Potential Benefits and Challenges of Working Within an Organization
Introduction
The pharmaceutical industry has existed in its current form since the early 1900’s. Before then, local pharmacists, or more commonly called chemists, mixed potions and elixirs from bulk chemicals using either standardized formulas or their own concoctions. Today, modern pharmaceutical companies comprise thousands of firms that produce a wide range of products for disease treatment and prevention, although the industry is dominated by a much smaller number of very large firms.
Pharmaceuticals are improving the delivery of health care and reducing the cost of treatment for many diseases. Drugs have reduced the death rate from arteriosclerosis, early childhood diseases, heart disease, ulcers, polio, and tuberculosis. The cost of maintaining a polio victim on an iron-lung machine today would run into the tens of thousands of dollars annually, while the common polio vaccine is now inexpensive. Treating typhoid with methods used before the discovery of antibiotics would cost hundreds of dollars. New drugs also have made possible many life-saving procedures such as organ transplants, chemotherapy, and kidney dialysis.
These improvements could be attributed to representative as well as regulating bodies of pharmaceuticals. The representation and regulation of the pharmaceutical industry and its products evolved in response to increased potency, effectiveness, and toxicity of drugs. One of these representative bodies, which will be the subject of this paper, is the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI).
Background of the organization
The ABPI is the pharmaceutical industry's main industry body and lobby group in the United Kingdom, as it justifiably claims. It represents the pharmaceutical industry's views to government and decision makers in the country. Amongst the ABPI's principal objectives are influencing legislation affecting the industry and creating a beneficial business environment. It enjoys a very favorable relationship with the government, and is considered one of the most powerful of all cross industry groups in the UK.
The mission of ABPI is to represent the pharmaceutical industry operating in the UK in a way that will assure the patients to have access to the best available medicines; creating a favorable political, economic, and regulatory environment; encouraging innovative research and development; and affording fair commercial returns.
Membership of the ABPI is open to UK pharmaceutical companies which supply prescription medicines for human use. As of the present, members of the organization include seventy five pharmaceutical companies within the country producing prescription medicines and supplying more than 90 per cent of the medicines prescribed through the National Health Service (NHS). Its member companies research, develop, manufacture and supply more than 80 per cent of the medicines prescribed through the NHS.
Controlled of the ABPI is done by a board of management whose members are elected by the member companies and by directors appointed by the ABPI itself. Board members work only voluntarily for the ABPI. They still maintain their other jobs with their companies. The larger pharmaceutical corporations, given the large size and effectiveness of their prescribed medicines, are better represented on the board of management
Context
The ABPI is just like any other organization. It has hierarchies, structures, manpower, conflicts and other characteristics that are found in other organizations. Organizations as structures of action have approaches which focus on the circumstances determining the actions of individuals in organizations. A great deal of organization theory has been criticized for its normative bias; for its individualistic analysis of the members of organizations; and for embodying an inadequate analysis of how wider relations of power and control in society affect and are affected by organizations (in other words for concentrating mainly on the internal exercise of managerial authority and attempts to subvert it) (, 1998).
Organizations are shaped by their culture, which include assumptions, values, norms, organization members, and their behaviors. They are also shaped by characteristics, which include strategies, technologies, structures, and processes. Where there are people and technologies, there are organizations. There are four key elements that define organization: (a) people and their roles within the organization; (b) the purpose of the organization; (c) the work activities; and (d) a person's working relationship with the organization (, 2005). Everyday our lives are touched by some element of an organization, whether it is a visit to the doctor, a board meeting, forming alliances on an uninhabited island, or simply buying a drug from a drugstore.
Specific to its goals and philosophy, the ABPI also has potential benefits as well as challenges. These may be organization-specific yet it is basically the same as for other organizations too. The benefits of regulating and representative organizations for pharmaceutical companies is that aside from regulating pricing and promotional policies, the effectiveness and safety of a drug could be regulated before it is allowed to be sold in public.
During the 1920s and 19230s, pharmaceutical companies built a new strategy, forging alliances with physicians and being identified with ethical or prescribed medications rather than industrial chemical suppliers and secret tonics for home use (, 2004). At present, strategic alliances is still being used by pharmaceutical companies, which is also done by many other organizations outside the field of pharmaceuticals.
