Corporate social responsibility, human rights law and the pharmaceutical industry: research studies of socially responsible management in practice

The pharmaceutical industry is a fascinating sector to explore as many people feel so passionately about it. It is not like the producers of televisions and washing machines: its products do literally mean the difference between life and death. It is fascinating to explore the social, moral and legal obligations and responsibilities the pharmaceutical sector owes to society and how campaigners from a myriad of institutions and organisations attempt to push out boundaries. The sector has been vilified in many quarters - it is not an exaggeration to say it has felt under siege - and the sector has sought to address the deluge of criticism. The websites and annual reports of large pharmaceutical companies over the last ten years have increasingly engaged with human rights issues and particularly the right to health. They have also built extensive and formal corporate social responsibility frameworks – not because anybody says to, but voluntarily. The companies may themselves argue that this has something to do with attracting employees of the highest calibre and encouraging pride in and loyalty to their employer. It of course makes good business sense: committed employees work harder. Good press about voluntary social responsibility also attracts the attention of corporate and individual investors. Some development of corporate social responsibility has been ad hoc, incremental, and in response to approaches from external bodies and some has been encouraged by external audits of one sort or another. One audit mechanism was drafted under the auspices of the United Nations. These are the United Nations guidelines concerning access to health drafted by Professor Paul Hunt, Special Rapporteur to the UN on the right to the highest attainable standard of health. These guidelines were drafted after years of consultation with many parties including the large pharmaceutical companies. The companies wanted five or six guidelines of a general nature. Professor Hunt was of the view that general and vaguely drafted guidelines would not be helpful: he detected goodwill from the companies, but a need for precise and specific guidance to enhance access to medicines. Consequently he drafted 47 guidelines, accompanied by explanatory commentary. Whilst many of the major pharmaceutical companies were involved during the period of consultation, the majority of these (with the notable exceptions of Novartis and NovoNordisk) withdrew from a later phase which required evaluation of their policies and practices against the guidelines and publication of the evaluation. One key reason for the withdrawal was that the guidelines seek to impose legal obligations upon pharmaceutical companies to advance the human right to the highest attainable standard of health. This is a step too far for the pharmaceutical companies - although they generally maintain that they comply with many of the UN guidelines in any event. One audit which seems to have been far more successful with the industry than any other is the Access to Medicines Index. This has been published twice, in 2008 and 2010 and it is funded by a Dutch foundation. Superficially it appears to concentrate on just seven criteria, which is what the pharmaceutical companies said they wanted when they talked to Professor Paul Hunt. However, each of those seven criteria are further subdivided into a number of others, which are all weighted differently. So in total, we do not have a picture any less complex than the 47 UN Guidelines. What is interesting however is that pharmaceutical companies have assisted in the preparation of this audit. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that they are being asked about what they are actually doing and the findings are presented positively in terms of their achievement and the laggards gently exposed. As the companies know that the audit is an iterative process, this engages them in competition against their sector peers to see where they will be placed next time. The Access to Medicines Index does not seek to pin particular social and moral obligations and responsibilities upon the pharmaceutical industry, but this audit is indirectly achieving significant progress in these areas. Against this background, this paper will undertake a comparative study of three pharmaceutical companies in terms of their development of corporate social responsibility frameworks from the particular perspective of the human right to health and access to medicines. This paper will also evaluate how these three pharmaceutical companies have fared in various external audits and what they see as their direction in terms of corporate social responsibility in the future.