ABSTRACT
In this second empirical chapter of the book, the case of the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, is examined as an example of a bureaucratic organization capable of undertaking advanced science-based innovation work. While Volvo Cars are operating in an industry characterized by lower margins, hyper-competition and an emphasis on cost-cutting, the pharmaceutical industry (although sharing some of these characteristics) also have the issue of new drug development, which consumes an increasing amount of financial resources in society. As opposed to the automotive industry, wherein most companies have adopted Japanese concurrent engineering management procedures and thereby have substantially shortened the new product development process, the new drug development process in the pharmaceutical industry is, in fact, consuming more time and money now than ever. The most widely recognized explanation for this predicament is the increase in close regulation of the industry by the authorities. Innovation work in the pharmaceutical industry is controlled and regulated from outside of the firm. This, however, does not suggest that there are no opportunities for creative and innovative work in the pharmaceutical industry; the last ten years has brought a veritable explosion of new scientific practices and know-how within what can be called the “new biology”, that is, in domains such as genetics, genomics and proteomics, providing new means for developing drugs targeting human diseases. Although, the automotive and the pharmaceutical industries share some characteristics, there are areas where they differ substantially. What this chapter intends to show here, notwithstanding these intersections and divergences, is that large, functionally organized and hierarchical organizations are fully capable of orchestrating innovative work.
