Management of Change in Sanofi France

This essay explores the management of change in Sanofi France, including the company's decision to reduce its workforce and focus on non-prescription drug sectors. The role of change agents, continuous and discontinuous change processes, and the importance of power in change management are also discussed.

Running Head: Change Management
Management of Change
Essay
System04104
8/6/2018

Change Management
1
Table of Contents
1. Management of change in Sanofi France......................................................................................2
2. Introduction...................................................................................................................................3
3. Continuous and Discontinuous change Process.............................................................................3
3.1 Role of Change Agent..................................................................................................................4
4. Literature Review..........................................................................................................................4
4.1 Theory ‘O’ and Theory ‘E’............................................................................................................5
4.2 Planning and Preparedness of Change Agent before implementing change...............................6
4.3 Role of Innovative and Creative Thinking in Management of Change.........................................6
4.4 Importance of Change Agent.......................................................................................................6
4.5 Role of Power in Management of Change...................................................................................7
5. The direction of Change (Strategy and Implementation) in Sanofi................................................7
6. Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................9
References...........................................................................................................................................10

Change Management
2
1. Management of change in Sanofi France
Sanofi is a popular Company in the Pharmaceutical industry, which is best known for its
health care services and improving their performance by implementing effective change
strategies all over the world in their organisations. Sanofi is a France based company and
operating its business in more than 145 countries and its 79 manufacturing sites operated in
36 countries where more than 100,000 employees working at Sanofi which representing 145
nations. However, in 2013, the company had to take several decisions about bringing a
change in the organisation because the product sale of Sanofi was declined at a very low level
and that forced the company to replace its CEO in 2015. In 2015, Oliiver Brandicourt joined
as a new CEO of Sanofi and replaced the former CEO Chris Viehbacher, who was fired by
the company after having disputes with the board of members because of continuously bad
performance in healthcare service by the company (Andrew, 2015). Oliiver mainly focused to
change the image of Sanofi with the help of advanced R&D of the company and he decided
to bring a major change in the organisation.
The company focused on making new strategies with its R&D and management in emerging
markets as well as focused on non-prescription drug sectors. Sanofi merged with some small
biotic company and in 2014 and paid $1 billion to Regeneron to conduct research on behalf
as back in 2013. Sanofi lost his number of patented drugs and was about to enter in generic
sales. Merger with other small companies builds pressure on the company as it is still fighting
with the low sales problem in the market. In 2014, the company decided to restructure its
organisation and bring a change by reducing the size of its employees. Sanofi was also found
to be guilty when the French Competition Authority (FCA) found that company was doing
disparagement practices and charged heavy fine which company had to pay as a whopping
amount of fine.
The incidents discussed above and economic pressures and operational inefficiency, forced
the company to bring changes in the organisation. The changes include reducing the
workforce, minimizing the facilities provided in healthcare services, and selling the patents of
the company in France. The CEO of the company and the top managers played an important
role in bringing change in Sanofi. They involved all the employees and people of the
organisation in management of change and provided a perfect framework for implementing
change in the organisation.

Change Management
3
2. Introduction
Due to Globalisation and economic crisis, every organisation has to face such a climate
created by its external factors. Change has become a crucial part of any organisation to
survive in the competitive world. Without change, no organisation can survive because today
is the time of diverse work culture where the transformation of culture, behaviour, learning,
and attitudes occurs. If the organisation is not able to adjust in the massive diverse
environment, the organisation will not be able to handle the different competitive and tough
business situations.
The Sanofi was facing the same problems after 2008 when the global Pharmaceutical
industry was in economic crisis. The economic crisis started from the Subprime crisis and
ended with Eurozone crisis. This company adopted the continuous change process and
decided to reduce the price of health care services. Further, it also reduced the operational
cost to face the economic crisis. The change process of company has been discussed in part
one of the present essay. In the second part, the various theories, and concepts are well
explained that can apply to the Sanofi change of management process. The change adopted
by the company was a good example of bringing a major cultural and operational change in
the organisation without any resistance from employees (Leaver, and Montalban, 2010). The
top executives of the organisation played a major role in implementing the change by
spending more time with the staff and listening to their issues and problems. Further, they
also provided training to managers to handle the situation, which created panic during the
change process. Later in the report, the different models and theories that can be applied to
the ‘Sanofi France’ have been discussed in detail. In the last part of this essay, a conclusion
based on the entire essay is explained that is a short summary of the case.
3. Continuous and Discontinuous change Process
Management of change is defined as the regular process of upgrading an organization in the
form of guidelines, structure, and ability to handle the change because of external and internal
business environment. Change is present in the organization at both process and strategic
level (Langley, et. al., 2013). Therefore, the doubt should not be there related to the
importance to the organization and of its capability rather it is about what needs are required
in future and how change can be explored in the organization (Buchanan and Badham, 2012).

