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This paper aims to examine the tensions between global and local corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives developed by multinationals managing subsidiaries in different emergent countries. Multinationals carry out a wide array of political activities (Boddewyn and Brewer, 1994; Hillman and Hitt, 1999; Rehbein and Schuler, 1995) supporting their economic objectives, even though the political landscape and the institutional environment may vary significantly in the different countries in which they are located (Luo, 2006). This can raise issues related to the management of cross-border political imperatives as well as the coordination of political activities among multinational companies and their subsidiaries.

Based on a documentary research, this paper analyses the key challenges facing the non-market and CSR strategies of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) a world leading, research-based pharmaceutical and health-care company.

The paper further looks at the way in which GSK deploys its global non-market strategies and manages their alignment with local CSR initiatives in emerging markets, particularly in China.

Further research is required to address the question of international CSR mediation and moderation of this imbalance between pressures for global consistency and local responsiveness. More specifically, in-depth case studies designed to target local managers, as well as their counterparts from the MNE headquarters, should allow us to more effectively analyse and capture the perceived biases with regard to the way the CSR agenda is set at the central level, in light of its global strategy and to the needs and demands of their local host countries’ stakeholders.

This exploratory research based on secondary data allows an interesting base for analysis of the synergies between CSR, non-market strategies and international strategic management which provide a promising base for continuing research.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners of management a sense of the importance of strategically leveraging social responsibility in the pharmaceutical industry, such that it provides a sustainable competitive advantage is that it requires a culture that can successfully execute a combination of activities. These firms should educate their employees towards the value‐added processes that accompany CSR‐based strategies. The internal as well as the external stakeholders of the pharmaceutical industry should also buy in the concepts of being socially responsible. CSR should be strongly supported in the company culture; thus including CSR in the training process of new employees and reinforcing the concepts to existing employees. Design/methodology/approach – A review of the applied literature on practices and actual examples of international firms with major headquarters in the Pittsburgh area have shown that innovative responsible strategy, exceeding government requirements and considering multiple stakeholders, as a long‐term objective. Findings – Case studies of GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer Corporation, which are two of the world's leading research‐based pharmaceutical companies, highlight the need and practice for sound corporate social responsibility. Historically, a concentration on improved operational effectiveness and overcapacity created a temporary economic advantage accompanied by increased profit and firm value. Such an advantage is short‐lived; investors may be satisfied, but competing companies will eventually mimic technological and material improvements. Practical implications – It is particularly difficult for pharmaceutical companies to allocate its strategic resources necessary to CSR strategies, due to so much of its funds are allocated for R&D and promotional activities, which are relatively risky in nature. The demand for its products is based on consumer motivation, which can vary greatly amongst different countries depending on the responsibilities of consumers, government and economies, and insurance companies or a mix of the three.. Originality/value – The pharmaceutical industry is under immense pressure by external and internal stakeholders with hopes of developing and distributing drugs efficiently. The pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists command considerable influence on healthcare initiatives by governmental agencies and must continually emphasize effort and investments in R&D in order to compete in the industry on a global perspective. The pharmaceutical industry must take into account the ability to be socially responsible to the external stakeholders. The prolonged advantage of corporate social responsibility ensures sustainable economic advantage of any organization.

When two 14‐year‐old New Zealand schoolgirls challenged the advertising claims of Ribena blackcurrant drink – owned by global giant GlaxoSmithKline – they triggered a sequence of events which led to prosecution, public opprobrium and international damage to an iconic brand. The purpose of this paper is to explore the case and identify lessons for future management practice.

Some of the fundamental principles of issue management, post‐crisis discourse and corporate apologia are to recognize the problem early, to promptly institute a strategic response plan and corrective action and, if necessary, to apologise genuinely and without delay. The paper assesses the case against the theoretical basis of each of these principles and comparable cases. A senior executive of the company concerned was interviewed about some management aspects.

Despite early indications of a problem which had potential impact around the world, a major global corporation responded inadequately to a local situation and, as a result, suffered prolonged embarrassment at the hands of two teenagers and unnecessarily severe damage to its brand and international reputation.

