Community Initiatives of Pfizer Company - Term Paper Example

 Introduction Pfizer is among the leaders of the global pharmaceutical markets. It owes its success to the continuous investments in learning and innovation and to the development of sophisticated medical products that meet the changing needs of consumers. Thousands of researchers and professionals in various fields dream of being employed by Pfizer – the company that has proved to be an example of excellent employment opportunities and career prospects. However, Pfizer is not simply a prospective employer but is the company that cares a lot about communities, for which it works. Community programs are among the basic aspects of the company’s corporate performance. Pfizer invests significant resources in the development and implementation of various community program solutions. Although community programs are an essential element of the company’s corporate social responsibility, Pfizer should be more careful with its community program expenses, not to sacrifice other, no less important employment and corporate programs. Pfizer: the company background Pfizer, Inc. is well-known as one of the most prominent leaders of the global pharmaceutical market. Founded in 1849, Pfizer currently resides in Brooklyn, New York and holds its headquarters in New York City. Today, Pfizer employs more than 100,000 people, of which more than 10,000 are medical researchers.1 The company comprises around 70 manufacturing and 50 distribution centers around the world; but the main Pfizer facilities are located in the United States.2 The company operates in almost 200 countries and its net income in 2005 exceeded $8 billion.3 Today, Pfizer is a publicly traded company, and its stakeholders include medical researchers, medical professionals, and individuals. Pfizer operates through the Board of Directors, which comprises 14 members, with 11 of them being independent.4 The company uses the three essential committees – Compensation, Audit, and Corporate Governance – to assist in operation and functioning.5 As a result, it is of no surprise that the company pays so much attention to its community activity and community initiatives. The current paper will discuss Pfizer’s community activity regardless of its location; although it would be fair to say that the majority of the community programs developed by Pfizer operate within the geographical borders of the United States. When it comes to stakeholders, the company actively engages in external cooperation with its stakeholders, particularly with Patient Advocacy Groups and Healthcare Professionals.6 Unfortunately, stakeholder engagement programs and policies are too general to be effective. In other words, the company interprets only the most general principles of its cooperation with stakeholders; the latter, however, do not know when they can be engaged in the company decision-making.7 The situation with community programs is much better, and for the most part, community programs help the company to achieve better social responsibility outcomes. The detailed review of the major community programs will shed the light on the major benefits and drawbacks of Pfizer’s participation in the community life. Pfizer and community initiatives Pfizer positions itself on the market as an important driver of various community initiatives and the company that is extremely attentive to the community effects of its policies and corporate decisions. Local citizenship is among the principal elements of Pfizer’s community decision-making. The company’s official website provides a brief review of the community health programs that were developed by Pfizer: Friends in Health and Balance It Out allow community participants and members to learn more about Pfizer products and about their own health.8 Friends in Health is a community program that targets Latino communities in California, Connecticut and Texas and provides “culturally relevant education regarding the access and self-management tools for patients with diabetes, related complications, and depression”9. The major benefits of the program include increased knowledge of community members about their health condition and the opportunities they can use to achieve better health outcomes and manage their chronic health conditions.10 Balance It Out is a community program targeting children and their families. The program was implemented in three community districts of Arkansas and resulted in increased engagement of the target communities in healthier lifestyles.11 The benefits of the community programs developed by Pfizer are not limited to better community health but extend to cover better relationships with medical and healthcare providers and government officials. The fact is in that Pfizer understands “the complexity of the health care challenges facing the world, and further recognizes that the company role extends beyond discovering, developing and delivering pharmaceutical products. We also have a role in helping to find solutions to the systemic barriers to health care” (Pfizer Inc., 2010). The model of community programs at Pfizer comprises numerous elements from community participation in healthier lifestyles to the increased role of government participation in resolving health care issues. It would be fair to assume that community for Pfizer is just one of many elements in a complex network of systemic solutions to the most