IntroductionThere is no one definite organizational structure and design that works for all businesses, but almost all types of businesses have some degree of organizational structure and design that divides, groups, and coordinates job tasks in that business. This group report is on Beximco Pharma Ltd. Ltd. which is one of the leading and most diversified trading companies in Bangladesh. This report includes details of the Organizational structure and design of Beximco Pharma Ltd.. Details of the company’s management process was obtained from Official Website of Beximco Pharma Ltd. The report contains the company background, company SWOT analysis, Organizational structure and design. Six Key Elements in Organizational Design Organizational design is engaged when managers develop or change an organization's structure. Organizational Design is a process that involves decisions about the following six key elements: I. Work Specialization Describes the degree to which tasks in an organization are divided into separate jobs. The main idea of this organizational design is that an entire job is not done by one individual. It is broken down into steps, and a different person completes each step. Individual employees specialize in doing part of an activity rather than the entire activity. II. Departmentalization It is the basis by which jobs are grouped together. For instance every organization has its own specific way of classifying and grouping work activities. There are five common forms of departmentalization: 1. Functional Departmentalization. As shown in the Figure 2-1, it groups jobs by functions performed. It can be used in all kinds of organizations; it depends on the goals each of them wants to achieve. Figure 2-1Functional Departmentalization example Different aspects on this type of departmentalization: Positive Aspects Negative Aspects o Efficiencies from putting together similar specialties and people with o Poor communication across functional areas common skills, knowledge, and orientations o Coordination within functional area o In-depth specialization o Limited view of organizational goals 2. Product Departmentalization. It groups jobs by product line. Each manager is responsible of an area within the organization depending of his/her specialization Figure 2: Product Departmentalization example Source: Bombardier Annual Report Different aspects on this type of departmentalization: Positive Aspects Negative Aspects o Allows specialization in particular products and services o Managers can become experts in their industry o Closer to customers o Duplication of functions o Limited view of organizational goals 3. Geographical Departmentalization. It groups jobs on the basis of territory or geography. Figure 2-3: Geographical Departmentalization example Different aspects on this type of departmentalization: Positive Aspects Negative Aspects o More effective and efficient handling of specific regional issues that arise o Serve needs of unique geographic markets better o Duplication of functions o Can feel isolated from other organizational areas 4. Process Departmentalization. It groups on the basis of product or customer flow. Figure 2-4: Process Departmentalization example Different aspects on this type of departmentalization: Positive Aspects Negative Aspects o More efficient flow of work activities o Can only be used with certain types of products 5. Customer Departmentalization. It groups jobs on the basis of common customers Figure 2-5: Customer Departmentalization example 1. Different aspects on this type of departmentalization: Positive Aspects Negative Aspects o Customers' needs and problems can be met by specialists o Duplication of functions o Limited view of organizational goals III. Chain of command It is defined as a continuous line of authority that extends from upper organizational levels to the lowest levels and clarifies who reports to whom. There are three important concepts attached to this theory: Authority: Refers to the rights inherent in a managerial position to tell people what to do and to expect them to do it. Responsibility: The obligation to perform any assigned duties. Unity of command: The management principle that each person should report to only one manager. IV. Span of Control It is important to a large degree because it determines the number of levels and managers an organization has. Also, determines the number of employees a manager can efficiently and effectively manage. V. Centralization and Decentralization More Centralization More Decentralization Environment is stable Lower-level managers are not as capable or experienced at making decisions as upper-level managers. Lower-level managers do not want to have say in decisions Decisions are significant. Organization is facing a crisis or the risk of company failure. Company is large. Effective implementation of company strategies depends on managers retaining say over what happens. Environment is complex, uncertain. Lower-level managers are capable and experienced at making decisions. Lower-level managers want a voice in decisions. Decisions are relatively minor. Corporate culture is open to allowing managers to have a say in what happens. Company is geographically dispersed. Effective implementation of company strategies depends on managers having involvement and flexibility to make decisions VI. Formalization It refers to the degree to which jobs within the organization are standardized and the extent to which employee behavior is guided by rules and procedures. Beximco Pharma Ltd. Ltd.: Brief History and Achievements Beximco Pharma Ltd. Ltd. is a leading edge pharmaceutical company and is a member of the Beximco Group, the largest private sector industrial conglomerate in Bangladesh. The firm started operation in 1980, manufacturing products under the licenses of Bayer AG of Germany and Upjohn Inc. of USA and now have grown to become nation's one of the leading pharmaceutical companies, supplying more than 10% of country's total medicine need. Today Beximco Pharma