Multico employs over 70,000 people worldwide producing a highly diverse range of products and having a reputation for being an innovative company. It is a relatively stable company, risk adverse with a considerable amount of centralised control. This is reflected in its human resource and industrial relations policies. It has always been non-unionised in the USA and the UK. It could be described in Purcell and Ahlstrand’s terms as a ‘sophisticated human relations’
employer, where pay and benefits are above average, there is an emphasis on internal labour markets, flexible reward structures, employee appraisal systems and development and training plans. These conditions also apply to the salesforce, with common sets of benefits, appraisal and performance criteria and pay grades and structures set across the company.
‘DrugDiv’, a division of Multico, is a relatively small operation within the pharmaceutical industry. It is a ‘niche player’, with a particular expertise in one therapeutic area. Due to its position as the most profitable division of a very successful multinational company, it has been protected from the mergers and acquisitions taking place within the industry, although not from the pressure to maintain high levels of profitability.
The main part of the DrugDiv is involved in the research, development, manufacture and sale of a range of branded products. The branded products section employs around 100 people in the UK and Ireland. Of these, about 70 are sales reps, divided among six regions, each region having its own manager.

The Sales Reps in Branded Products 

The main role of the salesforce is to meet GPs, nurses, prescribers in hospitals and pharmacists in order to find out about prescribing practices and encourage the prescribing of their products, rather than their competitors. Due to UK legislation, whereby prescribers decide on the appropriate branded drugs for patients and no direct sales are permitted, no direct sales can actually be made by reps. Rather, their role entails trying to persuade drug prescribers of the benefits of their products over those of competitors. This requires detailed knowledge of the drugs and their capabilities as well as disease processes and competitor’s products. Because of this reps are relatively well educated and nearly 60%
have a degree qualification. There are equal numbers of men and women and 40% have been a sales rep in the company for more than seven years. There are five rep grades, ranging from level 1 (trainee) to level 5 (around ten years as a DrugDiv rep, employed on similar terms and conditions to first line managers). All reps undertake the same basic job on their individual, geographically determined territories, but more senior reps are expected to achieve greater sales as well as having national and regional responsibilities and supporting less experienced reps. Promotion within the rep grades depends largely on sales but also on length of service. Pay is performance related, linked to a company-wide appraisal system, with a number of different performance criteria. There is no bonus system, that is, no extra pay linked to sales targets.
Training provision within DrugDiv is uneven and tends to be primarily for new recruits, even though Multico’s corporate policy emphasises the importance of training and development for all staff...........

Questions

In analysing the case you are asked to address the following questions:
1. What role did the human resources function have in the introduction of the new technology. What influenced the nature of this role?
2. What involvement mechanisms, if any, did the company rely on in order to obtain ‘employee voice?’ What influenced this approach? Is management style a good indication of how managers will behave in practice?
3. What degree of discretion did the managers have in determining the process of introduction of technical change? How important were product and labour market factors in determining the way it was handled? Evaluate the introduction of technical change in light of the organisation’s business strategy.
4. Would you expect sales reps to respond to the introduction of technical change in the same way as other groups of employees? In what ways might they be similar/different?