The Effects of The Covid-19 Pandemic on Exploitative and Explorative Strategies of Pharmaceutical Industries in Brazil

Abstract

The survey assesses whether changes in highly competitive market environments have led pharmaceutical companies in Brazil to adjust their corporate strategies in order to maintain or expand their performance. The study is of a theoretical-empirical type, and supported by a regression model and content analysis. Data collection applied questionnaires and interviews with managers of the pharmaceutical industries in two moments. The questionnaire referred to previous information (year 2019) and during the Covid-19 pandemic (June and December 2020). The interviews sought answers about future perspectives. As main results, the correlations between Market Turbulence, Exploitation, Exploration, Ambidexterity and Performance were positively validated, with the exception between Market Turbulence and Exploitation in 2019 and between Market Turbulence and Exploitation and also Exploration in 2019 and 2020. It is clear that companies in the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil changed their strategies to maintain or expand their performance in the face of this uncertain scenario, keeping exploration at levels similar to the previous year, but seeking balance in terms of exploitation, in the pursuit of ambidexterity, optimizing advantages of both strategies, with the mitigation of risks inherent to a turbulent scenario.Contribution/Originality: This study contributes to the organizational ambidexterity literature in highly turbulent environments, as is the case of the Covid-19 Pandemic, as well as identifies and analyzes how the pharmaceutical industries in Brazil had to carry out their incremental and or radical innovations in the global health crisis in 2020. ensures organizational survival (Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004;He & Wong, 2004). On the other hand, other researchers argue that balance, on the contrary, is very difficult to achieve, since both strategies present considerably different perspectives and approaches and compete for resources (March, 1991).Environmental turbulence or environmental uncertainty, as Milliken (1987) andMiles, Snow, Meyer, andColeman (1978) prefer, refer to the impossibility of foreseeing the future given a sudden event in the environment, either by an environmental disaster or catastrophe, or when it becomes difficult to obtain the predictability of the