How Beth Israel West Side Comprehensive Cancer Center in NY Operates with Aptium Oncology - Essay Example

?How does Beth Israel west side comprehensive cancer center in NY operate with the collaboration of Aptium oncology and continuum health care partners On July 14, 2010, Beth Israel Medical Center, a non- profit organization has come up with a dedicated cancer research center on its West side campus known as Beth Israel Comprehensive Cancer Center in a bid to extend further advancements in cancer care services at a plush Chelsea site with 88,000 square feet of space, located at 325 West 15th Street in Manhattan. In addition to providing cancer care services with the best of cancer specialist faculties, this new establishment will bring with it a whole new spectrum of cancer treatments that include medical, surgical and radiation oncology, breast cancer treatments, diagnostic imaging and cancer supporting research program. Beth Israel Comprehensive Cancer Center is a chief product of Continuum Cancer Centers of New York (CCCNY). CCCNY, a non- profit organization, beforehand used to look after more than 6,000 new cancer patients per year. This new addition to CCCNY makes it one of the biggest and most effective multi- site cancer research centers of the North East (Beth Israel Medical Center Officially Opens Its Manhattan West Side Comprehensive Cancer Center, 2010). The Beth Israel Comprehensive Cancer Center will be working in collaboration with Aptium Oncology, Inc., a Los- Angeles based prime profit organization with more than 25 years of practice in cancer research program development that provides support and enhancement in oncology related programs to private physicians and hospitals. It also provides consulting and organizational expertise to leading institutions around U.S. Aptium Oncology also boasts of having a large and advanced clinical research facility in cancer through the Aptium Oncology GI Cancer Consortium (AGICC), and in myeloma through the Aptium Oncology Myeloma Cancer Consortium (AMyC) (Research, 2011). This paper tries to investigate the challenges of an alliance formation between the non- profit and a profit organizations running the Beth Israel Cancer Center and how these two companies work together to make the venture successful. Alliance features: Alliances between organizations are becoming very common in recent times since working in an alliance is often considered advantageous for organizations. Here one needs to first understand the definition of Alliance and the differences in the concepts of Alliance, Partnerships and Collaborations. Alliance is a formal agreement that establishes an association among partnering organizations to achieve a particular aim wherein both organizations agree to share the responsibility through common goals. Partnerships generally mean co existing and usually voluntary relationships among participating groups that are ready to share responsibility of achievement of certain specific goals. Partnerships also contain mutual sharing of available resources, risks and returns realized on terms of pre- agreed legal bindings. Collaborations, on the other hand is a combination of the previous two concepts and is generally used to describe various different joint or multiple efforts. This term is more often than not used to refer long lasting and durable relationships wherein the parties join hands to bring separate organizations into an innovative structure with full fledged commitment towards fulfilling a common mission. The associating parties jointly optimize the resources available to them and also share the outcomes and the rewards. Regardless of the name of the associative relationship, working together requires proper policy formulation and policy formulation can be done through thinking backed with evaluation (Evaluation and Collaboration, n.d. pp.1). “Alliances are a big part of this game [of global competition]…They are critical to win on a global basis….The least attractive way to try to win on a global basis is to think you can take on the world all by yourself.” Jack Welch, CEO, General Electric (Speech at Harvard Business School, October 28, 1987) In this “Age of Alliances” cross-sectional partnership among profit organizations and non- profit organizations will continue to augment in frequency and complexity. There can be various interventions propelling the alliance between a profit and a non- profit organization, be it political, economic or social pressures, governments cutting their expenditures on non-profit organizations to maintain a balanced budget approach and private companies being rearranging their approach towards philanthropy and formulating engagement norms having higher relevance and better business impact. The nature of a strategic alliance largely depends on the competitiveness of the partnering firms, the nature of associative activity and the aspect of the level of co operation among the partnering firms. There are mainly four facets of the extent of organizational behavior. The intensity of potential conflict among the associated firms leads to “conflict potential”. In a joint working environment, firms are often concerned about the ongoing competition from the rivals in the market. This analysis therefore considers both the tactical and strategic conflict potentials vital in a collaborative alliance. Table 1: Types and levels of severity of Alliances Source: Yoshino, 1995, pp.19 Pro competitive Alliances are basically inter-industrial value relationships based on chain rules, as between a producer and the supplier. In recent times, this is being given more attention as the nature of its strategy implementation is