Change Management
4
There are two types of change in the organisation; first is continuous change and the second
is discontinuous change. Continuous change is that change in which there is a connection
between pre and post-change and no sudden change is planned. Actually, continuous change
is a need of internal environment of the organisation. While in discontinuous change is a
sudden change in the organisation and there is no connection with previous or post change
that has already taken place in the organisation (David, 2014). The discontinuous change
always brings problem for the organisation and creates many problems to be adjusted with
the change process. The organisational people have no idea about this type of change neither
they anything planned for it in association with the external environment of the business. In
the above case, management planned a discontinuous change and leaders played a democratic
style of the leadership role in the organisation (Järventie-Thesleff, Moisander, and Villi,
2014).
3.1 Role of Change Agent in Change Process
The role of a change agent is also a crucial part of managing the change process in the
organisation. The role of a change agent for any organisation is of great importance when
internal members resist accepting the change. The external change agency also plays a crucial
role in bringing change. The change agency overviews the need of change related to the
particular situation and provides the suggestion related to the pattern to carry continuous
change in the organisation or a need if a discontinuous change is required. In this case, the
senior manager, team leaders, and top executives of the Board members played an important
role to establish an understanding between the employees who opposed the change and
change agent (generally top leaders of the organisation). Normally people having no idea of
the new change, or they unable to adjust to the new changing environment, resist the change
in the organisation (Lunenburg, 2010).
4. Literature Review
In the era of globalisation and due to continuous organisational change, the role of
managerial skills has been increased in the modern day of the business environment in all
over the world. Due to globalisation, innovation, and technological advancement, many
issues related to the workforce as well as shifting towards social trends have emerged and
change should be done according to the demand of time (Anderson and Anderson, 2010). As
there is no restriction of the organization to carry out business beyond boundaries, this has
motivated the domestic players to introduce their business on the international level and have

Change Management
5
encouraged international organizations to go for the domestic level. Therefore, for expanding
the business in the market many organisations are actually competing for the same product or
services. In recent time, the number of healthcare companies in the pharmaceutical industry is
increasing day by day that cause’s tough competition for other existing players in the industry
(Parry, Grant, and Sestovic, 2013). Corporate culture is a hard thing to get right and it takes
time to grow and evolves. Change in corporate culture is the result of action and reaction.
Actually, it is the enduring effect of every interaction in the organisation regarding bringing
cultural change on the organisation.
4.1 Theory ‘O’ and Theory ‘E’
Sanofi Company decided to compromise on facilities and reduced the operational cost of
drug manufacturing by reduce the number of employees. It helped in reduction of operation
cost by apply ‘Theory O' which was changing the behaviour and culture of the whole
organisation and ‘Theory E' which was focusing on operational cost reduction (Flouris and
Oswald, 2016). The company wanted to bring a cultural change in the organisation by
reducing the size of its workforce. Culture is an important aspect of organisational change. It
can be said that it is possible to lead organisational change using culture as a vehicle (Liu,
Slim, and Scally, 2018). The culture of an organisation influences the change management
process but a change in the culture does not necessarily affect the management of change.
Every manager of the company is well aware of the importance and role of organisational
culture in the company's success. However, it is not always factored into change management
processes. Changing culture is the most frightening process in any organisation because it is
not easy to understand the different culture in the same place with different angles (ILO,
2018). The culture of an organisation is a soft concept where there is no real way of defining
or assessing culture then it is a hard job to measure it. Normally, it is very hard to change the
behaviour of an individual then how a Person can change the culture of the whole
organisation. However, if a leader wants to build a high-performing organisation it is
necessary to focus on bringing cultural change in the organisation.
4.2 Planning and Preparedness of Change Agent before implementing
change
As we all know the most of the changes in the organisation at random in nature which tends
to be discontinuous and raises complex and critical situation in the organisation. Most of the
employees oppose these random changes and it creates complex problems in the

