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Strategy Change at Minnesota Bio Labs

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Abstract Organizational change occurs when a company makes a transition from its current state to some desired future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to minimize employee resistance and cost to the organization while simultaneously maximizing the effectiveness of the change effort. This paper will present a case study of Minnesota Biolabs, a company that supplied rabbits to the producers of injectable devices and their move from injectable rabbits to Sepsis Detection Test (SDT). Instead of conducting tests in live rabbits, SDT used blood extracted from horseshoe crabs for the tests. After extraction, the crabs were returned to the ocean where they …show more content…

That general manager was typically left alone to operate his or her unit autonomously. Corporate headquarters set annual growth goals for the units and measured their profit and loss. As long as the units performed according to those goals, the managers were paid a bonus and mostly left alone. Strategies, product decisions, and acquisitions were determined by corporate executives in the States and communicated to these country managers. MB’s CEO frequently said that he liked this approach to management because it delineated clear lines of authority and responsibility. Country managers also preferred this autonomy. They were allowed, they believed, to decide on local strategies that best served their customers while maintaining good relation-ships with the national regulatory agencies to which they needed to respond. MB’s exceptional history of sustained, profitable growth reinforced the belief of managers that this was a well-designed organization. The Search for an Alternative tests, in the early years of the 21st century, MB began to look for an alternative method of testing for sepsis infection in injectable products. As animal rights became increasingly important, MB sought a methodology that would leave the animals alive. Because most of MB’s growth over its history had come from acquiring other businesses and integrating their products into the company’s offering, that is what MB executives sought to do now. An opportunity arose when a small, Rhode

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