In 2006, it purchased Zymed a market leader in the low-end domestic anesthesia machine market to round out its product portfolio. GE shortly thereafter decided to merge their higher-end DO line with that of the acquired company and integrate production of anesthesia machines – building internal efficiencies and a single engineering function. The merged company became GE Healthcare’s Life Support Solutions iPerformance (LSSiP) line.

The merged companies had to address many cultural, strategy and philosophical differences in the integration process. GE brought in a new general manager, Matti E. Lehtonen to lead the integration. Lehtonen developed a new business strategy, short term objectives and long term vision for the group. He instituted detailed planning efforts and monthly town hall meetings to emphasize the mission of the new organization. Rewards and recognition were also offered to team members displaying teamwork and a can-do attitude.

In 2007, a year and a half into the integration process, the employees took the Denison Organizational Culture Survey. While the company believed that some progress had already been made, the results showed challenges in Customer Focus, and the Consistency trait indexes of Core Values, Agreement and Coordination & Integration in the Denison model.

Leaders in the company had anticipated that integrating a strong corporate culture like GE’s with its process-driven culture with a family run business with few standardized processes like Zymed’s would be challenging. To address the issues brought up in the culture survey results, they implemented a rigorous compliance training program and streamlined the number of suppliers to focus the business process in the organization. They enacted these changes while maintaining production and sales volume, product development and continuing to service existing customers. Lehtenon also took an innovative approach to helping the new integrated team take pride in GE's name and the core values it stood for. To cultivate a sense of urgency and facilitate the adoption of GE’s exacting quality standards, employee’s were assigned to hospital operating rooms to observe surgeries in which their products were used. This helped crystallize for employees GE's exacting quality standards and their critical impact on their customers – literally on people’s lives. The general manager continued to impress upon his team members these important core values and worked to form a cooperative unified team, pushing them to reach the same market presence and status in China as GE held in other parts of the world.

In 2009, employees were again asked to take the Denison Organizational culture survey. Scores in the four focus indexes from the 2007 results: Customer Focus, Core Values, Agreement and Coordination & Integration showed marked improvement with scores in the 4th quartile. Within the organization, they had also seen an increase in sales, increased exports to emerging markets and growth in international markets.

A case study detailing the challenges of GE Healthcare’s integration process with Zymed is available in three parts from the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), in Lausanne, Switzerland. This three part series was written by Lily Zhang under the supervision of Professors Dan Denison and Katherine Xin.

• GE Healthcare Life Support Solutions (A): Entering A New Global Market
• GE Healthcare Life Support Solutions (B): A Vision-Led Integration
• GE Healthcare Life Support Solutions (C): Positioning for Quality and Growth