By in‐depth analysis of a recent case, the paper underlines valuable lessons in terms of prompt management intervention, consistent strategy and effective apologia. It also illustrates the danger of poor management of a brand extension and the risk of contagion facing multinational organizations where adverse outcomes in one small regional market can rapidly damage a global reputation.

Taking into consideration that the number of reports about pharmaceutical lobbying activities is increasing (Baleta, 2014; Boseley, 2014) and that the cost of drugs has a direct and powerful impact on both public and private healthcare, there is a need to require pharmaceutical companies to report their activity as well as reflect their considerations about the ethical implications of their work. To answer that need, this chapter explores how pharmaceutical companies communicate their corporate social responsibility activities.

This chapter explores how Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi (all in the top 10 of US foundations by total giving) use their websites to articulate their CSR strategies. In order to achieve this goal, an exploratory research that combines semantic analysis of the way the mission, vision and objectives are integrated in their strategy was conducted. To do so the researchers saved the text about each company’s mission and vision from their main websites (the .com) and saved all the data associated to CSR communication and reporting included on each company website in a word document. One hundred and ninety-one pages of text were thus collected in August 2013 (67 pages of text for GlaxoSmithKline, 38 pages for Sanofi and 87 pages for Pfizer). Wordle and VOSViewer were used to gain insight into the emerging themes from the textual data collected and therefore compare the similarities and differences between the three companies.

Our findings show a strong emphasis on business-related activities for Sanofi and GSK reflected through the vocabulary used. Additionally, the two companies also portray corporate social responsibility as a tool for image and reputation building and for achieving wider yet profit-driven organisational goals. CSR messages therefore are intended to create and consolidate corporate identity. Moreover, whilst their mission focuses on patients, health, care, and access to medicine, the values are also oriented towards profit making and economic criteria. Pfizer on the other hand, although sharing some of the mission and values with the other two companies, presents itself as a more inclusive organisation with a collaborative environment and research-focused culture.

While limited in scope and sample, this chapter raises many valuable questions for future research about the pharmaceutical sector’s understanding and definition of CSR and their differences and similarities in their online discourse and vocabulary in comparison with other profit-driven industries. Moreover, it raises questions about the style and nature of corporate communications and whether this should be consistent with that associated with CSR as well as whether it imposes the creation of a company-ego.

This chapter promotes an alternative exploratory method of online discourses through computer-aided techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the challenges and benefits that arose from the implementation of an innovative example of employer responsive provision, i.e. of a postgraduate programme that is work‐based and designed specifically to meet the needs of the organisation.

The approach is to outline the principles and challenges involved in designing a postgraduate programme that combines both scientific and personal/professional development in a way that is extremely unusual. In order to achieve this, in addition to assessment of technical scientific skills, it was necessary to integrate pedagogy that would support critical reflection on wider professional practice into the programme. The use of reflection on practice adopted an approach which is not familiar to the scientific community.

Adoption of reflection on practice introduced particular challenges for programme design and delivery that required those involved to review their own practice critically. This provided particular challenges in the context of a scientific community, due to the required change in perspective. However, now the programme is established, it appears that the inclusion of critical reflection has provided the organisation with some additional benefits and unexpected observations.

The originality value of the paper derives from two elements. One is the consideration of a programme that integrates a technical scientific perspective together with reflective practice. The other is in the indication from the outcomes that such a combination may be of demonstrable organisational benefit. Evaluation of the organisational benefits of work‐based learning (as opposed to the individual benefits) has in the past proved challenging.

To highlight how vendor managed inventory (VMI) can be extended both upstream and downstream in the supply network to co‐ordinate the material and information flows among a number of different suppliers, manufacturing and distribution plants (“extended VMI”).

The research is based on data and information gathered during an in‐depth case study within the supply network co‐ordinated by GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world's leading research‐based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies.

Defines the peculiarities and the requisites of the extended VMI as to: the information flows supporting the relationships among the supply network members; the information systems, supporting the data collection, management, diffusion and elaboration; the performance monitoring system, highlighting the benefits for each supply network member as well as avoiding opportunistic behaviours.

