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The purpose of this paper is to explore the barriers and challenges faced by chemical industries in Malaysia causing to the low participation in Responsible Care program. Also, this paper aims to propose a solution to address the issues in implementing Responsible Care by introducing a Simplified and Integrated Management System for Responsible Care.

A questionnaire was distributed to 132 Responsible Care signatory companies in Malaysia, and they were given a week to return it via e-mail. Combining the inputs from the survey and document analysis, a Simplified and Integrated Management System for Responsible Care (SIMS-RC) was proposed.

Responsible Care signatory companies faced barriers in implementing product stewardship code and they also faced challenges in getting employees’ commitment from all levels. Taking the inputs received from Responsible Care signatory companies and document analysis, an SIMS-RC was proposed as a closed-loop process which consists of quality, environmental, health and safety management system.

Some of the chemical companies were unable to share their thoughts in the survey due to the companies’ confidential reason.

Abundant literature has discussed about the limitation of Responsible Care that needs to be improved. Therefore, several elements and procedures of the program need to be revised and innovated to help the signatory companies to continuously improve their performances and encourage more participation in Responsible Care program. The findings will add value to the current body of knowledge and Responsible Care signatory companies which seek to improve Responsible Care implementation through an integrated management system approach. The proposed SIMS-RC is a simple, integrated, holistic and process-oriented management system in which it blends Responsible Care into quality, environmental, health and safety management system.

To promote access to their services, health-care companies provide various communication channels to their customers (beneficiaries) to enable the receipt of requests, such as authorization for examinations, procedures and hospitalizations. Under the approach of innovation studies, the management of customer relationship channels for health-care companies is characterized as a knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS). The purpose of this study is presenting innovation as a strategy to increase customer service productivity, as well as the monitoring of the quality of the service, the generation of health information for beneficiaries and compliance with the regulation set by the Brazilian National Health Agency (ANS).

The study is characterized as an applied research, as it proposes solutions to problems faced by supplemental health-care companies using the strategy of action research, i.e. an independent, social research with an empirical basis.

The result of this study shows that a computerized health-care system can increase productivity by 21.96%, and it presents an innovative solution for health-care companies to guarantee the process of meeting the demands and requests of their beneficiaries, ensuring the compliance with ANS regulations.

These results can be replicated to other healthcare companies and contribute to those seeking innovation, increased productivity and quality improvements in their services.

This work was also motivated by the lack of lstudies in the areas of health-care companies in Brazil.

The health care profession in the USA has traditionally attracted some of the best talent the country has to offer, with medical practitioners enjoying high incomes due to employer‐paid medical indemnity insurance plans. There was no oversight process or quality standards governing the health care delivery process and no motivating factors to contain costs. Prior to the introduction of the Knox‐Keene Act in the 1970s requiring employers to offer managed care as an alternative indemnity coverage, the only known managed care company was the Kaiser Permanente Medical Plan. Until just over a decade ago, the concept of managed care was stereotyped as a low quality method of health care delivery. Criticisms from providers themselves suggested managed care systems meant withholding medical care for the sake of profit; “production line” medicine, and compromise in the delivery of quality health care. In order to refute that notion and grow as an industry, managed health care companies were required to take steps to prove their integrity, high quality of care, and cost‐effective methods. Today the industry is fast growing, setting management practices that are becoming benchmark standards for other industries too.

Recent years have witnessed a change in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) debate from questioning whether to make substantial commitments to CSR, to questions of how such a commitment should be made. Given that CSR initiatives increasingly are carried out in collaboration with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), business–NGO (Bus–NGO) partnerships are becoming an increasingly important instrument in driving forward the sustainable development agenda. The aim of this chapter is to explore motivations to partner, the value-added of Bus–NGO partnerships as well as what is enabling and impeding the realization of this value.

An analytical model is developed based on contributions from partnership literature (Austin, 2000, 2007; Austin & Seitanidi, 2012a, 2012b; Seitanidi & Ryan, 2007) and the resourced-based view. This has resulted in a process model with the following three phases: (1) formation and motivation; (2) implementation and execution; and (3) outcomes and challenges.

The empirical part of the chapter focuses on three specific partnerships in Kenya. Kenya is one of the most prosperous and politically stable states in Africa, with high growth rates making it an attractive launch pad for businesses to enter partnerships with NGOs.

The partnerships studied were all pilots still flirting with this new form of collaboration modality and struggling themselves to clearly define the value-added. Partnerships are still experimental efforts involving a steep learning curve, and showing signs that they have to evolve further as well as innovate in order to produce the expected benefits. All three partners referred to learning as one of the most important intangibles.

Business and NGOs had both different and overlapping motivations that made them propel into cross-sector alliances. The partnerships have to be configured to satisfy a variety of different motivations, resulting in complex stakeholder management. For the NGOs, it is about designing new development models, due to an instrumental need of resource enhancement and idealistic need to deliver more sustainable and efficient solutions. The analysis shows clear signs of NGOs beginning to realize the importance of classical business skills, such as management, marketing, and technical systems that companies can provide. Looking at the business, the partnership fit right into the wider strategic sustainability “umbrella” of the corporation, notably the employees are central stakeholders. It is argued that a business’s approach to CSR and perception of its own responsibilities need to evolve to higher levels according to Austin’s Collaboration Continuum to produce valuable synergies in a partnership with an NGO (Austin, 2000).

Finally, the analysis shows a Bandwagon effect throughout the sectors, where the reason to form a partnership is because everybody else is doing it, and both NGOs and businesses do not want to miss out on potential benefits.