Change Management
6
implementation phase of the change. As per a research study, it has been found that most of
the changes (almost 70%) usually fail because change agent does not understand the
situation, lack of preparation and planning in case of continuous change (Harris, 2018). The
continuous change can only become routine when perceived change as normal and respond
naturally to internal and external business environment otherwise it will move towards
discontinuous change where the change happened in a sudden way and a routine is very
difficult to manage (Karp, 2006).
4.3 Role of Innovative and Creative Thinking in Management of Change
A study was done over media organisation for bringing change in the organisation. Data was
collected, analysed, interpreted, and structured. But it was found that organisation is not
ready to think out of the box rather they just want to remain in their own world as there is no
such world of external business environment and are standing still with their inertia (Dawson
and Andriopoulos, 2014). Therefore, the need to pursue both continuous and discontinuous
change is actually a challenging one. If the organisation wants to be succeeding then it has to
avoid inertia and it should remain open for the innovation and creativity. Sanofi was focusing
on bringing quality medicines and an effective treatment to its customer all over the world
and the core part of this innovation step was Canada. The company wanted to meet the
healthcare needs of Canadians and desperate to go for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).
Sanofi was constantly struggling with their brand value and image (Sanofi, 2018). The
company feel that they could not target the drug market anymore and was consistently facing
challenges from R&D, thereby they think about selling it. Bringing operational change and
reducing the workforce was not an easy task for the company. These needs of the company
required doing things in a unique and systematic way.
4.4 Importance of Change Agent
Another study was done on a change in New Zealand police department where it was found
that the vision and support of the frontline officer were not considered in the change process,
which leads to the failure of the change program. It simply says that if the change is to be
brought in then the change agent must consider the total need of the situation and must
communicate the needs of the change with all the members of the department along with the
consideration of all positive sides of the change (Duncan, Mouly, & Nilakant, 2010). Change
agent was not aware whether to use continuous change or discontinuous and instead of

Change Management
7
continuous change process had used discontinuous process by considering only one side of
the situation for sake of bringing change, which resulted in the unexpected outcome.
4.5 Role of Power in Management of Change
The role of power in organisational change is becoming crucial and very impactful. Power is
related to complexity and diversity, which is the important source in the area of
organisational development and change (Ulrich, Brockbank, Johnson, and Younger, 2013).
The three main viewpoints related to power change in strategies, the role of change agent and
inspiration behaviour related to decision-making determines the success or failure of power
change (Cummings, Bridgman, and Brown, 2016). Generally, employees resist the power
change and impact is rigid of it on the organisation. The power change connected to three
points. The first is the nature of the organisation, second is the analytical framework, and the
third is the change agent. This concerned with two different leadership styles;
transformational leadership style and transactional leadership style. The transformational
leadership mainly deals with the change by considering the interest of co-worker and
employees while the transactional approach of leadership in change management remain
untouched with the co-worker system and mainly focus on the value systems of the co-
worker and provide them with the necessary benefits from this.
5. The direction of Change (Strategy and Implementation) in Sanofi
After the economic crisis when Sanofi France technically was in a big trouble in the
Pharmaceutical industry, the jobs of managers were highly specialized but the
communication level between organisational departments was very poor. Sanofi was
introducing major management changes in order to compromise with healthcare services
provided by the other pharmaceutical company. The company then decided to focus on
bringing change into the working systems and reduced its operational cost without
restructuring, thus the company became more efficient and effective in satisfying the needs of
customers and clients. The change in working systems needs a whole process of culture
change and reduction in operational cost. Hence there are numbers of change process model
applied on focusing on ‘Theory O' which was changing the behaviour and culture of the
whole organisation and ‘Theory E' which was focusing on operational cost reduction.
Because of the restricting of Sanofi, there was a reduction in the number of employees, the
shutdown of some of their drug plants, and outsourcing some of the healthcare services
(Lodorfos, and Boateng, 2012). The second most important change took place is operational

