Ashland Reveals New Corporate Identity and Organizational Culture

Ashland took another step in its plan for the future, revealing its “Always Solving” corporate identity and unveiling the organizational culture that will continue to differentiate the company as it continues its mission.

“We’ve been on a journey since announcing plans to separate Valvoline and Ashland into two standalone companies,” says Bill Wulfsohn, Ashland chairman and chief executive officer. “Today, both companies are positioned for bright futures.”

Along with his leadership team, Wulfsohn developed a strategy which empowers each of Ashland’s chemical businesses to develop its own strategic approach as to where to compete and how to win in their marketplace. Each will employ its own core competencies in problem-solving that brings value to customers. Together as one global team, Ashland will build an organization focused on innovation, operations, and capital deployment. Its foundation will continue to be built on operations. Ashland will continue fostering growth through innovations and sales opportunities, and continue capturing value delivered to customers while driving cost competitiveness.

The most public facing element of the evolution of Ashland, is its new corporate identity – Always Solving – which reflects the company’s positioning and people across diverse industries as broad as pharmaceuticals to automotive, personal care to paints, adhesives to biofunctionals, and more.

“Now is the time for Ashland to communicate the nature of who we are and what sets our employees apart. We’re a company of solvers who develop solutions to complex problems in applied chemistry, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and advancing the competitiveness of our customers across industries,” states Carolmarie Brown, Ashland director global marketing and business communications.

The positioning illustrates how Ashland acts as a partner to its customers, providing solutions that bring value to its business partners. In particular, the company is focused on innovations for growing market positions in segments such as pharmaceuticals, personal care and paints and coatings.

Today and moving forward, Ashland embodies how its people are distinguished by their ability to apply specialized chemistry with a disciplined approach that increases the efficacy, refines the usability, adds to the allure, ensures the integrity, and improves the profitability of their customers’ products and applications. Each of these qualities are manifested in different ways for different industries, and together, its people around the globe are always solving, to improve customers’ products. “In Ashland we bring together different backgrounds, different disciplines, different points of view, and we operate as one team with a sense of purpose,” said Luis Fernandez-Moreno, senior vice president of Ashland and president of the Chemicals Group.

Along with its strategy and identity is the articulation and implementation of a collective Ashland Way, its corporate culture, which is “to respect, protect, and advance the people we work with, companies we serve, shareholders who invest in our future, communities we’re a part of, and the planet we share.”

The Ashland Way will drive business growth and shape an organization of which employees will want to be a part. Values of safety, integrity, partnership and passion will guide behavior each day.

“We have a common understanding of how we operate, think, manage, encourage and act in order to build an organization and improve the world through solutions based on the application of specialty ingredients and materials,” Wulfsohn says.

Ashland has a focus on operations and has been committed to doing business with integrity and respect for all people and the world. The company has made formal commitments to improve the environmental, health, safety and security performance for facilities, processes and products throughout the entire operating system. Forty-six Ashland sites have received Responsible Care certification, including three facilities earlier this year.