1 AIDS is not a Business英文版本.pdf

Journal of Business Ethics (2007) 73:65–75 Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10551-006-9198-y ‘‘AIDS is Not a Business’’: A Study in Global Corporate Responsibility – Securing Access to Low-cost HIV William Flanagan Medications Gail Whiteman ABSTRACT. At the end of the 1990s, Brazil was faced life of people around the world.1 Yet many of these with a potentially explosive HIV/AIDS epidemic. companies also have difficulty offering affordable Through an innovative and multifaceted campaign, and medications to the impoverished in developing despite initial resistance from multinational pharmaceu- countries. This was the case for multinational phar- tical companies, the government of Brazil was able to maceutical companies operating in Brazil. negotiate price reductions for HIV medications and de- In the late 1990s, Brazil was experiencing a grow- velop local production capacity, thereby averting a public health disaster. Using interview data and document ing HIV epidemic and was in urgent need of lower analysis, the authors show that the exercise of corporate priced medications. Large pharmaceutical companies social responsibility can be viewed in practice as a dy- such as Roche, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Abbot, and namic negotiation and an interaction between multiple Merck, all of which had CSR codes, refused to lower actors. Action undertaken in terms of voluntary CSR their prices. In response, the Brazilian government alone may be i