Many people believe that the research-based pharmaceutical industry has a ‘special’ moral obligation to provide lifesaving medications to the needy, either free-ofcharge or at a reduced rate relative to the cost of manufacture. In this essay, I argue that we can explain the ubiquitous notion of a special moral obligation as an expression of emotionally charged intuitions involving sacred or protected values and an aversive response to betrayal in an asymmetric trust relationship. I then review the most common arguments used (...) to justify the claim that the pharmaceutical industry has a special moral obligation and show why these justifications fail. Taken together, these conclusions call into question the conventional ideologies that have traditionally animated the debate on whether the pharmaceutical industry has special duties of beneficence and distributive justice with respect to the impoverished in dire need of their products. (shrink)

Recently, dramatic price increases by several pharmaceutical companies have provoked public outrage. These scandals raise questions both about how pharmaceutical firms should be regulated and about how pharmaceutical executives ethically ought to make pricing decisions when drug prices are largely unregulated. Though there is an extensive literature on the regulatory question, the ethical question has been largely unexplored. This article defends a Kantian approach to the ethics of pharmaceutical pricing in an unregulated market. To the extent possible, pharmaceutical companies must (...) price drugs so that those who genuinely need them can get them without financial ruin. This requirement is an ethical side constraint, like the moral prohibitions on deception and theft, that takes precedence over a business’s interest in maximizing profit. That said, the requirement’s application is sensitive to the need to recoup the costs of research and to produce a return that financially justifies the original investment. It may not be either feasible or desirable for government to attempt to enforce the ethical requirements concerning just pharmaceutical pricing. Either price regulation or subsidy could fulfill government’s obligation to protect patients from being objectionably vulnerable to pricing decisions by private companies. (shrink)

This paper seeks to identify a mid-level unifying ethical principle that may help clarify and articulate the ethical responsibilities of business firms in the field of marketing ethics. The paper examines critically the main principles which have been proposed to date in the literature, namely consumer sovereignty, preserving the conditions of an acceptable exchange, paternalism, and the perfect competition ideal, and concludes that all of them are vulnerable to damaging criticisms. The paper articulates and defends the mutuality principle as the (...) most plausible candidate for the role of master principle in the relations between a firm and its customers. This principle requires that sellers look for reciprocity in their relations with their customers, seeking to provide to their customers something that helps them improve in some way their well-being and is commensurate with what they receive from them. (shrink)

As concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) continue to evolve, the predicament facing CSR managers when attempting to balance the differing interests of various stakeholders remains a persistent management challenge. A review of the extensive literature in this field reveals that the conceptualisation of corporate approaches to responsible stakeholder management remains underdeveloped. In particular, CSR practices within the specific context of the pharmaceutical industry, a sector which particularly dramatically depicts the stakeholder management dilemmas faced by business managers, has been under-researched. (...) To address this gap, this paper utilises qualitative, exploratory data, obtained via multiple research methods, to investigate the CSR practices of major pharmaceutical companies in the UK and Germany. The data are employed to critically re-examine and revise a previously published explanatory framework which identifies the management steps involved in CSR stakeholder engagement. The resulting revised explanatory framework is the main contribution of this paper. By abstracting those factors which influence CSR practice, it provides an analytical tool which is designed to be of practical use for business decision-makers when managing their stakeholder engagement activities. Given that the research addresses values and ideals and prescribes practical recommendations for practitioners, it is essentially applied and normative in nature. Ultimately, the framework proposes a set of steps for developing CSR strategies which could help CSR professionals to make a ‘mindset transition’ from a narrower ‘traditional’ approach to CSR to a more innovative way of thinking. (shrink)

Recent judicial rulings and changes in federal and state legislation have given for-profit corporations a growing list of rights and constitutional protections, including the right to practice religion free from many types of federal or state restriction. In this paper, we highlight the implications of these developments using Rawls’ Theory of Justice to explore the consequences of for-profit corporate religious freedom for consumers and employees. We identify preliminary principles to spark a discussion as to how expanding religious freedom for businesses (...) and fair access to goods and services can coexist in the for-profit marketplace. (shrink)

