Current Issue : July - September Volume : 2011 Issue Number : 3 Articles : 5 Articles
Transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) may respond to processes of regional trade integration both by acting politically to influence policy and by reorganising their own operations. The Central American Common Market (CACM) was reinvigorated in the 1990s, reflecting processes of regional trade liberalisation in Latin America and globally. This study aimed to ascertain how British American Tobacco (BAT), which dominated the markets of the CACM, sought to influence policy towards it by member country governments and how the CACM process impacted upon BAT's operations.\nThe study analysed internal tobacco industry documents released as a result of litigation in the US and available from the online Legacy Tobacco Documents Library at http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/ webcite. Documents were retrieved by searching the BAT collection using key terms in an iterative process. Analysis was based on an interpretive approach involving a process of attempting to understand the meanings of individual documents and relating these to other documents in the set, identifying the central themes of documents and clusters of documents, contextualising the documentary data, and choosing representative material in order to present findings.\nUtilising its multinational character, BAT was able to act in a coordinated way across the member countries of the CACM to influence tariffs and taxes to its advantage. Documents demonstrate a high degree of access to governments and officials. The company conducted a coordinated, and largely successful, attempt to keep external tariff rates for cigarettes high and to reduce external tariffs for key inputs, whilst also influencing the harmonisation of excise taxes between countries. Protected by these high external tariffs, it reorganised its own operations to take advantage of regional economies of scale. In direct contradiction to arguments presented to CACM governments that affording the tobacco industry protection via high cigarette tariffs would safeguard employment, the company's regional reorganisation involved the loss of hundreds of jobs.\nRegional integration organisations and their member states should be aware of the capacity of TTCs to act in a coordinated transnational manner to influence policy in their own interests, and coordinate their own public health and tax policies in a similarly effective way....
There is an emerging evidence base that global trade is linked with the rise of chronic disease in many low and middle-income countries (LMICs). This linkage is associated, in part, with the global diffusion of unhealthy lifestyles and health damaging products posing a particular challenge to countries still facing high burdens of communicable disease. We developed a generic framework which depicts the determinants and pathways connecting global trade with chronic disease. We then applied this framework to three key risk factors for chronic disease: unhealthy diets, alcohol, and tobacco. This led to specific 'product pathways', which can be further refined and used by health policy-makers to engage with their country's trade policy-makers around health impacts of ongoing trade treaty negotiations, and by researchers to continue refining an evidence base on how global trade is affecting patterns of chronic disease. The prevention and treatment of chronic diseases is now rising on global policy agendas, highlighted by the UN Summit on Noncommunicable Diseases (September 2011). Briefs and declarations leading up to this Summit reference the role of globalization and trade in the spread of risk factors for these diseases, but emphasis is placed on interventions to change health behaviours and on voluntary corporate responsibility. The findings summarized in this article imply the need for a more concerted approach to regulate trade-related risk factors and thus more engagement between health and trade policy sectors within and between nations. An explicit recognition of the role of trade policies in the spread of noncommunicable disease risk factors should be a minimum outcome of the September 2011 Summit, with a commitment to ensure that future trade treaties do not increase such risks....
It is widely acknowledged that among all determinants of employment outcomes, leadership is viewed as an important predictor with a central role (Carli, 1990). It has been long held within the humanistic management perspective that different types of leadership style eventually are leading towards different outcomes. In this era of globalization, the role of leadership in determining the internalization pathways for the company is even more crucial. Due to many environment changes, companies decide to inject a new perspective into their management styles. The issue of globalization for example, has lead many companies to divert their focus to the issues of sustainability. This paradigm shift requires management to solicit the subordinates� inputs in decision making and/or allow them to ensure that the management receive a warm support from the employees which is embarking to the sustainability journey, it actually begin from the internal groups. Thus, this paper discusses the leadership style of senior manager in medical wastes business in Indonesia. By using the qualitative approach with case study method, there were 13 semi-structured interviews with 35 questions based on the topic used to investigate the role of leader�s leadership styles. Later, all data was transcribed and coded systematically. Based on the results of the interviews, the case analysis is presented, thus at the end, this paper will conclude by recommendations for management of PT Bunga Mawar....
This article addresses an area that has been largely underserved by the development community, and one in which there is a particularly good opportunity for the private sector to take a lead in making a difference to employees, customers and local communities: chronic, non-communicable diseases (NCDs). It highlights the extent of the epidemic of NCDs in developing countries, sets out the 'business case' for the private sector to act on NCDs, and gives examples of initiatives by business to ensure that the healthy choice really is an easier choice for employees, consumers and local communities. It makes the case that, to be genuinely sustainable, businesses should be addressing health as a core part of what they do and, by working in partnership - as called for by the Millennium Development Goals - they can make a real difference and become part of the solution. Identifying ways in which this can be done should form a key part both of planning for, and action after, the UN High-level Meeting on NCDs, to be held in September 2011....
This paper discusses the findings of a study which developed five case studies of five multinational health care companies involved in public health care systems. Strategies were analysed in terms of attitude to marketing, pricing and regulation. The company strategies have been subjected to an analysis using Porter's Five Forces, a business strategy framework, which is unusual in health policy studies.\r\nThis paper shows how analysing company strategy using a business tool can contribute to understanding the strategies of global capital in national health systems. It shows how social science methodologies can draw from business methods to explain company strategies.\r\nThe five companies considered in this paper demonstrate that their strategies have many dimensions, which fit into Porter's Five Forces of comparative advantage. More importantly the Five Forces can be used to identify factors that influence company entry into public health care systems.\r\nThe process of examining the strategic objectives of five health care companies shows that a business tool can help to explain the actions and motives of health care companies towards public health care systems, and so contribute to a better understanding of the strategies of global capital in national health systems. Health service commissioners need to understand this dynamic process, which will evolve as the nature of public health care systems change....
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