Change Management
8
changes at the group level when the top sells and operational managers of Sanofi feel that
there was inefficiency in the system. Then the top management decided to compromise with
some facilities provided to the customers and educate its employees to get prepared for the
upcoming changes, which help them to compete with other drug manufacturer companies
because all were facing the same economic crisis.
This was the great example of continuous change when organisation trained and makes aware
its employees that results in the change were no surprise for the employees and they were
ready to adopt the change. The management gives ample time for its employees to ready with
possible changes in the organisation. In the above case, the continuous change was applied
because the employees were already aware and ready for the change through mind states and
it was very less impact on their health and wealth interests. It was not the sudden change
rather it was the demand of economic crisis time. The change was successful because of
employees, staff contribution, and their good effort (Weber, Reichert, and Rinderle-Ma,
2012). The management of change process in Sanofi was a successful implementation
because it was not a power change rather it was bringing after lots of discussion with the staff
member of the organisation. Generally, employees resist the power change and impact is
rigid of it on the organisation. The power change connected to three points. The first is the
nature of the organisation, second is the analytical framework, and the third is the change
agent. This concerned with two different leadership styles; transformational leadership style
and transactional leadership style.
Here the role of change agent was so crucial. The role of a change agent is also important in
bringing change in the organisation. The ill preparedness and inappropriate planning of
change agent results in the unexpected outcomes of change implementation. Old approaches
and philosophies to change suggested that if the organisation does not adopt change then it
cannot be effective (Grabs, et. al, 2016). It was also stated that if organisation want to be
successful in future, people need practices to be operative and able to improve their
performance with the help of continuous change (Yilmaz, and Kilicoglu, 2013). In Sanofi, the
top leader of the company such as new Chief executive and the chairperson play the role as a
change agent. The continuous interaction of top leaders with the staff members and the
continued training softened the harsh impact of cultural and organisational change.

Change Management
9
6. Conclusion
In the end, the above case can be concluded as the top management of the Sanofi directed the
change by applying various change process model after the difficult economic crisis time
when all world was suffering. The Sanofi still considered being the big international
Pharmaceutical Company and awarded various times for their cultural change and change
management. The impact of economic crisis forced the company for taking an inappropriate
decision, which was taken by the top management and CEO of the Company, but mostly it
reflects the difficult business environment and hard times that exists for the whole
Pharmaceutical industry. Sanofi decided to go for the organisational restructuring and they
focused on to reduce the operational cost. The major focus of Sanofi behind the change is to
compete with other drug companies who operated the business at very low prices and survive
in the crisis phase. This was the main approach of Sanofi to maintain the efficiency of the
organisation by considering the profit perspective. The role of leaders was so important
during the management of change process, as the CEO of the company always interacted
with the staff, and ensures their presence in all operational processes includes managing
healthcare service and production of medicines and drugs. Overall summarizing the case, we
can say that the management of change of Sanofi was successful because of their strategic
planning and adoption of the proper change process. The continuous model of the change
process ensured that no staff opposed the change process. The decision of top management
related to the reducing the price of its products and reducing the facilities helped them to
survive in economic crisis and now it operates very well today. Despite the success, the
reputation of the Sanofi declined because of compromising with the operational quality of the
health care services and reducing its workforce to maintain the loss and regain its image
again in the market.

