Here's the post with John Mack's view, from Pharma Marketing Blog:
Brand Extinction Looms.
And to the left is the image he uses.
Tough years ahead. But there's more good analysis in his post. Go read.
Also, he has a couple of hilarious posts on Pfizer. Such as, McKinnell's New Gig: Male Model
Check it out!
Finally, he tells us about Kindler Fox in Pfizer HenhouseHe writes, "It's a little funny that PharmExec (PE) calls Kindler an "inside man" when Pfizer's board and Hank McKinnell justified his choice because he was an "outside man." BTW, PE shows Kindler in Pfizer's "global security bunker at company headquarters." Does Pfizer really call it that? If so, it says volumes about the state of the pharma industry these days! Bunkers, as we all know, often do not bode well for the occupants"
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Can Pfizer Super-Size Hypocrisy?
To predict the future of Pfizer, on a late night when you’re having difficulty sleeping, just begin to scratch the surface of Mr. Jeffrey Kindler, Esq., Pfizer’s newly appointed outsider-CEO. Take his membership on the Board of an organization called Transparency International (TI) for instance. Transparency means different things to different folks in various business contexts. Pfizer is one of many large organizations that consider themselves to be pillars of global corporate responsibility. Pretty lofty, huh? Do a google search (as I’ve done) on the words ‘Corporate Social Responsibility Pfizer’ and you’ll soon find the company’s splashy, four-color, first ever ‘Corporate Citizen Report’ (2005) as a .pdf document.: (http://www.pfizer.com/pfizer/subsites/corporate_citizenship/report/cc_report_2005.pdf).
“To underscore the importance of Pfizer’s commitment to corporate citizenship, Chairman and CEO Henry A. McKinnell signed the UN Global Compact in October 2002. Around that time, senior management created Pfizer’s first Corporate Citizenship department. A few months later, Dr. McKinnell told the Annual Meeting of Shareholders that Pfizer would henceforth be guided by three key standards to measure its success: being a good global corporate citizen, expanding access to medicine, and delivering strong financial results. During the next few months, he repeated this to the news media, the investor community and all 120,000 Pfizer employees, who are located in over 100 countries. At the 2003 UN Global Compact Annual Learning Forum, Pfizer was the first U.S. Company ever to present a case on how it is applying the Global Compact principles in its operations.”
“Since then, the education of employees has included executive memos, stories about the Global Compact on Pfizer’s online worldwide news service for employees, and a two-day global meeting of senior employees focused on stakeholder engagement. In addition, the company’s mandatory education for all employees on Pfizer’s Code of Ethics included segments on corporate citizenship, with reference to the Global Compact.”
According to Pfizer’s website, among other things, “a key aspect of citizenship is protecting colleagues….” Pfizer has apparently “benchmarked its performance to the United Nation’s ‘Global Compact’s’ nine principles and identified the company’s strengths and needs for improvement.” These U.N.-ratified principles are “a comprehensive set of values, policies, practices and programs integrated into our business operations worldwide.” Here is a list of these nine principles: Read ‘em and weep folks.
Principle 1 - Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights
Principle 2 - Make sure they are not complicit in human rights abuses
Principle 3 - Businesses should uphold freedom of association & effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining
Principle 4 - The elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labor
Principle 5 - The effective abolition of child labor
Principle 6 - Eliminate discrimination in respect of employment and occupation
Principle 7 - Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges
Principle 8 - Undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility
Principle 9 - Encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies
How do corporate citizenship and transparency come together? According to TI’s website, “The high-profile corporate scandals of recent years have made companies increasingly aware that corrupt practices pose serious and costly risks to their reputation and sustainability. This understanding, coupled with growing public expectation of accountability and probity in the corporate sector, are putting added pressure on companies to articulate and live up to more ethical business practices.”
Can BLOGS, in their relative historic infancy, help to bring about much needed transparency within a company as rich and powerful as Pfizer, even given it’s proudly reported extensive legal resources?
Said Huguette Labelle, Chair of Transparency International,” embedded corruption can be rooted out when people join together to change the system that facilitates it.” What better definition of a BLOG than people joining together? Now let’s work to change the system that facilitates embedded corruption.
“Like a bad disease, corruption is often predictable, preventable and curable,” stated David Nussbaum, Chief Executive of Transparency International. The world is turning against the corrupt.”
The “quiet, out-of-court” settlement is the United States Corporation’s version of the classic corrupt bribe. According to Transparency.org, “The economic significance of bribes for an individual or family differs from one country to another.” If someone sees an event or trend or any other business practice they shouldn’t have and has increasing difficultly sleeping at night, the out-of-court settlement without admission of culpability has become the standard M.O. of the corrupt company. Rich and powerful companies such as Pfizer bank on each of us having a ‘price.’ If you’ll notice at the bottom of Dr. Rost’s court filing, in big, bold letters are the words “Demand for Trial by Jury.” This has got to be one of the corrupt organization’s most embarrassing but preventable legal outcomes. Perhaps some folks don’t have a price.
Pfizer employs our friends, our Fathers, our Mothers, our Aunts, and our Uncles—Gay, Black, Lesbian, Hispanic, Bisexual, Asian, Transgender, Hispanic and, oh yeah, Straight White! When Pfizer makes a commitment within our communities to engage our families in employment and other contractual relationships, Pfizer directly impacts each one of us—for better or worse and through disease and death (especially through disease!!). When making such a broad and lofty commitment to be the world’s most valued company to all stakeholders, Pfizer’s corporate behavior towards our loved ones and ourselves must necessarily stand up to close scrutiny in these various areas. Transparency International has developed a barometer that “takes the temperature of the people whose lives and views are touched by corruption.” Against so many basic human-rights measurements, Pfizer has proven to be a miserable failure. From TIs website, “Why measure public perception of corruption? Today’s survey results lay a foundation for action by…civil society and individuals.”
For every whistleblower within Pfizer and it’s countless subsidiaries, divisions, territories and departments, there are countless others who have witnessed and been the victim of unethical and illegal behavior and who have attempted quietly to call such inappropriate behavior to the attention of management. Reporting bad behavior within Pfizer becomes ‘career limiting’ before you can even figure out that you’re going nowhere five years later! And each of those five years in the proverbial pasture you warmly read about Pfizer’s corporate responsibility, its values and its ‘leader behaviors.’ Can this chronic hypocrisy be cured? And Mr. Kindler proudly informs the world that the legal division he leads exists to help others. But for most if not all of these regular, honest, committed Pfizer colleagues without a voice, the company’s extensive legal resources are simply used to menace and threaten.
Pfizer as a ‘corporate citizen’ is just a collection of individual Pfizer colleagues acting either in alignment with or contrary to the company’s stated social mission. Can a company like Pfizer truly afford (in every meaning of the word) to go on quietly settling with honest employees who simply followed the Viagra-Blue Policy Book and, in doing so, attempt to continue to cover-up management’s ever-increasing embarrassing and sinister misdeeds?
A jury of our peers anyone?
Stay tuned. Perhaps here on Dr. Rost's BLOG (http://www.peterrost.blogspot.com/), Pfizer can learn something new about what it means to be an exemplary corporate citizen. Perhaps not. To quote Mr. Kindler: ‘Hindsight is 20/20.’
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