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The purpose of this paper is to see to what extent Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy could be used to unveil how corporate discourse about financial crimes (in codes of ethics) is closely linked to the process of understanding.

Corporate ethical discourse of 20 business corporations will be analyzed, as it is conveyed within their codes of ethics. The companies came from five countries (USA, Canada, France, Switzerland and Brazil). In the explanatory study, the following industries were represented (two companies by industry): aircrafts/trains, military, airlines, recreational vehicles, soft drinks, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, beauty products, telecommunications and banks.

Historically-based prejudices in three basic narrative strategies (silence, chosen items and detailed discussion) about financial crimes are related to the mindset, to the basic outlook on corporate self-interest or to an absolutizing attitude.

The historically-based prejudices that have been identified in this explanatory study should be analyzed in longitudinal studies.

The historically-based prejudices that have been identified in this explanatory study should be analyzed in longitudinal studies. Historically-based prejudices could be strengthened by the way corporate codes of ethics deal with financial crimes. They could, thus, have a deep impact on the organizational culture in the long-run.

The paper analyzes the way corporate codes of ethics use given narrative strategies to address financial crimes issues. It also unveils historically-based prejudices that follow from the choice of one or the other narrative strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to compare “how we see ourselves” vs “how others see us” when communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in US pharmaceutical companies.

Data were collected as follows: CSR reports from the companies themselves and Business Press reports from the Lexis-Nexis database. NVivo content analysis was used to compare CSR communication by companies and the Business Press. This analysis was comprised of almost 10 million words. Comparisons of Carroll’s framework, including the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic categories between CSR reports and the Business Press, were done. Additional analysis was done to discern individual, organizational, and societal patterns of communications. Return on assets was computed for companies that have formal CSR reports and those that do not.

The analysis of documents containing almost 10 million words allowed the following conclusions: companies communicate more about their economic and philanthropic activities, and the Business Press communicates more about their legal and ethical activities. The companies and the Business Press communicated similarly about individual CSR. The organization communicated more about organizational topics, and the Business Press communicated less about societal topics.

This paper makes both substantive and methodological contributions. Its substantive contribution allows an understanding of what pharmaceutical companies need to do to fully communicate their CSR activities. Its methodological contribution is in suggesting that content analysis be used in understanding communication patterns. A levels of analysis approach allowed the discernment of individual-oriented, organizational, and societal-oriented communication patterns.

This paper seeks to challenge a tacit, but nevertheless prevalent, notion that a robust corporate governance framework will, as a matter of course, engender good corporate social responsibility and, thereby, ‘ethical’ decision-making. It does so by drawing, in the first instance, on an example of apparent good corporate social responsibility and exposing the possibly unethical dimensions of the incident. The paper suggests that corporate governance always has a subjective ethical dimension and that such regimes are best understood as ‘regimes of practice’ – actions, actors and discourses – that shape and mould both thinking and action. Such regimes, it is posited, can best be explored by looking at actual instances or events of significance and analysing these. The paper then offers the example of international pharmaceutical companies’ HIV/AIDS drugs pricing policies, especially in South Africa, as such a critical incident and interrogates it using the ‘analytics’ approach outlined by Dean (1999). The principal aims of the paper are to demonstrate that corporate social responsibility and corporate governance regimes are not neutral processes but aspects of ‘governmentality’ and to offer a technique, analytics, by which such processes can be explicated.

This chapter offers critique of 2019 Social Responsibility (SR) reports from the five largest American-based pharmaceutical companies (based on revenues and number of employees) and offers suggestions for improved communication about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. Pharmaceutical treatments are an important component of health care. To improve health-care commitment, DEI practices must be front and center for the pharmaceutical industry and communicated via their SR reports targeting stakeholders. While some pharmaceutical companies have made greater strides toward communicating DEI than others, SR reporting often is diminished by lack of clear focus on specific practices. Thus, stakeholders may lack basic understanding of these endeavors and the companies' reputation may suffer the consequences.

This study aims to review the extant literature in pharmaceutical sector on corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability and organizational performance to explore if a relationship exists among these three elements.

A total of 301 research articles were collected from online databases. A new ECG framework representing environment, community and growth was used to classify the collected literature under the three elements: CSR, sustainability and organizational performance.

