Project Management. Zeropain Project case Essay

Project Management. Zeropain Project case - Essay Example Acquisitions offer one of the quickest ways for a company to grow and improve performance; they also represent the largest area of risk taking. The acquisition of Teutonia Pharma AG by Alpex was a case of a ‘horizontal’ (DePamphilis, 2002, p7) acquisition where both companies were in the same line of business with the intent of finding operational synergy and an effort to diversify into higher growth products and markets. The fact that Teutonia owned a licence from CPW for the European market made it an attractive preposition for Alpex. However, Alpex paid a premium on the basis of sales projections of a product which was not even tested by the original manufacturer. Roll (1986) argues that takeover gains are overestimated, if they exist at all. Any bids made over the market price represent an error and are made on the basis of an overbearing presumption by the bidders that their valuation is correct. The entire handling of Zeropain represents an attempt to justify the acquisition. The basic rules for the testing, positioning, promotion, and launch of a product were ignored by Alpex management – to disastrous consequences. New products are the ‘lifeblood of the research-intensive pharmaceutical industry’ (Taylor et al, 2002, p106-7). Given the huge cost of development, in this case the premium paid, and limitations placed on patent protection at the time of approval for marketing, the need to bring products to market quickly is very real

The roles of learning and motivation in total quality management Essay

The roles of learning and motivation in total quality management - Essay Example widely acknowledged and practiced by successful organizations and firms on a world wide basis; the philosophy originates with the concept of continuous improvement but expands to a wide array of different processes to ensure that quality is the utmost objective of all organizational operations (Terziovski et al., 2000). In addition to that TQM highlights the critical issue of customer satisfaction as a benchmark for measuring, assessing, evaluating and achieving eventually high quality standards in the provision of both services and products. While Total Quality Management is considered a systematic approach to quality, the majority of researchers argue that it is more of a philosophical perspective and view of the organization rather than a practical implementation of systems and tools. According to Coyle-Shapiro (1999) the objective of TQM is to transform an organizational culture towards a culture of quality. Ambroz (2004) posits that the culture is the dominant issue in TQM and most importantly the culture becomes a key ‘ingredient’ for achieving successful TQM. Within the framework of culture two critical issues emerge; the learning orientation of the organization and the employees’ motivation and participation towards managing and continuously improving quality (Dimitriades, 2000; Wilkinson et al., 2003; Yeh, 2003). This paper discusses the role of the learning orientation and the motivation of employees towards this respect. Total Quality Management is the philosophy which places quality at the very top of every organizational operation or process. Adopting a TQM approach to managing quality fairly implies that the organization is transformed to a quality oriented organization; this further implies that the culture of organization is transformed towards a more quality-drive and quality-focus culture. This transformation is not only theoretical but it becomes practical too, when processes and procedures are redesigned or re-configured in order to