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, members of the Salamanca School engaged in a sustained and sophisticated discussion of the issue of just prices. This article uses their contribution as a point of departure for a consideration of justice in pricing which will be relevant to current-day circumstances. The key theses of members of this school were that fairness of exchanges should be assessed objectively, that the fair price of an article is one equal to its ‘value’, and that the (...) best indicator of that value is the price that article commonly fetches in an open market. This article tries to bring to light the attractiveness of those views in order to guide current practice by contrasting them with alternative views, showing their connection with intuitively attractive basic standards, and linking them to commonly shared intuitions. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of how to price drugs for tropical diseases. The thesis defended in the paper is: (i) there should be no legal constraints on the profits pharmaceutical companies can make on their products for tropical diseases. In essence, (i) expresses the idea that drugs for tropical diseases should be treated as any other product on the free market and that the producers of these drugs should be allowed to sell their products at whatever price the (...) market can bear. The main argument in favour of (i) is first outlined. Five common arguments against (i) are thereafter discussed, and it is argued that all of these fail in their intended purpose. (shrink)

On January 1, 2006, Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage was initiated. Concern was immediately voiced by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and Families USA that, in response to this program, the pharmaceutical industry may raise prices for drugs most often used by the elderly. This article examines the ethical implications of a revenue-maximizing pricing strategy in an industry in which third party financing mitigates an end product's true cost to the user. The perspectives of three stakeholder groups (...) are examined: the elderly, as consumers of prescription drugs, the pharmaceutical industry, as product manufacturer and beneficiary of derived profits, and the total U. S. population, as the ultimate payer for the program via tax revenues. Key questions explored include the relationships among price strategy and access to drugs at both the micro (Medicare cohort) and macro (total population) levels, and on drug development or enhancement. The role of profit in a capitalism-based health care system is also examined. Hospital industry impact on these same stakeholder groups in response to the original 1965 Medicare law is used to compare and contrast possible outcomes of the new drug program. It is predicted that pharmaceutical firms will mimic the hospital industry, adopting a price maximizing strategy for drugs covered by the program. In the process, a utilitarian effect occurs: the benefits of increased access and diffusion of drugs counterbalance inequities in financing Medicare Part D. (shrink)

In 1999, the Journal of Business Ethics published its 1 500th article. This article commemorates the journal's quest "to improve the human condition" (Michalos, 1988, p. 1) with a summary and assessment of the first eighteen volumes. The first part provides an overview of JBE, highlighting the journal's growth, types of methodologies published, and the breadth of the field. The second part provides a detailed account of the quantitative research findings. Major research topics include (1) prevalence of ethical behavior, (2) (...) ethical sensitivities, (3) ethics codes and programs, (4) corporate social performance and policies, (5) human resource practices and policies, and (6) professions – accounting, marketing/sales, and finance/strategy. Much remains to be done. (shrink)

Many people believe that the research-based pharmaceutical industry has a ‘special’ moral obligation to provide lifesaving medications to the needy, either free-of-charge or at a reduced rate relative to the cost of manufacture. In this essay, I argue that we can explain the ubiquitous notion of a special moral obligation as an expression of emotionally charged intuitions involving sacred or protected values and an aversive response to betrayal in an asymmetric trust relationship. I then review the most common arguments used (...) to justify the claim that the pharmaceutical industry has a special moral obligation and show why these justifications fail. Taken together, these conclusions call into question the conventional ideologies that have traditionally animated the debate on whether the pharmaceutical industry has special duties of beneficence and distributive justice with respect to the impoverished in dire need of their products. (shrink)

International law holds that a firm is dumping if its foreign price is either below its domestic price or below its marginal cost. Domestic firms often claim that a low-cost foreign firm is engaged in a long run strategy to destroy the domestic industry and harm domestic consumers. Dumping is a permanent feature of marketing strategies of numerous companies, and anti-dumping complaints are increasingly resorted to as a defensive instrument to stop the challengers. This article offers a synthesis of ethical (...) and legal issues involved and relates them to marketing concerns in international operations. What is the current state of dumping legislation? What concern over personal ethics should a manager have? Using teleological and deontological philosophies of ethics the argument is made that the marketing manager who set very low prices for an international market is not behaving unethically. (shrink)

This study integrates insights from stakeholder theory and the literature on competitive dynamics and incumbent responses to entry. While research in economics and strategy has examined how market incumbents respond to new entrants, little is known about the heterogeneity in these responses to the entry of a stakeholder-oriented firm; our study addresses this research gap. Findings from a novel, longitudinal dataset of 206 granularly defined pharmaceutical markets in India suggest that stakeholder-oriented firm entry in these markets is associated with an (...) impact on prices and product differentiation with heterogeneous responses from high-end and low-end incumbents. Specifically, entry by a stakeholder-oriented firm results in a reduction in prices and dosage sizes from high-end incumbents, whereas low-end incumbents respond in the opposite direction. (shrink)

