Homework answers / question archive / Changing environments (Perform)    © Shutterstock Images Management at Work Celgene Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company based in New Jersey, develops cutting-edge drugs in a highly regulated environment

Changing environments (Perform)    © Shutterstock Images Management at Work Celgene Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company based in New Jersey, develops cutting-edge drugs in a highly regulated environment

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Changing environments (Perform)

  

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Management at Work

Celgene Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company based in New Jersey, develops cutting-edge drugs in a highly regulated environment. Areas such as informatics and functional genomics evolve on a daily basis, as do the regulations that control the pharmaceutical industry. The stem cell lines Celgene needs for research are very expensive and can be hard to acquire.

At Celgene, the environment isdynamic  

 because of thepace of change  

 andcomplex  

 because of thenumber of factors that are changing  

 . Resources arescarce  

 .

 

Points:

1 / 1

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Explanation:

When analyzing external environments, consider the following three dimensions:

1.	Environmental Change. It is important to know how quickly the environment is changing, because this tells you whether the decisions you make today are likely to hold true tomorrow.
2.	Environmental Uncertainty. It is important to know how many aspects of the environment are changing, because every time one aspect changes, it will affect other parts of the environment and the organization. When many parts of the environment change at once, it is harder to determine what the environment might look like in the future.
3.	Resource Scarcity. It is important to know if resources are abundant or scarce. When resources are scarce, it is more difficult to predict their availability and cost.

The environment for Celgene is dynamic, because technology and regulations are constantly changing. It is complex, because so many aspects of the environment are changing at once: Science, medicine, technology, and legal factors all interact when a single factor changes. Although stem cell lines are only one type of resource used by the company, the fact that they are so expensive and hard to come by make them scarce.

The managers at Celgene are facing conditions ofhigh  

 uncertainty. This means that it will bedifficult  

 for them to make strategic decisions about the types of products the company will offer in the future.

 

Points:

1 / 1

Close Explanation

Explanation:

Based on what you learned in the first part of this question, you can tell that Celgene is operating in conditions of high uncertainty. The level of uncertainty is directly related to the ease with which managers can make decisions about how to run the company. The more uncertainty there is, the harder it is to make good long-term, strategic decisions, because the company might be faced with an entirely different environment in the near future.