Change Management
10
References
Aguinis, H. and Pierce, C.A. (2013) Enhancing the relevance of organizational behaviour by
embracing performance management research. Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 29(1),
pp. 139-145.
Anderson, D. and Anderson, L.A. (2010) Beyond change management: How to achieve
breakthrough results through conscious change leadership. Hoboken, USA: John Wiley &
Sons.
Andrew, W. (2015) Five Big challenges facing Sanofi’s new chief Oliver Brandicourt
(online). Retrieved from- ft.com: https://www.ft.com/content/8cb2611a-b900-11e4-b8e6-
00144feab7de [Accessed: 12/08/2018].
Buchanan, D. and Badham, R. (2012) Power, politics, and organizational change: Winning
the turf game. New Jersey, US: Sage.
Cummings, S., Bridgman, T., and Brown, K.G. (2016) Unfreezing change in three steps:
Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management. Human relations, 69(1), pp. 33-60.
David, F. (2014) Discontinuous change vs continuous adaptation [online]. Available from:
http://www.drdavidfraser.com/2014/08/29/discontinuous-change-vs-continuous-adaptation/
[Accessed 23/6/18].
Dawson, P. and Andriopoulos, C. (2014) Managing change, creativity and innovation. USA:
Sage.
Duncan, M., Mouly, S., & Nilakant, V. (2010) Discontinuous change in the New Zealand
police service–A case study. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 16(1), 6-19.
Flouris, T.G. and Oswald, S.L. (2016) Designing and executing strategy in Pharmaceutical
management. London, UK: Routledge.
Grabs, J., Langen, N., Maschkowski, G. and Schäpke, N. (2016) Understanding role models
for change: A multilevel analysis of success factors of grassroots initiatives for sustainable
consumption. Journal of Cleaner Production, 134, pp. 98-111.

Change Management
11
Grugulis, I. and Wilkinson, A., (2012) Managing culture at Sanofi: hype, hope and
reality. Long Range Planning, 35(2), pp. 179-194.
Harris, S. (2018) What is the Theory of Change? [online]. Available from:
http://www.theoryofchange.org/what-is-theory-of-change/ [Accessed 23/6/18].
ILO (2018) The enormous burden of poor working conditions [online]. Available from:
http://www.ilo.org/moscow/areas-of-work/occupational-safety-and-health/WCMS_249278/
lang--en/index.htm [Accessed 23/6/18].
Järventie-Thesleff, R., Moisander, J., and Villi, M. (2014) The strategic challenge of
continuous change in multi-platform media organizations—A strategy-as-practice
perspective. International Journal on Media Management, 16(3-4), 123-138.
Karp, T. (2012) Transforming organisations for organic growth: The DNA of change
leadership. Journal of Change Management, 6(1), pp. 3-20.
Langley, A.N.N., Smallman, C., Tsoukas, H., and Van de Ven, A.H. (2013) Process studies
of change in organization and management: Unveiling temporality, activity, and
flow. Academy of Management Journal, 56(1), pp. 1-13.
Leaver, A. and Montalban, M. (2010) Sanofi-aventis and the complexity of capitalist
organization. Competition & Change, 14(1), pp.1-22.
Liu, Z., Slim, M.A.M. and Scally, C. (2018) Otitis Externa in Secondary Care: A Change in
Our Practice Following a Full Cycle Audit. International archives of
Otorhinolaryngology, 22(3), p. 250.
Lodorfos, G., and Boateng, A. (2012) The role of culture in the merger and acquisition
process. Evidence from the European chemical industry. Management Decision, 44(10), pp.
1405-1421.
Lunenburg, F. C. (2010) Managing change: The role of the change agent. International
Journal of Management, Business, and Administration, 13(1), pp. 1-6.
Parry, M.F., Grant, B., and Sestovic, M. (2013) Successful reduction in catheter-associated
urinary tract infections: focus on nurse-directed catheter removal. American journal of
infection control, 41(12), pp. 1178-1181.

Change Management
12
Sanofi (2018) Aventis Canada transforms to support Sustainable Business Model [online].
Retrieved from: newswire.ca: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/sanofi-aventis-canada-
transforms-to-support-sustainable-business-model-539796831.html [Accessed: 12/08/2018].
Ulrich, D., Brockbank, W., Johnson, D. and Younger, J. (2013) Human resource
competencies: Responding to increased expectations. Employment Relations Today, 34(3),
pp. 1-12.
Weber, B., Reichert, M. and Rinderle-Ma, S. (2012) Change patterns and change support
features–enhancing flexibility in process-aware information systems. Data & knowledge
engineering, 66(3), pp. 438-466.
Yilmaz, D. and Kilicoglu, G. (2013) Resistance to change and ways of reducing resistance in
educational organizations. European journal of research on education, 1(1), pp. 14-21.