well recognized. In this case, firms do not usually tend to be rivals. Since the conflict potential is quite low in this case, strategic aims of safeguarding unique competencies and learning are not very prevalent, and the partnering concerns are more interested in maintaining strategic stability and value addition. Noncompetitive alliances are more of an inter industry connection amongst non-rival companies where level of interaction is quite high. Therefore the firms do not work enough to maintain flexibility in the ranks and it is more important to protect core competencies. Learning ranks very high on the associated firm managers’ agenda. Competitive alliances differ from non competitive alliances since partners are better equipped to be the direct competitors of each other in the product market. In this case, strategic stability is not maintained to the fullest since value multiplication is more significant. Leakage of internal information is considered detrimental to the alliance, so protection of central strategic competencies is considered important by the managers. Precompetitive alliances conglomerate firms from different and unrelated industries to work on aptly defined activities such as newer technology creation. Working together helps them develop a new product on which they individually have no expertise. So, joint activity is required with limited interaction among the partnering firms. Strategic flexibility is being maintained with proper publicity of the product (Yoshino & Rangan, 1995, pp.3- 18). The degree and form of alliance between the non- profit and profit organization can be seen as a continuum that is evolving from low to high engagement. Relationships arrive in many forms and are at a continual process of evolution over time. The nature of this relationship can be envisioned as a progressive stage from “humanitarian” to “transactional” to “integrative”. In the initial “philanthropic” stage, the relationship is primarily that of charitable donor and receiver. In the transactional stage, resource exchanges among the partnering organizations start taking place; this is a migratory stage that falls in the category of cause-associated marketing arrangements. The final stage is the “integrative” stage where the missions, aims and activities of both the partners start amalgamating into more collective purposeful actions and organizational integrity. Traditionally many organizations would engage in pure philanthropy, supporting non-profit organizations with donations of goods and services and grants. However, the outlook has now changed and the organizations are starting to progress to an advanced level of collaboration. As the alliance progresses along the continuum, the magnitude of available resources, importance of common motive, scope of activities, level of interaction, social value additions as well as managerial complexity start growing (Wymer & Samu, 2003). This conceptualization provides collaborators a chance to identify the level of association on the continuum realized on the basis of how the discussions among the parties are going on and where do they want this association to go. Cross sectoral association framework contains certain forces responsible for propelling the evolutional advances of the association. Four main “Alliance Drivers” have been identified that work closely to increase the potency of the collaborative relationship. The first driver can be identified as the strategy, aims and value closeness of the partnering organizations. The more closely knit the aims of the two organizations are, the more vigorous and illustrative the association is likely to be. Similarly, the more fitting the partner’s values are, the greater is the chance of the alliance to be more cohesive and closely associated. Secondly, there is scope of personal connection and interaction among the members which are created, maintained and increased by people. Social partnerships are the sole motivational reasons behind the emotional connection that an individual makes with the purpose. This motivation is what binds the organizations together. The third driving force to be identified is that of continuous process of learning wherein the partners are engaged in continuous learning of the collaborative processes and how it can prove helpful in value addition. Clarity and hunger to find newer and innovative processes of forwarding this relationship are being in the process of continual development (Austin,1999, pp.3-5). Beside these, there are certain other factors that need to be discussed. First and foremost, any deep association requires enough attention. The alliance, in this light, can be seen as a high priority association having high internal clarity and which can obtain careful engagement by the main decision makers. The partnership becomes a very important facet of the organization’s leadership. Then, there is the need for the partners to possess the means to communicate regularly, efficiently and effectively so as to realize the full potential of the alliance. For this, multiple channels of formal as well as informal communications are used. Thirdly, conscientiousness of the management of the association should be clearly defined to both the partnering organizations and performance- based incentives should be directed to those managers who work closely to ensure success of the relationship. Finally, expectations from each other should be clearly pre- defined to each partner. This helps to increase mutual accountability and helps creation of value(Creech, 2006, pp.3-7). The alliance between Beth Israel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Aptium Oncology is more of an “integrative” continuum. Let us try and track the progress of this alliance from the start. The first stage, as we know, is “philanthropic”. In this stage, we can see that before this alliance, Aptium Oncology, Inc. used to provide services for the St. Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center (SVCCC) which was established with the financial support of Aptium Oncology. But with St. Vincent’s declaration of its bankruptcy and corresponding shut-down, it has gone on to form a partnership with Beth Israel. The second stage is that of “transition” which is characterized by mutually befitting alliance associability. In this stage, Beth Israel and Aptium Oncology, Inc signs a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU). According to the terms of agreement, this transfer of services will allow the cancer centre to provide critical care to thousands of SVCCC patients who visit to the place around 60,000 on an annual basis. The third and final stage is “integrative” where the partnering organizations touch new highs and reach higher levels of association in their aims and realizations. Since 2010, the doctors and researchers of SVCCC and Beth Israel are working in tandem to make this project successful (Joint Statement From Beth Israel Medical Center And Aptium Oncology, Inc, 2010). Aptium Oncology has also worked to find and bring the cream of oncologists and cancer researchers to this institute to make this venture a real successful one. The West wing now boasts of a huge establishment wherein continual research and treatment of various types of cancer including skin cancer and breast cancer is now taking place. Alliance Challenges: It is often argued that alliances or collaborations are not really competent process of pursuing a business. All partners are required to do and get something although their efforts are never really equal. An honest collaboration is truly interactive, associative and voluntary. It is however time consuming and can never be forced or forged (Evaluation and Collaboration, n.d. pp.1). Effective partnership is a real difficult task. There are mainly four dimensions of the collaboration- building process that pose various challenges. Coming to the discussion of these challenges, the first challenge that two partnering organizations have to face is that of creation of aim and matching of vision. This is the main cornerstone in creation of the alliance. Recognizing the alliance driver is really very complicated. Overlap of recent and future aims are often not very obvious. Even the concept of strategic unison does not fit into the mindsets of many members of the profit or the non- profit organization or both. The main problem is that mindsets cannot be changed easily. Second challenge lies in construction of the value construct. Firstly, it needs to be ensured that benefits flow two- ways and are reasonably balanced between the two associating organizations. Secondly, collaboration value should be preserved in times of declining margins of profit. For this, newer sources of value addition need to be recognized or created. Thirdly, establishment of efficient and effective communication strategies across the organizations is important to build the trust that allows further growth of the relationship. Here, dealing with other concerns regarding brand control strategies and publicity and project designing can be tricky and new abilities in cross-sectoral association management are always required. Another interesting facet may be that of institutionalization of the alliance from a smaller group of leaders to a larger network of connections across the two organizations which is vey essential as far as longevity of the relationship is concerned. One must be wary of the risk of complacency in more mature associations. This can turn out to be the most important reason for stagnation and value faltering (Austin, 1999 pp.5). All relationships are directly involved in the process of exchange of value assessments among the participating organizations with the magnitude, source, direction and distribution of the value being the central norms of regulatory dynamics. Assessment of the potential and true value of alliance configuration is the central idea behind the creation and ongoing development of the association. The value is much worthier and sweet if and when there is a two- way balanced stream of beneficial resources (Austin & Hesselbein, 2002, pp.76-78). The magnitude of value addition can be evaluated by mainly three dimensions. There is Generic Resource Transfer which basically involves one partnering organization providing to the other partner benefits obtained from resources that are common to both the organizations. For example, a profit company provides monetary support to a non-profit organization and in return of the favor, the non-profit organization provides good deeds and even better credibility. In this way, both companies work hand in hand to allow image betterments and credibility to each other in their own sectors. Next up there is “Core Competencies Transfer” that utilizes both organization’s distinctive skills and abilities to generate benefits for their partners. These resource flows have better potential for creation of value since each organization is leveraging unique competencies. The value of the alliance gets enhanced in such process since each organization is coming up with profits. Next, there is “Joint Resource Creation” which represents non- bilateral resource transfers. It emphasizes on joint products that are derived from the melee of the effectiveness and resource mobilizations of the organization. This is more of a high- value source