AstraZeneca: Introduction, Environment, Organizational Structure, Organizational Culture And Impact Of Technology

Environment

Produce a report discussing a multinational company AstraZeneca.

This study elaborates AstraZeneca, established in 6 April 1999 with its headquarters in London, was created by emerging Astra AB and Zeneca Group plc. It is a British –Swedish multinational and biologics company. Over hundred of countries observe it operation. Cancer, infection, neuroscience and cardiovascular are main diseases comes under the list of portfolio of products (https://www.astrazeneca.com/our-company.html ). This organization reflects the most of technology by directing it toward a better healthy world. It pushes further limits of technology to create life-changing medicine. Last year AstraZeneca announced to use CRISPR for distinguishing and validating new drug select in preclinical prototype. It has also found a way of treating non-small cell lounge cancer using gefitinib. Directors of AstraZeneca hold proactive approaches to train their employee best way possible. Therefore, it installed LMS with its PeopleSoft Human Resources Information System (HRIS) that assign relevant training to everyone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AstraZeneca#History ). Though coming from different range of background, Employees of AstraZeneca share the same passion for modern medicine. AstraZeneca’s human resources provide sustained involvement and worth to the organization’s market. Medicines of this organization helped the people around the whole world to fight against the critical diseases. It is one of the best Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Company in the world.

Ten particular environmental factors influence AstraZeneca’s business. Here the discussion on Industry, raw materials, human resource and financial resources are present.

AstraZeneca comes under the category of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Industry (Mahaffey 2014). This industry is responsible of creating curative drugs, also improving diagnostic mediums and the commencing of gene therapy.

For raw materials, AstraZeneca mostly depend on third party like every other pharmaceutical companies (Beck et al. 1988). Organization does the job of extracting from different raw material for manufacturing drugs. Raw materials consumed by the organization carry active pharmaceutical ingredients (API).

	Dec 31, 2014
Raw materials and consumables	663
Inventories in process	501
Finished goods and goods for resale	796
Inventories	1,960

Source: Based on data from AstraZeneca PLC Annual Reports

Human resources of AstraZeneca are responsible for recruiting people and developing performance strategy for the organization. For supporting organization’s competitive advantage human resources develop partnership with managers (Gomez-Mejia et al. 2004). This delivers the important knowledge and skills to the managers regarding people related advices on the labour market.

AstraZeneca possesses good amount of capital for spending it as cash, credit lines and liquid securities for business purpose. The organization, kept capital as security before participating in the business, has successfully promoted success based on financial resources like any other environment.

Industry

AstraZeneca is one of most renowned Multinational Company (MNC) in the biological pharmaceutical industry. They provide their services to more than hundred countries. Three different organizational structure of AstraZeneca made the activities of the organization fluent enough to work in an international level. The various aspects of structure are manufacturing, developing and supply chain management. AstraZeneca also funds a huge amount of money to develop drugs for critical diseases. Different branches in installed in the whole world prove training to new recruits (Shi 2013). The training they provide is one the best in present. This interest for producing new drugs to make the world diseases free makes the organization different from many others present in the industry.

Manufacturing part is assigned to meet the demands of the market (Jensen and Meckling 1992). Supply chain management keeps the company’s product available to market. Personal development of individual workers is very important to the organization. The training provided  in the various parts for the new recruited make this thinking possible. The fundamental elements of this group are universal and private manufacturing medicines, researching and market administrations. In AstraZeneca, the entire employee work under this CEO.  According to Jensen and Meckling (1992) the board of the organization consist CEO, Chairman of the board and directors. The next level of employees are CFO, CIO etc. Chairman of board is the heights person in an organized group of a organization. He is the head of the directors. And second most powerful officer in an organization after CEO.

AstraZeneca recruits and has people within it who belong to various types of background. In spite of this divergence of backgrounds all the employees of this organization share the same affection of accomplishing challenges of modern science. It encourages employees to work with each other and to take smart risks. Employee’s gets support whenever they need it and it provides the platform to work autonomously. Merit and performance decides distinct success for workers. They get Energetic and innovative environment which know to value the diversity. The organization has also a purpose of nourishing talents of individual people. This helps the employees to involve them in work and dedicate crucially in scientific excellence. This place share motivations and conventions. Here every day is recompensing.

The organization has the curiosity toward science and the potentiality of it. For achieving the aim, AstraZeneca works with companies, which share similar taste and collaborators to create inventive drugs. The hope of winning over the most dangerous diseases, this organization’s workers share their knowledge and skills. This thinking produce an innovative and strong environment in the work place. AstraZeneca’s workplaces all over the world share the same affection for a inspiring and motivating environment.

Raw materials

Personal development of individual workers is very important to the organization. To maintain organizations commitment, it requires its employees to never stop gaining knowledge and nourishing their skills. Organization encourages and aids the workers by providing never-ending support. Therefore, a keen person can reach his/her full capability of using science to help create medicines.

 A team member with different kind of thinking and being in a diverse team with different backgrounds can come up with new ideas. With new ideas come new possibilities. Several numbers of teams presented in the organization get the advantage of dynamic mélange. AstraZeneca received ‘Excellence in Practice Award’ because of their hard contribution for developing abilities of workers.

