The HIV/AIDS epidemic created a new context for the pharmaceutical industry unlike any it had ever encountered. This was not a discrete shock to which the industry could simply adjust through a planned change program, but rather a whole new environment demanding novel and unfamiliar ways of operating. For one thing, the drug companies had to find different ways of collaborating with patients,1 particularly those within the gay community, which had become increasingly politicized, organized and skeptical of the medical establishment. Adapting to such new realities required more than just implementing a single change effort. Rather, it required the pharmaceutical industry to manage cycles of continuous change over the course of years.
The experience of the drug companies illustrates the kind of complex and demanding environment that many companies face. The problem for managers confronting such situations is that the conventional models of organizational change tend to be too simplistic. Most of them present an unrealistic image of change as an episodic phenomenon in which corporate leaders develop and implement elaborate change programs on an occasional basis in response to specific, isolated environmental shocks. Of course, that type of change does occur, but more often the corporate environment is characterized by change that is open-ended, fluid and less closely tied to specific shocks — a continuous process rather than a clearly delineated... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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