Key findings under the identified categories are: A) Environment: Strict legislation and green chemistry have revolutionized the pharmaceutical sector by decreasing manufacturing costs, minimizing the environmental footprint and improving compliance with regulations. B) Community: Community goodwill and organization’s image have gained importance under the influence of external and internal stakeholders. C) Growth: A weak relationship exists between CSR and organizational performance but increases engagement in sustainability practices which has led to increased market performance. Effective integration of social and environmental goals with strategic business processes could result in long-term profits.

This study focuses on the extant literature to identify the significance of CSR and sustainability on the organizational performance of the pharmaceutical sector. The propositions developed in this study will help in identifying the interdependency of the aforementioned three elements opening further possibilities of in-depth sector specific studies.

Pharmaceutical companies have received a tremendous amount of attention in the media regarding increases in drug prices at rates much in excess of the rate of inflation. Synthesizes the numerous issues affecting drug pricing and the role that the auditor should play in determining a “fair” price. Evaluates the role of the auditor with regard to the call from investors for additional information in the annual report and more in‐depth analysis of management′s ethical and operational practices. The pharmaceuticals industry represents a unique area for consideration, given ethical and regulatory pressures and the nature of the drug development and distribution process. With the complexities of this process, considers the auditor′s responsibility to understand unfair pricing practices along with the ability to detect such practices.

This empirical study aims to identify the essential strategic leadership and management factors underlying sustainability in healthcare. It also examines which factors drive sustainability performance outcomes (SPO) in health-care organizations, an analysis lacking to date. It provides a strategic leadership and management perspective toward sustainable healthcare, responding to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The investigation adopted Sustainable Leadership as its research framework. Using a cross-sectional survey, 543 employees working in health-care and pharmaceutical companies in Thailand voluntarily provided responses. Factor analyses and structural equation modeling were employed.

The results revealed an emergent research model and identified 20 unidimensional strategic leadership and management factors toward sustainability in healthcare. The findings indicate significant positive effects on SPO in health-care organizations. Significant factors include human resource management/development, ethics, quality, environment and social responsibility, and stakeholder considerations.

The study was conducted in one country. Future studies should examine these relationships in diverse contexts. In practice, health-care firms should foster significant strategic leadership and management practices to improve performance outcomes for sustainability in healthcare.

This paper is the first empirical, multidisciplinary study with a focus on strategic leadership, health-care management and organizational sustainability. It identifies a proxy for measuring the effects of essential strategic leadership and managerial factors for sustainability in pharmaceutical health-care companies. It advances our currently limited knowledge and provides managerial implications for improving performance outcomes toward sustainable healthcare.

Research sponsored by entities in developed countries, but conducted in developing countries, has recently been the focus of academic debate, international declarations and media controversy. Much of this attention has focused on whether the trials are exploitative and if so what should be done to avoid exploitation. This chapter takes Alan Wertheimer's principles of mutually advantageous transactions and applies them to the question of exploitation in international research. In this chapter, I develop an analysis of exploitation and apply this to the hypothesis that some pharmaceutical companies who run drug trials in developing countries wrongfully exploit the trial participants.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the wealth effects of the issuance of guidelines by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to encourage pharmaceutical manufacturers to use internal controls or self‐regulation “to efficiently monitor adherence to applicable statutes, regulations, and program requirements” in their marketing to the physicians.

The authors employ a standard event‐study methodology to examine the impact on shareholders of 12 large pharmaceutical firms around four events leading up to the final guidance issued by the OIG.

The overall results indicate a net wealth loss for the sample firms.

Interpretation of results warrants caution since the sample is biased toward large multinational pharmaceutical firms that are listed on the USA stock exchanges. The issuance of high‐level government policy initiative triggers a pharmaceutical industry response that in turn mitigated firms' questionable marketing practices. The government accomplishes this without instituting regulation but by taking the dialogue to a wide‐ranging and highly public forum.

The empirical results suggest that a public policy initiative that impacts shareholder wealth could alter firm (industry) behavior thereby sparing government from enacting regulation and potentially saving exorbitant regulatory enactment, enforcement, and policing costs. The results also provide credence to the argument that the hybrid systems, ones that combine industry rule making with government oversight, provide the greatest potential for overall benefits to society.