Org Behavior - Bioprimia

Situation Analysis

Bioprimia, a pharmaceutical company, is nearing the launch of promising new drugs in the final stages of FDA approval. Being a product innovator, Bioprimia places a strong emphasis on R&D while bringing new drugs to the market. Despite operating in losses in recent years, they were able to achieve a strong revenue growth of 37% in the last quarter by focusing on R&D and outsourcing peripheral activities. For a successful drug launch, Bioprimia facilitates development through 3 main avenues: in-house research, collaboration with universities, and start-up acquisitions.

But Bioprimia’s executives fear incurring production losses from the new product launch due to the collaborative problems existing between the newly merged employees and the existing employees. Some of these problems stem from the difference in aspirations and work styles of both sets of employees. These differences are the byproduct of various personality traits and situational factors at play. Yet the senior management of Bioprimia is wise in understanding the value of skills and personalities both parties bring to the table and trying to integrate both of them for the drug development.

While bringing employees together, Bioprimia faces unique set of challenges - biggest of them all being the ability to maintain diversity of thought while achieving collaborative outcomes by leveraging synergies. Hence, Bioprimia needs to review and restructure the internal work processes and the onboarding program in order to facilitate smooth integration while maintaining the personality traits of various employees intact.

Traits versus States

Due to the nature of acquisition, it is inevitable that Bioprimia faces integration of many types of individuals, and it could be argued that part of the Bioprimia culture is attributed to successful blending of the current organization with the acquired start-ups. In order to identify how to effectively blend these cultures, it is first necessary to separate elements of the situations that stem from individual differences in personality and elements that are simply a result of the unique situation. These trends can distinguished as traits versus states. Individual differences in personality would be considered traits in that traits are stable elements shown across a variety of situations and time periods. States would account for the changes that come about in a unique situation. Once the “trigger” situation is gone, these elements subside.

Employees from the acquired start-up show specific trends in personality traits. First, start-up employees have a high tolerance for risk and enjoy working creatively on out-of-the box ideas. These elements could linked to personalities that rank low in neuroticism. Additionally, start-up employees trend high in openness which is shown specifically through their preference to work creatively and flexibly with a desire to test new ideas. While they enjoy being creative, they typically remain very detailed in their experimental work. Finally, the passion and positive emotions towards new ideas showcase a high level of extraversion within the start-up employee base.

Established employees also show very specific trends in personality traits. First, established employees would rather work on safer tasks, finding time spent on experiential ideas to be impractical. That said, they have a high level of self-discipline, are motivated by long-term considerations, and strive for continual achievement within the organization. These elements prove established employees trend high in both neuroticism and conscientiousness. Additionally, established employees show a high level of agreeableness through their tendency to hold onto traditions and trust the established processes to continue to perform successful work.

Bioprimia has also become aware of employee “states” that are arising solely in response to specific events. For example, in the event of a merger, employees are looking to prove their self-worth and ability. This causes the employees to focus on performing their tasks as they previously have and stick with “what they know” given it has proved successful in the past. Another example could be seen when business is underperforming. This causes all employees to feel pressure or stress in one way or another.

The second step to a successful blending of the current organization and the start-up organization is to leverage the socialization and attraction-selection-attrition models appropriately for culture maintenance. Bioprimia must ensure socialization is applied in order to keep the strong parts of the current company running