Ltd. Ltd.manufactures and markets its own `branded generics' for almost all diseases from AIDS to cancer, from infection to asthma, from hypertension to diabetes for both national and international markets. Beximco Pharma Ltd. Ltd. manufactures a range of dosage forms including tablets, capsules, dry syrup, powder, cream, ointment, suppositories, large volume intravenous fluids, metered dose inhalers etc. in several world-class manufacturing plants, ensuring high quality standards complying with the World Health Organization (WHO) approved current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP). They also contract manufacture for major international brands of leading multinational companies. Beximco Pharma Ltd. : Organizational Structure BP operates its business through extensive departmentalization as needed. This is for specified effectiveness of the tasks. The business activities of BP, BIL and PCL are directed, controlled and monitored from the head office of Beximco Pharma Ltd located at 7A, Dhanmondi, Dhaka. Being a leading Pharmaceutical company in the country it employs good number of people in different departments to keep its business thriving. The following major departments coordinate the activities of BP, BIL and PCL: Central product management (CPM) department Planning department Purchase Department Sales department Sales education and training department Medical services department Business Research & Development department International marketing & fine chemicals department MIS department Finance and Accounts department CPM CPM stands for Central Product Management that takes care the total marketing of a product. It includes i. selection of new product ii. design of new product iii. design of packaging iv. Introduction of the product to the market and others Planning Department The planning department ensures smoothness of total operation of BPL. It is concerned with the following: i. The production planning and ii. Raw material procurement. iii. Inventory Planning Based on sales forecast from the CPM planning department breaks up the yearly sales forecast to monthly basis and develop the planning of production, purchase and stock maintenance. It also initiates the negotiation of purchase. It refers the suppliers’ quotations to the purchase departments. Planning department try to ensure buffer stock of three months of all the raw materials to meet any untoward events or circumstances in market. Purchase Department The purchase department is concerned with all the purchases of BPL. Apart from purchasing it keeps the record for tracking the costs of the company. This department works in coordination with planning department for negotiation and price fixing. Sales Department To follow the recent management of the business world the sales department has been completely separated from marketing department. It sets the forecast in coordination with marketing department and upon fixation of the sales it is the responsibility of the sales department to realize the yearly sales volume forecasted. Medical representatives are farthest unit of the organization. They are to generate demand for products. They are trained before sent for field. Training Department Training department is to provide the training to the medical representatives of the company. This training is necessary to improve the quality of job-related function. The curriculum of training varies from group to group. The department basically offers 4 types of training programs: Induction Training Programs (for MRs ) Supervisory Management Programs (for FSs) Advanced Supervisory Management Refresher Training Programs (for everyone in sales in as and when basis). The MRs are virtually the direct product of this training department. The selling skill of the MRs are dig out through the training session on that ultimately BPL depends for attaining its target sale. MIS Department The MIS department is the department that takes care of total automation of BPL. It supports the hardware and network of the company and the factory. It maintains the automation regularly and keeps the pace with the global IT. The MIS department also maintains the radio-link between the factory and the head-office. Though separately dealt before, recently software department has been incorporated with MIS department. This software section is to work for developing software solutions as per organizational requirements. It also supports the other companies’ requirements of the chemical division. The facilities of MIS department are available round the clock for 24 hours. MSD MSD stands for Medical Services department. It is a unique department in this industry as BPL established this first ever in order to create easy relationship through using the professional linkage with the doctors, the ultimate customer of the pharmaceutical companies. This is a supporting department that provides services (e.g., slide preparation, providing different journals, books etc.) to the health professional on different issues and receives feedback from them. It arranges seminars on different issues such as diseases and their cures in different parts of the country. It publishes a special ‘Medical Newsletter’ quarterly and sends the current issues to the enlisted doctors at free of cost. The newsletter consists of important, recent medical articles. It also provides news gathered from Internet and allows free browsing facility for the doctors. Thus it helps the medical community and at the same time increases the company image outside. Business Research & Development Department The department began its operation for the purpose of working on market development – both domestic and international. It assists product development and marketing of new products. The product development process is as follows: Quality Assurance (in each stage in factory) and Quality Control improvement is another concern of this department. It suggests the SOP (Standard Operating Guideline), which is the biggest part of GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices). It