due to its uniqueness towards the existence of the alliance (Austin, 1999 pp.5-6). The value effectiveness is created not only by assessment of the benefits accrued to each partnering concern but also the opportunity costs of the utilized resources and the risks associated with entry into the alliance. The problem arises on the front that these related costs and benefits vary over time and so regular reassessment of value addition is required. Moreover, there is possibility of costs and associated benefits depreciating over time; so continual relevancy of the association requires renewal of value listings. The primal force that binds the alliance together as well as provides the social justification for the cross-sectoral partnership is the increased social potency that is created through this association. Therefore, partnering organizations need to repeatedly and continuously assess the social value additions of their efforts which is essential in calculating the Collaborational Value Construct (Herman, 2005, pp.267-268). Discussions and Conclusion: Alliance between Beth Israel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Aptium Oncology is relatively new. There are no reports of rift in the relations of the two companies and they are no doubt working together for a better cause. However, one should not forget the fact that Beth Israel is a non- profit organization whose prime motive is to provide medical assistance to the cancer-afflicted patients of U.S and other parts of the world, while Aptium Inc. is a profit company whose actual aim at the end of the day would be that of profit maximization in spite of the fact that they are providing unilateral funds for cancer treatment and research. With rising incidences of health hazards and complex diseases like cancer, it would not be ill judgmental to say that market opportunity for hospital based diseases is going to be at an all time high in the span of next twenty years, but with it there are associated problems of increasing risk of implementation and complexities. In such scenario, avenues seem open for Aptium Inc., who through its expert management cell will be able to provide pocket friendly and economical solutions to patients. This can seem a bit judgmental and harsh from what it is doing now, yet it can hardly be denied that if welfare was the only motive on the minds of this profit company, it would not have abandoned St. Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center (SVCCC) when it declared itself bankrupt. So problems can arise when the principles of these two associations would not match. It is although undeniable how the alliance between Beth Israel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Aptium Oncology has progressed so far maintaining the Alliance Engagement Continuum in such a small period of time. This is mainly due to the great and pompous beginning of this partnership wherein time and benevolence have played a key part in helping the association get off to a great start. In order to make this association long and fruitful both partners need to be operational in bringing maturity to this alliance which includes shared vision towards achievement of the goal of removing cancer threats, personal connections to each other, value addition, focused mentality, realizable mutual expectations, confidence and communications. Both partners need to speak a universal language of change with the willingness to imply this change at a socio economic level. This process of lateral learning and combined creativity will in turn reap good results for the future of this young but promising partnership. Bibliography 1. Austin, J.E (1999), The Collaboration Challenge: Making the Most of Strategic Alliances between Nonprofits and Corporations. Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Series, 6 pp. 1-82. Retrieved on May 17, 2011 from: http://www.hbs.edu/socialenterprise/pdf/SE6CollaborationChallenge.pdf 2. Austin, J.E & F. Hesselbein (2002), Meeting the Collaboration Challenge: Developing Strategic Alliances Between Nonprofit Organizations and Business, San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 3. Beth Israel Medical Center Officially Opens Its Manhattan West Side Comprehensive Cancer Center, (2010). Wehealny, Retrieved on May 17,2011 from: http://www.wehealny.org/BethIsraelWestsideCancerCenterOpen.pdf 4. Creech, H. (2006) What to Consider in Creating a Strategic Alliance, International Institute for Sustainable Development pp.3-7. Retrieved on May 17, 2011 from: http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2006/networks_strategic_alliance.pdf 5. Evaluative Thinking,(n.d.) Evaluation and Collaboration, Bruner Foundation. Retrieved on May 17, 2011from: http://brunerfoundation.org/ei/docs/EvaluativeThinking.bulletin.9.pdf 6. Herman, R.D (2005), The Jossey- Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management, San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 7. Joint Statement From Beth Israel Medical Center And Aptium Oncology, Inc (2010), Aptium Oncology. Retrieved on May 17, 2011 from: http://www.aptiumoncology.com/news/joint_statement.html 8. Research, (2011). Aptium Oncology. Retrieved on May 17,2011 from: http://www.aptiumoncology.com/research.html 9. Wymer, Jr., W.W & S. Samu (2003), Dimensions of Business and Nonprofit Collaborative Relationships, Journal of Nonprofit and Public Sector Marketing, 11(1) pp. 3-22. Retrieved on May 17, 2011 from: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t792306939~tab=sample 10. Yoshino,Y.M & U. S, Rangan (1995),Strategic Alliances: An Entrepreneurial Approach to Globalization, London: Harvard Business School Press Read More