Empirical evidence, including a recent field study in Northwest Indiana, indicates that supermarkets and other retail merchants frequently incorporate quantity surcharges in their product pricing strategy. Retailers impose surcharges by charging higher unit prices for products packaged in a larger quantity than smaller quantity of the same goods and brand. The purpose of this article is to examine the business ethics of such pricing strategy in light of empirical findings, existing government regulations, factors that motivate quantity surcharges and prevailing consumer (...) perceptions. (shrink)

Promoting ethical practice within an organization has been a continuous challenge in the business ethics community. To enrich organizational practices for promoting business ethics across an organization, this paper aims to introduce the voices of practitioners working in organizations that offer exemplary practices. Based on semi-structured interviews with 21 engineers working in the health products industry, we identified 12 pervasive ethical values that we grouped to four categories: fiduciary, economic, engineering, and process values. As ethics has been embraced as a (...) core element of the ethical practice of our study participants regardless of their rankings and roles in their organizations, we investigated organizational strategies for promoting ethical practice. We identified four categories of organizational strategies: symbols, memberships, practices, and systems. Each strategy affected the 12 ethical values in different ways. Lastly, we identified three characteristics of the industry contexts that appeared to influence ethical values: customer impact, economic norms, and highly regulated industry. We discuss how the findings from this paper can potentially promote new discussions and practices in the business ethics community. (shrink)

While the effects of COVID-19 are being felt globally, the pandemic disproportionately affects lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) by exacerbating existing global health disparities. In this article, we illustrate how intersecting upstream social determinants of global health form a disparity pathway that compromises LMICs’ ability to respond to the pandemic. We consider pre-existing disease burden and baseline susceptibility, limited disease prevention resources, and unequal access to basic and specialized health care, essential drugs, and clinical trials. Recognizing that ongoing and underlying (...) disparity issues will require long-term correction efforts, this pathway approach is nonetheless helpful to inform ethical responses to this global pandemic. It can facilitate international cooperation during the pandemic to reduce the disparate burdens among different regions without imposing significant burden on any particular contributor. The pathway approach allows international stakeholders in various social positions to respond to different components of the pathway based on their respective strengths and resources to help break the cycle of global health inequity. Guided by the ethical principles of relational and pragmatic solidarity, we argue for a coordinated global division of labor such that different stakeholders can collaborate to foster equitable healthcare access during this pandemic. (shrink)

In public health, the issue of pharmaceutical pricing is a perennial problem. Recent high-profile examples, such as the September 2015 debacle involving Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals, are indicative of larger, systemic difficulties that plague the pharmaceutical industry in regards to drug pricing and the impact it yields on their reputation in the eyes of the public. For public health ethics, the issue of pharmaceutical pricing is rather crucial. Simply, individuals within a population require pharmaceuticals for disease prevention and management. (...) In order to be effective, these pharmaceuticals must be accessibly priced. This analysis will explore the notion of corporate social responsibility in regards to pharmaceutical pricing with an aim of restoring a positive reputation upon the pharmaceutical industry in the public eye. The analysis will utilize the 2005 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights to establish implications regarding the societal responsibilities of pharmaceutical companies in a global context. To accomplish this, Article 14 of the UDBHR—social responsibility and health—will be articulated in order to advocate a viewpoint of socially responsible capitalism in which pharmaceutical companies continue as profit-making ventures, yet establish moral concern for the welfare of all their stakeholders, including the healthcare consumer. (shrink)

The author critiques the expedient application of market valuation principles by the transnational corporations and other large firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry on a number of issues like patents, pricing, irrational drugs, clinical trials, etc. He contends that ethics in business is chiseled and etched within the confines of particular social structures of accumulation. An ascendant neo-liberal social structure of accumulation has basically shaped these firms' sharp opposition to the Indian Patents Act, 1970, government administered pricing, etc. The author (...) contends that the practice of neo-liberal economics is strongly associated with a "one dimensional" ethics that privileges market valuation principles over all others. This seems to inevitably generate a social counter-movement that struggles for social protections. He critiques neo-liberal business practices from a perspective that derives from the work of the economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi. Before the present phase of liberalization in India, markets were "managed", but without a "welfare state" in place. Moving toward deregulation of the markets without a welfare state in place is unethical. Keeping the debilities of the institutional framework of public policy in mind, the author adopts a Polanyian perspective that places its trust and hope in the growing social legitimacy of the counter-movement in opposition to both neo-liberal business practices and the degenerate behavior of state agencies. (shrink)