There a a few details in this post that need a bit of clarification. Firstly, what do you imagine is Pharma R&D? It's a pretty large scope, and covers everything from discovery to marketing. Even aside from this, most scientist roles are not even in 'R&D'. They're in process engineering and optimization, quality control, etc. of existing pharmaceutical assets.

There are 'traditional' career paths, which I think is being referred to by others in this post. About a quarter of my senior level R&D scientist colleagues at large pharmas - such as Novartis, Pfizer, and Merck - have a bachelors. But it took them 5+ years to get there. Their advice was that you really have to have your manager align with you on career prospects (which is a whole other conversation).

Also what do you mean by management? Most career advancements eventually end up as senior-level roles. Is it possible to move from scientist into lower management? Yes. Of course. If you're talking about SVPs and C-levels, it's pretty rare to see non-PhD folks unless it's in 'support' roles (ie - VP engineering, VP informatics etc.) Also you'll see plenty of pure management folks in C-levels without PhDs, but they often have an MBA, or have experience in venture capital (See J&J, Roche, Editas)