Blog #5 Industry Structure

For the pharmaceutical industry, it varies on every company on how they structure themselves, but most of the time they structure themselves on their products. In general, the structure of a product defines the tasks that must be completed to deliver a product to end-users. An industry’s structure emerges from the various ways firms organize themselves to complete those tasks. Some firms structure themselves to have the product production go straight from start to finish, while others divide the tasks and collaborate on how to produce the product to the consumers. Companies do end up having similar questions on the decision on what their products should be, generic or brand. If gone in either way, the division of tasks is modified to fit that product. Sometimes there is an interpersonal faction to the companies that cater the product to the consumer’s need, like costumer service, only indirectly. But the majority of any company’s workforce may be their R&D (research and development) department. The R&D department basically creates and product and determines it usage, while the rest of the work force, decide where it goes. Because of more competition in recent years resulting from a lot of drugs coming off patent, companies have expanded their R&D departments to develop similar or enhanced versions of already popular drugs. R&D is vastly the most important part of any pharmaceutical company at this point of the industry.

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