Strategic CSR - Amazon

As the article in the url below implies, how is this for creepy?

 

"What if your employer made you wear a wristband that tracked your every move, and that even nudged you via vibrations when it judged that you were doing something wrong? What if your supervisor could identify every time you paused to scratch or fidget, and for how long you took a bathroom break?"

 

In the name of ever-greater efficiency, this day is drawing nearer as Amazon expands its reach into every corner of the economy (and our lives):

 

"What may sound like dystopian fiction could become a reality for Amazon warehouse workers around the world. The company has won two patents for such a wristband, though it was unclear if Amazon planned to actually manufacture the tracking device and have employees wear it."

 

If you are interested to see what the workplace of the future looks like, the two patents are available here: http://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?PageNum=0&docid=20170278051&IDKey=0E2634BC1119

 

You would have thought Amazon would have learned from the withering coverage it received for its "bruising workplace" culture in this profile in The New York Times in 2015:

 

"At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another's ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are "unreasonably high." The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another's bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: 'I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.')"

 

Instead, given its rapid expansion, fawning attention over its HQ2 decision, and share price that defies gravity (and common sense), the message it is getting from its stakeholders is to keep on going. Apparently, its employees are just happy to be working there and the rest of us don't care if their privacy and/or security is threatened. Frederick Taylor would be impressed with the extrapolation of his work over a century ago:

 

"In theory, Amazon's proposed technology would emit ultrasonic sound pulses and radio transmissions to track where an employee's hands were in relation to inventory bins, and provide 'haptic feedback' to steer the worker toward the correct bin. The aim, Amazon says in the patent, is to streamline 'time consuming' tasks, like responding to orders and packaging them for speedy delivery. With guidance from a wristband, workers could fill orders faster."

 

Take care

David

 

David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation (4e)

© Sage Publications, 2017

 

Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler4e

Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

 

 

Track Hands of Workers? Amazon Has Patents for It

By Ceylan Yeginsu

February 2, 2018

The New York Times

Late Edition – Final

B3

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/technology/amazon-wristband-tracking-privacy.html

 

Strategic CSR - Pharmaceuticals

I always find it fascinating that the pharmaceutical industry has such a bad reputation (Issues: Patents, p252). How is it that firms that specialize in producing drugs that save lives, reduce human misery and suffering, and increase longevity and general wellbeing can be criticized from so many quarters for their lack of social responsibility?

Why is it that:

“There is a special duty when you are selling medicine as opposed to pantyhose or hubcaps,”

but also that:

“On the one hand, we don't like it that markets are harsh and unjust, … But on the other hand, it's the power of the market that creates the therapies in the first place”?

The article in the url below goes some way to redressing this disconnect by outlining some of the good work being done by pharmaceutical firms and many of the challenges that prevent more rapid progress. Two aspects of the story jumped out at me: First, how much is being done and how far the industry has progressed toward responding to its critics. For example:

“Efforts to deliver cures to the world's poorest regions range from new research initiatives to Big Pharma donations of medicine. Last November, the World Health Organization unveiled an alliance with six firms that pledged to donate drugs for neglected tropical diseases. … Among the contributions was an unlimited supply of leprosy treatments from Novartis, and up to 200 million tablets a year from Johnson & Johnson to combat intestinal worms in children. … GlaxoSmithKline is sharing more than 800 of its patents with other companies working to find treatments for neglected tropical diseases. The company has also cut prices for more than a dozen drugs sold in the least developed countries -- such as Rwanda, Ethiopia and Cambodia -- to no more than 25% of the developed-world price. The treatments cover conditions that include asthma, malaria and hepatitis B.”

And, second, the prominent role of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is mentioned in multiple examples in the article as partnering with specific firms to make a significant impact:

“Many such programs are modeled after alliances between drug companies, governments and non-profit organizations that have expanded affordable access to HIV/AIDS treatments in poor countries. Perhaps the most ambitious effort has been in Botswana, which in 2001 joined forces with Merck and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to bring drugs to the impoverished African nation. Now 90% of Botswana's HIV/AIDS patients receive treatment, says Merck, compared with just 5% when the program began.”

No doubt many (if not all) of these initiatives are not widely known, however, and pharmaceutical firms will continue to score poorly in public perceptions of their social responsibility.

Have a good weekend.

David

Bill Werther & David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment (2e)

© Sage Publications, 2011

http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr2e/

Instructor Teaching Site: http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr/

The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/

Profits and Social Responsibility: Chastened Drug Makers Step Up Efforts to Bring Affordable Medicines to Poor Countries

February 10, 2011

Knowledge@Wharton

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2710

Strategic CSR - Patents

The article in the url below profiles Yusuf Hamied, the CEO and largest shareholder of Cipla, a firm in India that breaks pharmaceutical patents by copying drugs and selling them at vastly reduced prices (Issues: Patents, p253). This business model has turned Cipla into one of India’s largest firms and “the largest supplier of antiretroviral drugs in the world”:

“To his supporters, Hamied has saved countless lives by making medicines affordable. But to his critics - above all the large western pharmaceuticals who first developed the drugs - he is a ''pirate'', an opportunist who has exploited others' intellectual property to swell his own profits. In the process, they say, he is undermining investment in future medicines, including the next generation of HIV therapies.”

The business model is extended across the board to hundreds of different kinds of drugs:

“We have more products than any (drug) company in the world,'' Hamied says. ''More than a thousand for humans, and a hundred for animals. That's because they are, in inverted commas, 'copy products'.”

Rather than a threat to the large western pharmaceutical firms, however, Hamied argues that he wants to collaborate with them to broaden the markets to which they can supply and for which there is overwhelming demand for pharmaceutical products:

“Hamied argues that western drug companies should - at best in exchange for modest royalties - allow generic producers to compete by making their medicines available immediately at the lowest possible cost, giving access to many more patients who would not otherwise be able to buy them.”

Needless to say, Cipla has run into significant resistance:

“''The first six months were absolute hell, as big pharma tried to run us down,'' [Hamied] says. Richard Sykes, head of Glaxo, denounced Hamied as a ''pirate'' and described the quality of Indian generic drugs as ''iffy''. Hamied fired back, saying that the company was a ''global serial killer'' for charging such high prices.”

Take care
Dave

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther

The man who battled big pharma.
By ANDREW JACK
2829 words
29 March 2008
Financial Times
Surveys MAG1
Page 14
http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto032820081826526065