Summary

With the world experiencing significant socio-economic impacts due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a growing interest in the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry’s “purpose” is to provide medicines that enhance people’s well-being and save their lives. Hence, the sector's ability to provide access to medicine (not only the usage but also at other stages of the product lifecycle, such as product development) is a crucial aspect of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Further, it is becoming increasingly common for companies to source their pharmaceutical production and related services from emerging countries. Hence, CSR in the pharmaceutical industry can be difficult to navigate because the sector is highly complex, with its value chains stretching across borders.

This project aims to investigate the CSR of the pharmaceutical industry in the global value chain (GVC) to identify the barriers to optimizing public values. The business strategies in the pharmaceutical sector from the perspective of international corporate social responsibility will be analyzed, zooming in on the different stakeholders in the (global) value chains and considering the geopolitical and regulatory contexts.