The ABPI can manage alliances, arrangements, or disputes over their members. The viability and desirability of alliances and other external linkage arrangements depends importantly not just on the efficacy of this form of contract, but also on the resources/capabilities which can be accessed in this fashion. These alliances are essential in the 1980s and 1990s to the pharmaceutical industry as a mechanism to tap into the drug development capabilities of new biotech firms. Because the biotechnology revolution has occurred outside the organizational gambit of the established pharmaceutical industry, alliances have been embued with virtues they might not otherwise possess. Put differently, the value of a contract can easily be confused with what it enables one to access. The comparative institutional approach used here imputes to the alliance only that which it can uniquely access as compared to other arrangements (, 1999).
Using state-of-the-art design and manufacturing technologies, many pharmaceutical companies have gotten better at meeting customers’ needs, responding to changing markets, and producing higher-quality products. This is actually a characteristic of many other organizations, not only those belonging to the pharmaceutical industry. They have reduced paper flow, prototyped products quickly, shortened cycle times, linked supply lines electronically, created virtual inventory and companies, and given customers more choices.
Some results have been widely reported, such as Motorola’s customized pagers and Levi Strauss’s customer-tailored jeans. Others not as widely reported include the Big Three automakers, the aerospace industry, semiconductor makers, the computer industry, and pharmaceutical companies. All have been able to speed up design, manufacturing, and customization using the agile concept to meet changing customer needs as well as to optimize a company’s operations ( & , 2003).
Organizations are of course composed of individuals who are working interdependently to produce some good or service. Even holding aside issues of incentives and motivation, the very fact of interdependence requires coordination to ensure that activity results in the efficient production of the organization’s output. What would happen in a pharmaceutical research facility if there were no social controls of any kind to determine when people would start work and what they would do? Almost certainly there would be chaos. Coordination and control are necessary, and how to achieve these ends efficiently and, in some formulations, humanely, are fundamental organizational issues (, 1997).
Also, the behavior of employees would definitely vary within the organization. We cannot expect people to leave their evolved behavior at the door when they enter the work environment; gossip, dominance, harassment, and status seeking behaviors permeate organizations and create conflict, intimidation, and jealousy. These behaviors cannot be eliminated, but they can be understood and considered when creating organizational policy. When considering one's position in an organization, it is advantageous to be socially intelligent, which can be thought of as being skilled at social networking, knowing whom to trust, and being able to form powerful relationships.
An understanding of the organization life cycle and the associated management imperatives could also aid ABPI founders through the uncharted course of organization growth. The life-cycle literature suggests that organizations evolve in a consistent and predictable manner (, 1993). Scholars have argued that as firms move through various stages of growth, differing problems must be addressed, resulting in the need for different management skills, priorities, and structural configurations. While numerous theories and models have been proposed in an effort to explain the life-cycle process, there has been remarkably little effort to validate these empirically. On the whole, life-cycle stage definitions remain vague and general, making application to specific cases difficult.
Organizational structures, production systems, information processing procedures, strategies and environments all tend to influence each other. A valid life-cycle model could be of great value to those managing emerging growth firms. It could provide a road map, identifying critical organizational transitions as well as pitfalls the organization should seek to avoid as it grows in size and complexity. It could help management know when to let go of cherished past strategies and practices that will only hinder future growth. The benefits of such a model to new-venture founders could be significant. However, if these benefits are to be achieved, a great deal of work remains to be done in tightening the life-cycle construct and clarifying patterns of organization growth (, 1993).
Challenges for pharmaceutical companies stem mainly from occupational safety and hazards. As this organization deals mainly with chemicals and research, health has become a hot topic for the pharmaceutical companies. Occupational health problems arise in a context, that of the employment relationship, and are bound up in issues of management, labor relations, contractual obligations, regulation and compliance, and professional certification (, 2005). This prompted many organizations to come up with plans that will safeguard their employees’ health and safety and at the same time avoid costs brought about by illness and injury. Occupational health programs have therefore become a trend in many organizations, including that of pharmaceutical companies.
When difficulties arise within the organization, emphasis is always on improving both the ability of a system to cope and the relationships of the system with subsystems and with the environment The use of reflexive, self-analytic methods refers to involving system members themselves in the assessment, diagnosis, and transformation of their own organization. Rather than simply accepting the authoritative advice of an expert, organization members themselves, with the aid of outside consultants, examine current difficulties (, 2006).
Summary and Conclusion
The pharmaceutical industry has evolved over the past hundred years. Organizations within the industry exist specifically to represent the industry’s views to government and decision makers. Chief among them is the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. This association, as is the same for other organizations, has its benefits and challenges. One of its benefits is its response to the perceived needs for consumer protection and industry development, attempting to balance the benefits and costs of pharmaceutical regulation. Its challenges also are the same as other organizations, chief among them their employees’ health and safety. Along the way, the entire pharmaceutical industry was transformed through organizations like the ABPI.
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