urgent healthcare issues. Actually, health partnerships which Pfizer develops for and with the communities for which it works lead to numerous improvements and result in considerable benefits for both the community and the company. In this sense, the community grant-making program initiated in 1997 is the source of the major benefits for the community and stakeholders. Despite the lack of the detailed quantitative evaluation of the program, the following effects and benefits are obvious. First, the grant-making program led to better management of patients’ chronic diseases: the stakeholders and medical professionals were able to raise the quality of standard medical care which community members can access on a daily basis.12 Second, technological innovations and advanced solutions improved medical center operations and the quality of patient care: for example, some grantees implemented the use of electronic medical records, while communities acquired an opportunity to contact medical and support centers via e-mail or the Internet.13 Community programs developed and implemented by Pfizer result in significant cost savings and improve the state of community and healthcare networks – ultimately, these cost savings release resources necessary to improve the most problematic aspects of healthcare and make companies and communities better prepared to the ever changing healthcare environments.14 Finally, community programs and Pfizer’s commitment to community sustainable development improves the development and state of learning in the company itself: employees who face a challenge of effective community cooperation must be both flexible and innovative in their decisions. Pfizer is well-known for its investments in corporate learning and innovation and seeks to successfully cope with the external community biases.15 However, even these benefits leave sufficient room for sound criticism. Such criticism is the necessary precondition for the company’s continuous success: only companies that can critically assess their failures and underachievement will have a better chance to reduce their negative impacts on the corporate performance. Pfizer and community: Potential drawbacks That Pfizer spends significant resources on community initiatives can be equally beneficial and detrimental for its corporate performance. On the one hand, such commitment to community programs implies the company’s desire to establish close cooperation ties with the community members; on the other hand, it suggests that with its emphasis on community initiatives, Pfizer may overlook other, no less significant corporate issues. The scope and specificity of the company’s corporate activity tells much about numerous challenges, which Pfizer must face on a daily basis. The 14 percent of its payroll which the company spends on unlimited tuition reimbursement and training of employees, including those that actively work with communities, is a considerable sum which could have been spent on the initiatives other than those developed for communities.16 Nevertheless, Pfizer continuously surprises the public and its stakeholders with how brilliantly it can meet its business goals and objectives. Here, the major task Pfizer must fulfill is to develop and use extensive quantitative techniques, necessary to assess and predict potential community program outcomes and their relative cost-effectiveness. Quantitative analysis and regular monitoring should be integral components of any community initiative. Otherwise, the company risks losing valuable human and financial resources and distorting the vision of Pfizer as of the responsible community participant. Conclusion For years, Pfizer sought to establish itself as the company with the well-developed corporate social responsibility and serious commitment to community development. Numerous community programs position Pfizer as the company that cares for its stakeholders and wants to improve the health and wellbeing of the communities for which it works. Despite the numerous benefits of community initiatives, Pfizer should be more careful about their costs and expenses. With the amount of resources spent on community programs every year, a risk exists that Pfizer may overlook other, no less important moments and will fail to address them before they turn into a disaster. BIBLIOGRAPHY Johnson, H. “Top 5: Pfizer.” Training, 1 March 2004, http://www.allbusiness.com/services/educational-services/4283672-1.html OWT Charity. “Pfizer Inc.” GAR Accountability Profile, 2007, http://www.oneworldtrust.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=98&tmpl=component&format=raw&Itemid=55 Pfizer, Inc. “Enhancing the quality of life… Where we work and where we live” in Pfizer, Inc., Community Programs, Pfizer, 2009, http://www.pfizer.com/responsibility/community_programs/local_citizenships.jsp Pfizer, Inc. “Doing the right things. Corporate responsibility report”, Pfizer Inc., 2010, http://media.pfizer.com/files/corporate_citizenship/cr_report_2009.pdf Pfizer, Inc. “Upholding our corporate responsibility to the communities.” Pfizer, 2009, http://www.pfizer.com/responsibility/community_programs/community_programs.jsp Roan, C. & Clark, C.W. “The Pfizer foundation’s community health ventures program: Providing models for community health partnerships”, Health Affairs, Special report, 2005, http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/21/6/250 Read More