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The Constant Gardener Revisited: The Effect of Social Blackmail on the Marketing Concept, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship*
ABSTRACT. This paper discusses how adoption of the social dimensions of the marketing concept may unintentionally restrict innovation and corporate entrepreneurship, ultimately reducing social welfare. The impact of social marketing on innovation and entrepreneurship is discussed using the case of multinational pharmaceutical firms that are under pressure when marketing HIV treatments in poor countries.
The argument this paper supports is that social welfare may eventually be diminished if forced social responsibility is imposed. The case of providing subsidized AIDS medication to less developed nations is used to illustrate how social blackmail may result in less innovation, entrepreneurship, and product development efforts by the pharmaceutical industry, ultimately reducing social welfare.
KEY WORDS: corporate entrepreneurship and social responsibility, innovation and ethics, innovation and public policy
"If Africans and other Third Worlders are left out, it's not because of 'corporate greed' but because there is no price at which they would become customers for antiretroviral therapy. . . . The modern drug industry is a purely artificial creation. Without strong government enforcement of its patent rights and pricing freedom, it would dry up and blow away overnight. Drugs are just too expensive to invent, and too easy to copy in a lawless environment" (Jenkins, 2001, p. A33).
"In John le Carre's latest book, The Constant Gardener, the bad guy isn't a Soviet spymaster or a marauding terrorist but a sinister pharmaceutical giant called KVH" (Harris and McGinley, 2001, p. Al).
"Greed is a basic requirement for the success of a market economy. Competition, encouraged by greed, leads to more and better marketing mixes through entrepreneurship and innovation. In economies where profit is discouraged, there is less for everyone" (Cooke, 1997, p. 4).
In John le Carre's (2001) recent book, The Constant Gardener, a fictitious Swiss-Canadian pharmaceutical corporation, Karel Vita Hudson (KVH), ruthlessly exploits Africa's poor by using them as subjects for human medical efficacy trials while failing to provide drugs due to the Africans' inability to pay market prices. Although the drug company portrayed in le Carre's book is fictional, the scenario described is chillingly realistic.
Currently, major pharmaceutical firms are being pressured by organizations such as the World Health...