is mention that by practice BPL follows the highest standard of quality suppose as suggested by WHO. Purchase and material management coordination is also included within responsibilities of this department. International Marketing It is note that BPL has started marketing its product internationally. This department is concerned with the international promotion and marketing of BPL finished products and basic chemicals. It analyzes country analysis in terms of health status, economy, market and its growth, legal bounds of entering the market with its product etc to find the feasibility to market its products. So far it has 18 export outlets. Multimedia Department BPL is the only pharmaceutical company that has a multimedia department. This department is helping in the promotional activities of BPL. It designs medical videos for the doctors. The color, size, shape, lettering etc. of the text are carefully selected to attract the target audience easily. It has designed some Kiosks that have been placed in some medical colleges for the students to learn and be trained. The department also provides audio-visual aids to other departments of the company and also assists to decorate the publications. Finance and Accounts Department There are three sections in this department. Treasury section Accounts section Cost and budget section Treasury section deals with banks and bills. It also looks after the cash planning and management. Accounts section is there to maintain all records and transactions. it is automated with aid of the software named MAPICS (Manufacturing Accounting Planning Information Control System). Cost and budget section identifies the cost centers and prepares the budget. Cost section calculates the product cost and cost of goods sold. The annual budget preparation starts at October. Budget review is done quarterly (internally) and half-yearly (by the top management). It compares the budgeted and actual sales and expenses and prepares reports on them. Evaluate and Analyze Beximco Pharma Ltd.'s Organizational Structure Let's examine Beximco Pharma Ltd.'s organizational structure with the Six Key Elements mentioned in Section 2. I. Work Specialization As we can recall from the Organizational Structure Chart in the previous section, different jobs and tasks are grouped and assigned to different divisions or departments based on the skills or specialties in that department. That is: 1. Employees in Administrative Units may not have the skills to work in Business Units or vice-versa. 2. Most of Beximco Pharma Ltd.'s top managers are promoted from or within the departments or divisions that have similar functions and responsibilities. Is work specialization high in Beximco Pharma Ltd.? Yes, indeed, but not in the sense of assigning a specific and repetitive task to a particular unskilled worker. BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD. delegates its tasks and jobs to workers on a larger scale. It is on the departmental level: each department or division has teams comprised of very skillful employees that concentrate on their own line of products and responsibilities. II. Departmentalization: BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD.'s departmentalization is mixed with Functional and Product Departmentalization. As seen in the Organizational Structure Chart, after separating the organization into 2 big parts, the Business Units and the Administrative Units, each part is divided into different departments and divisions: Business Units has sub-units that are separated based on Product Departmentalization. BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD. has separated this part into eight different areas to research and develop their own specialized field to successfully meet the needs of consumers. Administrative Units consists departments that are departmentalized by Functions such as Marketing, Financial, Human Resource, and Global Development. III. Chain of Command The chain-of-command, as the textbook indicated, has far less importance today in many organizations including BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD.. The evidences are: The authority managers impose upon their teams is kept to a minimum because employees of BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD..are experts at what they do. Instead of handing orders from top to bottom, managers in each of the different business units merely "oversee" their progress and performance. "The obligation or expectation to perform" falls on individuals or teams. That is, while the top managers only "oversee" the operations without actually assigning tasks to each individual, the teams take on the responsibilities to divide work among themselves and carry out operations in order to attain BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD.’s objectives. As a result, unity of command is almost non-existent since the majority of employees are working in teams (they report to each other, report to the manager who oversees them, and may report to other managers when different resources are needed from other departments), so it may not be the case that each person only reports to only one manager. Because the responsibilities mainly fall on teams in BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD., the authority is not strongly emphasized and results in an irregular line of authority. Therefore, Chain of Command is not very significant in BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD.. IV. Span of Control The trend in recent years has been toward larger spans of control because it reduces costs, speeds up decision making, increases flexibility, gets closer to customers, and empowers employees. Our research indicates that BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD. is a part of this trend as well. Here are some hints: Hint 1: Many of BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD.'s top executives are in charge of many divisions or have a wide range of responsibilities. Hint 2: It seems that workers have to