The research intends to offer an original contribution to the stream of research on VMI, explaining the peculiarities and the requisites of the extended VMI. Future research should seek to consider the extended VMI in light of some supply chain management (SCM) practices which have emerged in recent years, such as collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment. Moreover, a second research opportunity lies in investigating the mixes of SCM initiatives – among which is also the extended VMI – needing launch in a perspective of optimisation of the whole supply network.

The case reported here and the research findings should offer guidance for managers facing the decision‐making process concerning the implementation of the VMI both upstream and downstream in the supply network.

Most authors tend to consider VMI at the dyadic level, namely as an approach for managing materials and information flows between one or more customers and their immediate suppliers. Instead, this research adopts a supply network perspective, seeking to explain how VMI can be extended both upstream and downstream and considering the supply network as a whole rather than as a series of dyads.

Since merging in December 2000, GSK’s information management group has continued to build on the great efforts of both GlaxoWellcome and SmithKline Beecham in provision of document delivery and access to published information. This article describes the current operational system in detail and indicates the company’s strategy for document delivery both in the short and long term.

Drugs and pharmaceuticals assume importance in the healthcare system today for their capacity to replace costly treatments like surgery. The pharmaceutical industry is considered capital intensive and building a new product costs as much as $900 million. Though the cost of developing a new product is significantly low in a country like India, it is substantial. Therefore, perhaps, companies try to go for incremental innovation. This apart, finding new symptoms to promote products, hiding major side effects, publishing data mixing the outcomes of different studies, publishing major outcomes in reputed journals and poor outcome studies in less important journals are some of the strategies being adopted by pharmaceutical companies. The purpose of this paper is to analyze these issues and their impacts on the Indian economy. As most of the Indian pharmaceutical companies are in private hands, this paper focuses on the possible plight of Indian poor in the changing world order.

This paper draws upon earlier research undertaken by the author. His experience from the pharmaceutical industry as well as the published works of other researchers also helped complete the work.

The analysis of this paper indicates that in order to avoid the loss of revenue and to keep their businesses floating, drug and pharmaceutical companies resort to information manipulation.

The research is limited to the author's ability to review literatures in the field of marketing and corporate ethics related to drugs and pharmaceuticals. As competition and economic liberalization would have a significant impact on pharmaceutical brand‐success, therefore, perhaps, drug companies would resort to manipulations for survival. This paper is an attempt to alert the society to these sorts of information laundering.

This paper would perhaps provide consumers with necessary information to understand the unethical practices being adopted by drug companies and help them consider what exactly to look for and would press for their right to good health.

This paper is the record of original work done by the author. It would probably fulfil an identified need and would perhaps help the society fight unethical practices being adopted by pharmaceutical companies.

This paper aims to determine new-normal uncertainty considerations stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic to consider within transaction-cost analysis for pharmaceuticals. It also aims to propose new-normal market entry strategies to address the uncertainty as a result of COVID-19's implications and provide for lack of knowledge and information in an uncertain business environment by way of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem for pharmaceutical market entry.

In this paper, we focus on the uncertainty facet within transaction-cost analysis consideration and utilise a descriptive three-case study approach taking in Johnson and Johnson (J&J), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Novartis to present an ADO (Antecedent-Decisions-Outcomes) understanding of their usual market entry approach, the approach undertaken during the pandemic and the outcomes thereafter facilitating new-normal uncertainty considerations to factor in. Further with this insight, we develop a conceptual framework addressing the transaction-cost analysis implications of uncertainties toward lack of knowledge and information for a new-normal market entry approach and operating strategy for pharmaceuticals applicable due to IoT (Internet of Things).

Uncertainty (external and internal) is different now in the new-normal business environment for pharmaceuticals and boils down to acute shortage of knowledge and information impact to make an appropriately informed decision. Therefore, considering the changed factors to consider, pharmaceuticals need to be able to undertake market entry with vaccines and medicines by way of IoT thereby enabling, the filling of the gap via real-time data access and sharing, including enhancing predictive analysis for sustenance.

The paper's findings have many theoretical implications highlighted in the manuscript.

The paper's findings have many practical implications highlighted in the manuscript.

This is the first study to our knowledge that throws light on transaction-cost analysis theory's uncertainty facet for pharmaceuticals. It is also the first study that provides a new-normal market entry strategy for pharmaceutical companies built on interoperability of real-time IoT.