Organizational Structure Paper
Brianne Fluegel
MGT/230
March 2nd, 2015
Sylvester Taylor

Organizational Structure Paper
There is no better way of knowing a certain organization than actually working for them. Sanofi Pasteur, my employer, is a global pharmaceutical company. Sanofi is broken off into a few different companies, Sanofi Aventis, Sanofi, and Sanofi Pasteur. Each division has its own distinct purpose. My employers purpose at Sanofi Pasteur is formulate, fill, inspect, and package vaccines. The motto of the company is that we may live in a world where no one suffers or dies from a vaccine preventable disease and that is what the company focuses on. There are constantly new trials and on going research for new vaccines, improving the ones we already have, and expanding our reach to the world. Some diseases that we prevent with our vaccines are Influenza, Tetanus, Meningitis, Yellow Fever, Pertussis, and Dengue Fever.
In order for a company that is so large and influential to be successful, the organizational structure of the company must be strong and clear. Sanofi Pasteur operates within a vertical structure. The hierarchy is run from the board of directors, to the CEO and president, to top level managers, mid level managers, and lower level managers. The company just named a new CEO to start on April 1st, 2015 after removing the previous CEO. The board, CEO, and president operate the company from France, not on our actual production campus. On campus we have the president of Industrial Operations who oversees major decisions that happen on campus. There are also a few other top-level managers and mid level managers on campus. In production, we interact with our lower level managers each day and they oversee decisions that need to be made on the production floor.
Sanofi Pasteur may also be seen as a functional organization structure. A functional organization uses departmentalization around specialized activities such as production, marketing, and human resources. Since the company is so large and there are many processes before the final product is released to the public, there are many departments. The departments go from corporate work like human resources, marketing, and sales to production work like filling and packaging. Although each of these departments use a different process, they are all connected. Any product from formulation will go to filling, then inspection, then package to releasing the final product. Each department on campus and within the company has the same set of rules, policies, and procedures they must follow. There are site wide rules and regulations that everyone on campus must abide by. These rules come from the board, which allows the company to remain a vertical organizational structure.
A divisional organization uses departmentalization to group units around products, customers, or geographic regions. Sanofi could have structured their organization using this method because of the global reach and wide variety of products. Although the company could have used this structure, they do everything the opposite of this method. Since the company has many different products, they might have structured each site to focus on one product alone. Instead, each site focuses on many products all at once. They could have divided the organization in units by customers, since we sell vaccines all over the world. Instead, each site ships to wherever the customer is asking for it to go. For example, the company will send Fluzone to Saudi Arabia today and send Yellow Fever to Canada tomorrow. With the broad range of countries that consume the company’s products, they could have divided into geographical regions instead of numerous sites shipping products all over the world.
Sanofi Pasteur’s organizational functions (such as marketing, finance, human resources, and production) influence and determine the vertical organization in a few different ways. The board of directors determines the firm’s strategic direction and review financial performance. The finance division of the company influences these decisions made by the board. If the finance department is showing high profit and proper accounting practices, the board may go ahead with accessing risk and opportunities for even higher profit. The board of directors also ensures ethical, social responsibility, and legal conduct from divisions like human resources. Influence from employee’s ethical behaviors can allow HR to provide feedback to the board about which policies must be strictly enforced and ones that may not need to be. Social responsibility and legal conduct may influence the board from divisions like production. The production areas are the divisions of the firm in which the product that will be delivered to the public is held and formulated. For many reasons, social responsibility needs to be at its highest in these areas considering employees are potentially handling the lives of human beings. Each of these organizational functions can influence the vertical organization in many ways.
Organizational design (such as geographic, functional, customer-based, product, service, hybrid, matrix, marketing channels, and departmentalization) helps Sanofi Pasteur determine that a vertical structure best suits the needs of the company in a few ways. Departmentalization allows the company to operate globally with ease by providing the same structure to each department, with it’s own specific rules and regulations alone with the same policies as the rest of the company. For example, the human resources department in the United States, have the same rules and policies as the human resources department in France does. The hierarchy structure allows the board of directors to implement policies for each department but keep the consistent around the world. The organizational design also helps Sanofi determine the vertical structure suits the company best by customer-based decisions. For example, if Canada orders 150,000 syringes of the Influenza vaccine with specific information printed on the label and carton in which it is packaged, the company will abide by their wishes. Keeping the market customer-based allows the company a wide variety of customers. Certain countries have particular policies for a certain amount of samples they request, different languages printed on their cartons, and a precise amount of product ordered. Sanofi Pasteur will provide exactly what the customer or country is requesting, keeping the sales customer-based.
There are many different structures in which a company can chose to run an organization. These structures can fall under the category of a horizontal structure or vertical structure. Sanofi Pasteur operates on a vertical structure to provide the best decisions for the company, their customers, and the people of the world who use their vaccines.