For most pharmaceutical organization, productivity is one the crucial concern. The amount of fund the organization provides for speeding up R&D process, it faced decrease in productivity. In spite of the failures, AstraZeneca has produced some revolutionary medicines and adopted great technologies like gnome. The organization has examined the capability of PT003 for the enhancement of functionality of lung. AstraZeneca acquired Pearl Therapeutics. This technology was developed for carrying pressurised metered dose inhaler (pMDI). In PINNACLE 1 and PINNACLE 2, upper respiratory tract infection and dyspnea are the most disadvantageous treatment arms. The safety information study in PINNACLE 3 is not yet available. Gefitinib is a medicine for particular breast, lung and other cancers. Lung cancer is widely known as one of the most dangerous and second most detected cancer in United Kingdom. Patients with epidermal growth factor mutation-positive (EGFR M+) disease were only prescribed for treatment with gefitinib. AstraZeneca introduced the drug gefitinib, used for treatment of non-small cell lung.

AstraZeneca also adopted various technologies to provide both successful and significant service for the patients. The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asks for good quality Manufacturing Practices. Therefore, it established regulations internationally to make sure of best manufacturing quality. If a organization fails to follow the rules created by FDA, it can cost the organization millions of pounds a day. AstraZeneca never suffered for the rules created by FDA. Previously the organization kept track of their training manually. After integration of Plateau Learning Management System in 2002, it assisted the business process automation. It took the enterprise training a way forward than it was ever before (Ramirez and Tylecote 200).

CRISPR is a pioneer gnome editing technique. The technology allowed AstraZeneca to recognize and authorize new drug targets in preclinical replica. This technology helped the organization to develop Pearl Therapeutics (Meltzer 2012). It gave scientists power to change particular genes surprisingly faster and more precisely way than ever before.

Human Resource

Conclusion:

From the above study, we can conclude that AstraZeneca is one of the best pharmaceutical multinational organizations. It its life span it created various lives changing drugs that aided the world to recover from most dangerous diseases. The organization provides the best in class training to motivate their employee from the begging of their career. It always provided the environment of innovativeness for the workers. Using gnome editor, it created the history in the history.  PINNACLE 1 and PINNACLE 2 studies are the result of the technology. PINNACLE 3 studies will be unenclosed soon. AstraZeneca also adopted various technologies to provide both successful and significant service for the patients. The curiosity of the organization toward science also made their employees reach their full potential. AstraZeneca’s environment consists of inventory, human resources, financial resources, etc. Integration of Plateau Learning Management System in 2002, made significant change that assisted the business process automation.

References:

Beck, A.T., Epstein, N., Brown, G. and Steer, R.A., 1988. An inventory for measuring clinical anxiety: psychometric properties. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 56(6), p.893.

Fain, K., Daubresse, M. and Alexander, G.C., 2013. The Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act and postmarketing commitments. JAMA,310(2), pp.202-204.

Fan, J.P., Wong, T.J. and Zhang, T., 2013. Institutions and organizational structure: The case of state-owned corporate pyramids. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 29(6), pp.1217-1252.

Gomez-Mejia, L.R., Balkin, D.B. and Cardy, R.L., 2004. Managing human resources. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

Hagedoorn, J. and Schakenraad, J., 1994. The effect of strategic technology alliances on company performance. Strategic management journal, 15(4), pp.291-309.

Jensen, M.C. and Meckling, W.H., 1992. Specific and general knowledge and organizational structure.

Levy, M.L., Hardwell, A., McKnight, E. and Holmes, J., 2013. Asthma patients’ inability to use a pressurised metered-dose inhaler (pMDI) correctly correlates with poor asthma control as defined by the global initiative for asthma (GINA) strategy: a retrospective analysis. Primary Care Respiratory Journal, 22(4), pp.406-411.

Mahaffey, K.W., Held, C., Wojdyla, D.M., James, S.K., Katus, H.A., Husted, S., Steg, P.G., Cannon, C.P., Becker, R.C., Storey, R.F. and Khurmi, N.S., 2014. Ticagrelor effects on myocardial infarction and the impact of event adjudication in the plato (platelet inhibition and patient outcomes) trial.Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 63(15), pp.1493-1499.

McIntosh, D., 2014. Vendors of learning management and e-learning products. Learning Management Vendors, pp.88-96.

Meltzer, E.O., Blaiss, M.S., Naclerio, R.M., Stoloff, S.W., Derebery, M.J., Nelson, H.S., Boyle, J.M. and Wingertzahn, M.A., 2012, September. Burden of allergic rhinitis: allergies in America, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific adult surveys. In Allergy and Asthma Proceedings (Vol. 33, No. 5, pp. S113-S141). OceanSide Publications, Inc.

Ramirez, P. and Tylecote, A., 2004. Hybrid corporate governance and its effects on innovation: a case study of AstraZeneca. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, 16(1), pp.97-120.

Shi, Y., Zhang, L., Liu, X., Zhou, C., Zhang, S., Wang, D., Li, Q., Qin, S., Hu, C., Zhang, Y. and Chen, J., 2013. Icotinib versus gefitinib in previously treated advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (ICOGEN): a randomised, double-blind phase 3 non-inferiority trial. The lancet oncology, 14(10), pp.953-961.