Turkey
Gülsüm Azeri
- Group President, Şişecam; CEO, OMV Petrol Ofisi (Chemicals and glass; Petroleum)
Born in 1951 in Hendek, Turkey. BSc. Chemical Engineering, Boğaziçi University (1975); MBA Industrial Engineering, Boğaziçi University (1977).
“Being an engineer always helped me. I went for R&D. If there wasn’t sufficient R&D, I formed it...”
Summary
Gulsum Azeri relates her career running Şişecam, an industrial group that produces glass and chemicals, and becoming CEO of OMV Petrol Ofisi, a leading Turkish petroleum company. As a trained chemical and industrial engineer, Azeri is a pioneer for women in high-technology industries. She has a global education, having been trained at Austrian and American-run schools. In this interview, she discusses joining Şişecam at a time when the company was looking to expand globally. After supervising chemical production at a factory in Mersin, Turkey, she was made head of global sales and marketing of sodium bichromate and other products worldwide. In describing her rise in the company, Azeri highlights the relentless need for innovation in entering new product categories in glassware and chemicals and the ways these efforts required not only technological skills but also financial acumen.
Video Clips by Topic
Regional Integration
Gülsüm Azeri, head of Şişecam, an industrial group in Turkey that produces glass and chemicals, discusses the strategy of the glassware producer, Paşabahçe, to enter the Russian market.
Keywords:
Turkey, Global Expansion
Unions
Gülsüm Azeri, head of Şişecam, an industrial group in Turkey that produces glass and chemicals, describes how she chose to close down an outdated glassmaking factory because legal regulations prevented its modernization and her subsequent discussions with labor unions about this decision.
Keywords:
Turkey, Labor Relations
Innovation
Gülsüm Azeri, CEO of OMV Petrol Ofisi, a leading Turkish petroleum company, describes how how she took the very costly decision to change the environmentally hazardous production process for sodium bichromate.
Additional Resources
- “Lasting and Growing Investments of Sisecam in Bulgaria,”Radio Bulgaria, October 2, 2011.
- "Securing Supplies: OBG Talks to Gülsüm Azeri, CEO, OMV Turkey.
- "Gulsum Azeri: Passion and Purpose,"TurkishWIN,April 21, 2014.
- Fortune Türkiye profile, April 2014.
- Datamonitor, OMV AG SWOT Analysis, 2008-2013.
- Önder Küçükerman,Istanbul’ da 500 yıllıik sanayi yarışı. A 500 Years’ Heritage in Istanbul: The Turkish Glass Industry and Şişecam. Türkiye Şişe ve Cam Fabrikaları A.Ş., c.1999.
- Ayşe Buğra and Osman Savaskan, New Capitalism in Turkey. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2014.
- Şevket Pamuk, Turkiye'nin 200 Yıllık İktisadi Tarihi. Is Bankasi Kultur Yayinlari, 2014.
- Aslı M. Colpan, "Business Groups in Turkey," in Oxford Handbook of Business Groups, ed. Aslı M. Colpan, Takashi Hikino, and James R. Lincoln. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
- Yakup Kepenek and Nurhan Yentürk, Türkiye Ekonomisi. Remzi Kitabevi, 2000.
- Roger Owen and Şevket Pamuk, A History of the Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1998.
- Ayşe Buğra, State and Business in Modern Turkey: A Comparative Study. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1994.
- Video file of this interview available at Baker Library Historical Collections, histcollref+hbs.edu. Harvard ID holders can access the full-length video above.
Interview Citation Format
"Interview with Gülsüm Azeri, interviewed by Aslı Colpan, April 29, 2014, Creating Emerging Markets Project, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, http://www.hbs.edu/creating-emerging-markets/."