Interview

Organisation of a meeting between the different parties involved in a project to create a pharmaceutical research laboratory in India.

The different protagonists are: a researcher and his manager, both Indian, sitting side by side with their Swedish counterparts opposite. Also present at the meeting is a judge who will be in charge of hosting the debate and making its final recommendations.

The conversation will focus on the management and governance of the new laboratory, which is mainly financed by the Swedes but located in India for economic, but above all, legal reasons (India benefiting from more flexible rules than Europe regarding pharmaceutical research).

Reminder :

Judge : Lauraline 

Swedish researcher : Louis

Swedish manager : Sébastien 

Indian manager : Sara

Indian researcher : Théo

the judge will be the first protagonist to speak:

"Hello everyone... We are here today to discuss the pharmaceutical research laboratory project with our Indian colleagues here present, who have been appointed to represent Indian interests in this matter. I will in turn give you the floor so that you can clearly explain to me your arguments concerning the management of the site. At the end of the presentations I would give my final recommendations in accordance with the mission given to me. I therefore invite the Swedish manager to take the floor so that we can start.”

The Swedish manager therefore took the floor and began the hostilities:

"I introduce myself, I am [...], as his honor reminded us, so I am Helmer Aldebrink manager of operations in pharmaceutical laboratories based in Sweden of the investment fund AstraZeneca [...]. First of all, I would like to stress the importance, for our Board of Directors, of managing a new laboratory. It seems essential to us to organize the structure according to the experience already acquired in this type of field by our company. The results of our management are clear and have already been presented to our interlocutors because it was one of the leverage points for signing the joint financing of the new laboratory. Moreover, having already worked with Indian teams, it seems essential to me to frame the research teams according to our already proven organization in order to be able to consider the short and medium term objectives more calmly. Indeed, Indian management is too often disorganized, ineffective and unable to account for bottlenecks in failure due to the inability to acknowledge the responsibility of the individuals involved. What worries us even more is the management of working time in India, which can hinder the creation of a company. If employees are given margins to get to work, if lunch breaks are granted for too long during major rush phases, we will be unable to meet the objectives set by management.”

"If I may, the judge takes the floor again and says: I would now like to hear from your Indian counterpart on these issues and perhaps share their own concerns.”

The Indian manager clears her throat and continues:

“So let me introduce myself,  I am Sara Sharma, manager of the Indian group's pharmaceutical branch [india life]. First of all, I would like to react to my counterparty’s arguments. The Western vision of management is indeed very far from our management systems and it seems very difficult for them to understand the advantages of a more personalized and flexible management.

Indeed, I saw during my studies the differences between our two countries.

However, it seems to us that with a majority of Indian employees it is truly essential to have Indian managers as well, in order to facilitate internal communication.

We can as well boast a reputation that is no longer needs to be dismantled in the pharmaceutical field, and that’s why you wanted to invest in our country.

Defining objectives and applying them won’t be the biggest challenge we will face, unlike building team cohesion that combines efficiency and transparency. Having to rely on an informal and relaxed management system like the one in Sweden will certainly lead to a slowdown in the assimilation of objectives by teams. Another bad consequence of this will be the inability to make decisions in real time for managers because they are unable to rely on their teams.”

The Indian researcher suddenly took the floor and said:

"If I may... First of all, I would like to introduce myself, [i’m Rajneesh Chandra] Currently a researcher for the group [IndiaLife]. I would like to intervene to highlight the ideological importance that managerial leadership can have for my colleague here in a country like India, which is based on a patriarchal system. Indeed, if we consider the current context, and your respective arguments, the management of teams by a woman would allow us to inject new managerial techniques from Sweden while at the same time facilitating communication between teams by relying on an Indian manager. Concerning the technique, even if the employees selected for the moment are almost exclusively bilingual, in order to be able to work in collaboration with other Indian laboratories, particularly on the implementation of clinical trials, but also on production and suppliers, we will have to work with the Indian business culture, which is special, particularly regarding schedules and negotiations. It is not uncommon during negotiation phases to have unrealistic counterparts proposed orally by your possible partners in order to enter into a game of seduction to get you to sign but as long as it is not written on a contract then you must be sure to be able to guess the truth of the false.”