In this paper, we argue that the opportunities created from the recent transformational change in the health care industry have provided the environment for entrepreneurship to thrive. As a result, new and innovative organizational forms have flourished particularly when embedded in communities of entrepreneurial activity where networks of experience, access, and social/work relationships exist. The major purpose of this paper is to initiate a theoretical dialogue in which entrepreneurship is introduced as a field of research that can be used to explain how and why health care organizations have emerged and changed into their present forms. First, we present the basic elements for understanding the process of entrepreneurship and how entrepreneurial activity is important to the innovation of new organizational forms. Second, we relate this to the field of health care by focusing on the three stages in the entrepreneurial model: creation, discovery, and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. Third, we argue that the degree of entrepreneurial activity within a given community is the outcome of a dynamic process involving social networks along with positive economic and legal activities that reduce transaction costs and encourage entrepreneurship. To demonstrate this, we focus on the area known as the “health care business capital” in the U.S. – Nashville, Tennessee – and describe the entrepreneurial activity in that city beginning in the 1960s and relate this to the existing theory. We believe this research represents a juxtaposition of the practical and theoretical, so critical in understanding entrepreneurial activity and new organizational forms in health care.

One of the most challenging aspects in the health care industry is to understand the nuances and strategies of those companies that provide both B2B and B2C services, apart from being supported by their management team, quality officers, the HR Manager, the clinicians, the doctors, and the holistic support of all staff. This case study focusses on analyzing the various indicators of success of The Health Medical Services (THMS), a major service provider in the health care sector, serving both B2B and B2C markets in the UAE and the organizational factors that drove the service provider to success, creating an exceptional experience for both their internal and external customers. The unique success drivers of THMS, as brought out by the current study include Customer Relationship Management, unique leadership style, employee engagement, market orientation, Quality Circles, patient-centric care, and service innovation in health care that supports their sustainability and scalability. Moreover, a literature review on the success drivers brings out the academic implications of the study.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is an increasing popular marketing strategy in which a firm donates a specific amount to a designed cause when customers engage in revenue-providing exchanges. Based on balance and attribution theory, this paper aims to explore the interaction effect of donation amount and ad orientation, two important factors of formulation and communication of CRM, respectively, on consumer response and the mediating effect of consumers’ perceived company motives.

Two 2 (donation amount: small vs large) × 2 (ad orientation: product- vs cause-oriented) between-subjects experimental studies were conducted in marketing course with 284 and 157 Chinese undergraduate students participating in Studies 1 and 2, respectively. ANOVA and regression were used to test the hypotheses.

Study 1 shows the significant interaction effects of donation amount and ad orientation on consumers’ response. When CRM has a large donation amount, cause-oriented (vs product-oriented) ad leads to consumers’ more positive company attitude and higher purchase intention. The opposite is true for the small donation amount condition. Study 2 shows that the above interaction effect is mediated by consumer-attributed company motives. The attributed motive of sincerely caring about social cause has significant positive effect on consumer response, whereas the attributed motive of increasing sales or improving corporate image does not.

This paper contributes to the literature by empirically examining the interaction effect of donation amount and ad orientation on consumer-inferred motives and behavioral response. The findings are valuable because they indicate the importance of matching between factors at formulation and communication stage. In addition, this paper found that consumers are “tolerant” of companies using CRM to promote product sales and improve brand image.

The economic phenomenon of “globalization” has broadly affected the health care industry and the medical profession in the late 20th century. Governmental and private sector managed care reach is expanding globally, as patients are “ecuritized” and traded as covered lives. Arbitrage of health care goods and services is creating commoditization effects, including trans‐border parallel markets (i.e. black markets). Consumers and governments are becoming concerned about privacy issues and product standardization, while Third World challenges remain in the public health realm (i.e., infectious pandemics, sanitation, nutrition and overpopulation).

In Bangladesh, 30 percent of the population lives beyond the “last mile” of traditional distribution networks and serving this rural low‐income population with socially useful goods is a huge challenge. The purpose of this paper is to present one of the most innovative and successful cases of its kind in the world, a social enterprise rural distribution model originally developed by CARE Bangladesh and the Bata Shoe Company, to illustrate the possibility of combining market‐based solutions to poverty with socially responsible business growth.

This in‐depth case study was developed over the course of three field visits to Bangladesh between November 2009 and September 2010 based on 25 face‐to‐face interviews with rural sales women, Bata employees and CARE staff as well as participant observation and review of project documents and media reports.

The case provides insights into the origins, lessons learned and key success factors of viable rural sales agent distribution networks serving the poor. A key tension to be managed is keeping the costs of the network down while ensuring that every member is adequately incentivized.

The 3,000 women sales agents in rural Bangladesh engaged with the Rural Sales Program have benefited from earning viable incomes in contexts where opportunities for employment and empowerment of women are limited. Rural populations have gained affordable access to socially beneficial goods such as fortified foods, seeds, daily necessities and shoes. Companies have benefited from learning how to adapt their product offerings to meet the needs of low‐income customers.

Where rural sales initiatives elsewhere have faced challenges, this case is the first published account of the origins of how CARE, Bata, and other companies established a viable and scalable rural sales agent distribution network for the commercial benefit of companies and the economic and social benefit of poor women and their customers.

Examines the impact of genetic testing and therapy on health care in light of the development of the system in the USA since the turn of the twentieth century. Genetic testing and therapy have the potential to create a great advance in health care but also to become a business of multi‐billion dollar proportions. If present trends of investment and long‐range plans mature, health care will be adversely affected in terms of its distribution, access and economy. Developed and sold as commodities in a free‐market economy, genetic advances will economically stress health care and fail to meet the ethical and legal standards demanded by voluntary informed consent and counseling. Without abandonment of the marketplace approach to health care and thorough reform, many will find themselves excluded from the benefits and vulnerable to discrimination.