Impact of Internal Characteristics
Any company’s external environment is considerably impacted by its internal characteristics, such as sustainability, organizational culture, enterprise resource planning (EPR), and multiple others. The sustainability indicator of an organization shows how successfully this or that organization is able to withstand external and internal factors. The higher the level of this criterion, the faster the company makes competent decisions (Lipka et al., 2017). The company Astra Zeneca shows a high level of sustainability; each year, the corporation attracts more partners and investors. The corporation also has the ability to expand its representative offices in different countries of the world. This aspect is attractive to customers who are willing to purchase drugs from a thriving manufacturer. By adjusting to various changing conditions, the corporation provides itself with a state of equilibrium, which means that it increases its competitiveness.
Sustainability refers to a company’s initiatives associated with the improvement of environmental safety as well, and AstraZeneca’s environmental activism has a significant impact on improving the environment. According to the company’s report, since 2015, it has managed to reduce emissions of harmful gases by 59 percent; water use has been reduced by 17 percent (AstraZeneca, 2022). The company gets 100 percent of its electricity from renewable resources (AstraZeneca, 2022). In addition, its high level of efficiency means that there is no significant uncertainty, chaos, and lack of chaos in the company’s operations.
Organizational culture in Astra Zeneca also contributes to its growth and development as it is based on the ideas of close and open interaction between all departments and financial activity transparency. Employees of the company pay special attention to the approach of drug development with maximal responsibility for public health and environmental safety. The important component of the organizational culture of this corporation is the aspiration to the active introduction of the newest technologies and scientific discoveries for the purpose of increasing of ecological compatibility of production (Tama, 2019). AstraZeneca provides annual reports on financial, scientific, and environmental activities. A set of corporate values is publicly available. The above-mentioned components of the organizational culture, which are publicly disclosed, can contribute to profitable cooperation with organizations and investors who share Astra Zeneca’s values.
In terms of enterprise resource planning (EPR), the organization is building a fairly competent strategy. It consists of investing the company’s assets in promising scientific and environmental projects. The corporation provides support to young specialists who develop programs to optimize or improve the quality of production. A large part of the income is used to improve branch operations and to build new ones. The company’s resources are aimed at intensive and extensive development of the company. The EPR criterion makes AstraZeneca look quite attractive in the investment market. This corporation has a fairly low level of volatility, which means that per unit time, there is a slight increase in the price of production products. This indicator allows the company to attract more clients. Moreover, the availability of drugs has a positive impact on public health.
Weisbord’s Six-Box Model
Weisbord’s Six-Box Model includes six categories – purposes, structure, relationships, rewards, leadership, and helpful mechanisms – that may be used by Astra Zeneca to “diagnose” its current state in order to identify strategies for stable growth and development. Its purposes derive from the clarification of its missions, vision, and target population, and the structure refers to the business design, while relationships imply the level of employees’ communication and integration for successful goal achievement. In turn, rewards from how workers are awarded for their efforts, leadership is associated with inspiring direction and guidance, and helpful mechanisms are systems and processes that support the whole business. All in all, the analysis may help Astra Zeneca define its major strengths and weaknesses in order to elaborate on initiatives related to particular aspects of development.
Impact of Informal Structure on Decision-Making
Traditionally, the decision-making process in a company is associated with the activities of the manager and director, as well as with the tools and means that will achieve the goal. According to the new approach, the management process is based on the conditionality of the external environment and its factors (Matuszny, 2020). An organizational culture with a well-formed value system largely determines management activities. An essential part of the corporate culture at AstraZeneca is environmental thinking. For example, when selecting production materials, preference will be given exclusively to biodegradable ones. Environmental safety will be taken into account in all operational and strategic decisions to ensure an exceptionally positive impact on the environment.
References
AstraZeneca. (2022). Resources. Web.
Lipka, A., Winnicka-Wejs, A., & Waszczak, S. (2017). The experiment in the management of human capital creativity. Journal of Economics and Management, 27, 58–74. Web.
Matuszny, M. (2020). Building decision trees based on production knowledge as support in decision-making process. Production Engineering Archives, 26(2), 36–40. Web.
Tama, K. M. (2019). Organizational culture mapping analysis through Organizational Culture Assessment (OCA). Masyarakat, Kebudayaan Dan Politik, 32(2), 186. Web.