New Kind of Structure: Case of Pfizer - Essay Example

Pfizer Case Study Affiliation Pfizer Case Study Task In the year 2005, Pfizer Inc. was confronted with an economic crisiswith several of its most important drugs on the verge of patent expiry. The organization declared cost-cutting strategies were comprising a reduction of its yearly budget by US$4 billion. Though, the organization understood that only cost-cutting methods cannot suffice the crisis. To make sure that Pfizer once more progressed to a resilient position, it had to implement a plan to influence its human resources in an efficient way. On examining its employee’s activities, one of the employees Jordan Cohen, who is currently heading the PfizerWorks initiative, established that rather than concentrating on high-value tasks for which they were employed for. The employees spent an imbalanced amount of their time on ordinary tasks like working with PowerPoint, creating documents, researching, and data entry, among others. This made Cohen begin the PfizerWorks Initiative in the year 2008 after testing it with some employees for several months. This initiative comprised outsourcing the works that are boring to two Indian-based business process outsourcing (BPO) companies- Genpact and a division of RR Donnelley. The possibility of these has just been by a simple click of a knob. This button enables the workers to shift time-consuming and tedious tasks with a single click of a button on their computer desktops. They then define what they want in a form that is online and then it is sent to any of the two Indian service outsourcing companies. After receiving the employee’s desires, the Indian company calls the Pfizer worker to make clear what’s required and by when. After that, a cost specification is sent by e-mail to the requested task, and if the worker decides to continue, then the costs incurred are charged to the workers department. The initiative was received well by workers of Pfizer and was also valued by industry viewers, who commented on the improvements in worker effectiveness and cost reductions it brought about. In a period of just one year after implementing the PfizerWorks, the initiative had already freed 66,500 hours for workers. According to Miller and Wedell-Wedellsborg (2013), the Pfizer employees were now capable of focusing their attention and time on more strategic features of their responsibilities instead of wasting precious effort and time on boring tasks. This initiative can be imitated by other organizations so as to overcome the declining trends in the global economy as a whole. Task 2 An example of a company is Wal-Mart Corporation, which has a bureaucratic, formal organizational structure that has brought about alterations to its structure in 2010. Before the implementation of this structure, the three effective operating partitions, (store operation, real estate, and logistics) were not under a united management team. In present days, the units are now under a unified management team, which is structured into three different business units, North, South, and West. This has made changes to Wal-Mart from being departmentalized by function to having a geographic departmentalization. This approach Pfizer is also known as Office of the Future, means that this initiative has created a new perception where they can link their offices all around the globe with each other and where any employee of the office can share data, interconnect with other workers from office to office around the globe is a good decision that can be taken by this organization. Wal-Mart also has a perfect chain of command from the topmost to the lowest (News & Brothers, 2005). This is suitable for the Pfizer initiative as topmost management can decide on workers to select tasks that fit them and are well accustomed to them so as to enhance productivity. Furthermore, the span of control is restricted as the company has leadership teams that choose on how goods are priced, how they are shipped and additional items that require to be managed. In this case, the workers in the Pfizer initiative have the options to do what they want at their convenience, and a company like Wal-Mart is to have a Pfizer strategy. Task 3 If you compare this structure of Pfizer with that of a nonprofit organization structure like UNICEF, where most of its activities happen in a field and each office of UNICEF in a country carries the missions of UNICEF through an exclusive program of cooperation that is formed by the host government. This makes the functions of their various offices in several countries to be different compared to other countries, and this makes it difficult for a Pfizer initiative to be effective in this organization. This is mainly because its departments are divided by function (UNICEF, 2013). Additionally, governing and management of UNICEF happen in the headquarters where the worldwide policy on children is molded. This means the span of control is not limited as there is no specific rule that decides what services the organizations will offer to the children. This makes it the Pfizer Company not suitable for this organization. The majority of the resources from this company comes from private groups, individual donors, governments, among others, therefore projects cannot be initiated by the employees before passing through an executive board of committee and being approved. This makes it difficult for this model to apply to this structure since employees must do tasks they are assigned, and they do not have an option of switching tasks. Lastly, there is no chain of command in this organization as the governing body is comprised of thirty-six Executive Board made up of government agents. They form rules, approve initiatives and choose on financial and administrative budgets and plans. Participants are chosen by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, normally for three-year terms. Lack of a chain of command makes it difficult for a Pfizer works initiative to work effectively. Therefore, this Pfizer technique is not suitable for this organization. Task 4 Adapting this Pfizer initiative, will enable a company to make the best use of the resources to deliver value to its consumers worldwide. Furthermore, with this initiative, an organization will be able to quickly capitalize on openings to progress their industry globally by growing support for effective new products, building partnerships with main consumers, entering into licensing and co-promotion agreements, capitalizing on new technologies, so as to add significance to their primary product offerings, and obtaining new services and products from outside the corporation. The culture of the organization will also be impacted positively as its daily activities will be directed in the right direction and improve productivity. As the company will have a clear understanding of the advantages of change and communication with others will be effective (Business week. 2013). References Business week. (2013). New York, etc.: Bloomberg L.P., etc. Miller, P., & Wedell-Wedellsborg, T. (2013). Innovation as usual: How to help your people bring great ideas to life. News, F. L., & Brothers, R. S. (2005). Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Mergents Dividend Achievers, 2, 280–280. doi:10.1002/div.2070 UNICEF. (2013). UNICEF. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org.uk/Documents/Publication-pdfs/UNCRC_summary.pdf Read More