be very skillful and well trained for working in BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD.'s departments and divisions. Evidence as follows: Especially in BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD.'s business units, employees seem to be able to work in teams, make decisions, and execute operations without direct supervision from top management. It is pretty remarkable that a company has almost 2,800 employees over the country with a tremendous amount of business operational activities, yet its Administrative Units have only 4 departments. If the employees are not well- trained, it would be hard to maintain smooth operation and communication throughout the company. One must understand that every managers cannot attend to all of the different divisions that are assigned to them and make all of the decisions for them. Therefore, they must entrust teams at the division level with the power to make decisions that are fitting to BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD.'s goals. Furthermore, while we suspected that BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD. may have wide span of control from reading about top managers' roles (from hint 1), hint 2 confirmed our assumption because skilled workers are required for a company that takes this approach. BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD. can't possibly operate so efficiently and effectively with a wide span of control if their employees are not very skilled or well-trained. V. Centralization or Decentralization? From what we have seen so far, BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD. appears to be a fairly decentralized company. As mentioned for several times, QUALCOM has the following qualities that make it appear to be decentralized: Teams in each department/division make their own decisions in their projects based on their knowledge and skills while fulfilling divisions and/or company's goals Managers may rely on teams' expertise and experiences during departmental or divisional decision making such as setting goals. Managers also oversee the teams and offer suggestions when needed All departments and divisions may need resources from each other and therefore organizational level decisions cannot be made by just one department or an individual Since the decision making is not concentrated at a single point in the organization, it makes BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD.a decentralized company. VI. Formalization in BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD. BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD.spent great effort to make it's employees' working environment flexible without many boundaries. Simultaneously, every employee is persuaded and encouraged to live life as a learning process. With this approach, BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD.has created a highly intelligent and highly skilled workforce that is expected to achieve company goals with great deal of freedom. It is just like the textbook says: "Where formalization is low, job behaviors are relatively unstructured and employees have a great deal of freedom in how they do their work." COMPANY SWOT ANALYSIS A planning tool used to analyze an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Such factors of Beximco are summarized in the following table: Strength High Employee Empowerment Capability to Bring Innovation &high product differentiation Outstanding Product Quality World Class Professional Service Weakness Insufficient Working Capital Not Operating in Low Cost Market Corruption within the organization Opportunities Ability to Retain Growth & Market Focus in Difficult Operating Situations Ability to Exploit Opportunities of Patent Law as an LDC in International Market. Threat Strong Competitors in Domestic & International Market. Political Instability Government & International Regulations. Rising Trend of Material Price. Conclusion -- Is BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. traditional or contemporary? At first glance, BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. seems to employ two types of traditional designs in its structure. One is Functional Structure that applies to its Administrative Units in which departmentalization is based on the function of the departments. The other is Divisional Structure which applies to its Business Units where each division's teams are responsible for performance and have strategic and operational authority while the top management acts as an external overseer to coordinate and control the various divisions. However, BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. also demonstrates signs of Contemporary Organizational Design. By exhibiting the characteristics of a team structure, a design in which an organization is made up of teams that work toward a common goal, BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD. was able to provide expertise in every specific field. Also, characteristics of a Learning Organization are thrown into the mix. Beximco Pharma Ltd. Rabbur Reza, chief operating officer, has won the prestigious 'Australian Alumni Excellence Awards-2014' in the category of business and leadership. By receiving this award, BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD. demonstrated that they are a company that builds on learning and development. This recognition highlights BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD.'s commitment to employee development and their focus on supporting learning with their overall business objectives. Works Cited Internet Resource: BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD.Annual Report: www.beximco-pharma.com/financial-reports.html BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD.Company Information: www.beximco-pharma.com BEXIMCO PHARMA LTD. LTD.Press Release Archives: www.beximco-pharma.comour-products.html Textbook Robbins, Stephen P. and Coulter, Mary. Management. 11th Global Edition. Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.