Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008 - (Page 10)

Schein on Culture Dr Brian D. Smith looks at the value of management science to real-world pharmaceutical executives. A t a recent conference, I shared the panel with a consultant who talked about cultural change and its part in implementing strategy. As sometimes happens at such meetings, I had to bite my tongue and let discretion be the better part of good manners. The consultant issued a stream of platitudes about how important company culture is, how it acts as a barrier to change and how the rate of change in our market was making it important to change our pharmaceutical industry cultures. The only small consolations to my almost-bleeding tongue were the comments from the floor. These showed clearly that the delegates also thought the speaker platitudinous as they pushed him, unsuccessfully, for something more substantial and practical. I’m compelled therefore, to use this month’s column to say what I wanted to say at that meeting, not only to vent my frustration but because what good management science tells us about culture is both very substantial and enormously useful in practice. There are a lot of good academics who have written about organisational culture: Smirchich, Martin and Hatch are amongst the names I recommend. The writings of these great researchers show deep understanding of how culture forms and works. However, their contribution can be weakened by the way academics tend to quibble about methodology and philosophy. This is a shame, since so much of their insight is useful. Two quotes, for instance stick in my mind: “Organisations don’t have a culture, they are their culture,” and “Executives are about as aware of their culture as fish are of the water they swim in.” These two quotes sum up Drucker’s much earlier observation that company culture is “persistent and pervasive.” For practical usefulness, however, the central figure of company culture research has to be Ed Schein of MIT. His works are as prolific as they are impressive, but perhaps the most useful for executives are those that describe company culture as consisting of three layers: • artefacts and behaviours — things like structures and activity that we can see in every company; …the only cultural change that really works is that which begins with changing core assumptions. • values — the things that the company sees as important, for example, technical excellence or teamwork; • assumptions — core beliefs, which are often implicit, about how the world works. In Schein’s model, assumptions come from company founders and leaders and change only slowly. They form and shape the companies values that in turn lead to artefacts and behaviours. In the 12 Executive Recruitment ‘Downshifting’ can be a good move for the ambitious 15 Executive Recruitment The value of recruiting experts on an as needed basis 19 Meet unmet needs Natalie Douglas on named patient programmes 22 Pharma in Turkey Interviews with the country’s leading executives

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008 Contents News and Analysis Calendar BioFutures Strategy Fundamentals Executive Recruitment: Small Company, Big Career Executive Recruitment: Instant Pharma Named Patient Programmes Executive Review: Turkey

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008

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