The Vigilance Project

I. Rationale/Background

PharMed International

PharMed International is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. It was established two years ago when ValMed and PharmCO merged. PharMed is obligated to keep detailed records of how its drugs perform by relying on sophisticated database such as the Vigilance which will be used by division employees around the globe. The core team responsible for designing and implementing Vigilance has three members in the United States: Frank Lanigan, Carol Reynolds, and Mike Powell; and four members based in France:Didier Amrani, Karine Bareaut, Merline Bucquet and Fabrice Lemaire. In addition to the core team, five subteams were formed. Overall, half of the subteams’ members are located in the United States and half are based in France. Most of the U.S. core and subteam members were previously employees of ValMed. Before the merger, several of them, including all of those on the core team, played key roles in efforts to develop a similar system called Perspective. Several months later, the newly merged organization decided to scrap Perspective in favor of Vigilance. The Perspective team members were disappointed, but understood the rationale for the change in direction.

The Vigilance core teams were introduced to each other virtually and had been working with each other via teleconferences. These teleconferences were frequently cancelled by Didier Amrani, the project manager, without notice and without him having sought input from the rest of the team as to whether there were issues they wanted to discuss. Didier strongly controlled the way meetings were run by restricting the kinds of information that was exchanged and the ways in which it was exchanged. Also, the other French team members seemed to be in accordance to Didier’s behavior. When there was discussion, many