Benchmarking and Transparency: Incentives for the Pharmaceutical Industry’s Corporate Social Responsibility |
| |
Authors: | Matthew Lee Jillian Kohler |
| |
Institution: | 1.Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy,University of Toronto,Toronto,Canada |
| |
Abstract: | With over 2 billion people lacking medicines for treatable diseases and 14 million people dying annually from infectious disease,
there is undeniable need for increased access to medicines. There has been an increasing trend to benchmark the pharmaceutical
industry on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in access to medicines. Benchmarking creates a competitive
inter-business environment and acts as incentive for improving CSR. This article investigates the corporate feedback discourses
pharmaceutical companies make in response to criticisms from benchmarking reports. It determines whether these responses are
part of a healthy process in increasing access to medicines or a barrier to improvement. A qualitative analysis on the feedback
the industry provided was performed, and the responses seen in these statements were grouped by analysing the language used,
the ideas portrayed and atti- tudes of the companies. Increasing transparency through benchmarking is a powerful tool which
reveals the industry’s shortfalls to the public, affects the decisions of socially responsible investors, and is a risk to
their financial bottom line. This article demonstrates the importance of benchmarking and transparency in creating inter-business
competition and the translation of these responses to actual access to medicine practices. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|