Open Doorway to Truth: Legacy of the Minnesota Tobacco Trial

Hurt, R. Douglas; Ebbert, Jon O.; Muggli, Monique E.; Lockhart, Nikki J.; Robertson, Channing R.

doi:10.1016/s0025-6196(11)60563-6

Cited by 53 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…1996; Test Research 2000; Cummings et al 2002; Bates and Rowell 2004). These revelations led to cigarette manufacturers being openly demonised as merchants of death who preyed on children and led to reduced trust in the industry amongst policymakers and publics which also greatly strengthened the political influence of public health advocates (U.S. Newswire 1997; Test Research 2000; Carter and Chapman 2003; Nathanson 2005; Palazzo and Richter 2005; Hurt et al 2009; Haltom et al . 2009).…”

Section: Stage One: Declining Political Authority Conceived By Corpormentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility: Techniques of Neutralization, Stakeholder Management and Political CSR

et al. 2012

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Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively under-developed. In particular, little is known about how corporate decision-makers privately reconcile the conflicts between public and private interests, even though this is likely to be relevant to understanding the limitations of CSR as a means of aligning business activity with the broader public interest. This study addresses this issue using internal tobacco industry documents to explore British-American Tobacco’s (BAT) thinking on CSR and its effects on the company’s CSR Programme. The article presents a three-stage model of CSR development, based on Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization, which links together: how BAT managers made sense of the company’s declining political authority in the mid-1990s; how they subsequently justified the use of CSR as a tool of stakeholder management aimed at diffusing the political impact of public health advocates by breaking up political constituencies working towards evidence-based tobacco regulation; and how CSR works ideologically to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the relative merits of competing approaches to tobacco control. Our analysis has three implications for research and practice. First, it underlines the importance of approaching corporate managers’ public comments on CSR critically and situating them in their economic, political and historical contexts. Second, it illustrates the importance of focusing on the political aims and effects of CSR. Third, by showing how CSR practices are used to stymie evidence-based government regulation, the article underlines the importance of highlighting and developing matrices to assess the negative social impacts of CSR.

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Section: Stage One: Declining Political Authority Conceived By Corpormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This has weakened the effect of this strategy by alerting both policymakers and public health advocates to the interests behind political activity relating to the regulation and control of tobacco (Hurt et al . 2009; Smith et al . 2010; Arnott 2011).…”

Section: Stage One: Declining Political Authority Conceived By Corpormentioning

confidence: 99%

The Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility: Techniques of Neutralization, Stakeholder Management and Political CSR

et al. 2012

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“…Consequently, political strategy, designed to bring about such conditions, has long been recognised as a key component of overall corporate strategy, on an equal footing with market strategy. 14 Like transnational tobacco corporations (TTCs), 15,16 alcohol industry actors employ a range of different approaches to achieve their political objectives in the UK and beyond. 6-8,17-23 As Miller and Harkins suggest, communications and media strategies are a key element of their political strategy, providing businesses with ‘an opportunity to connect with popular opinion as well as elite opinion’.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between a rock and a hard place: Economic expansion and social responsibility in UK media discourses on the global alcohol industry

Thornton

Hawkins

2017

Social Science & Medicine

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Context Transnational alcohol corporations (TACs) employ a range of strategies to achieve their business objectives, including attempts to frame perceptions of their activities in media debates. TACs aim to achieve a favourable regulatory environment by presenting themselves as socially responsible actors. However, the need to secure financial investment means they must also emphasise their potential for growth. This article investigates tensions between these objectives in coverage of the global alcohol industry in the UK print media. Methods This article examines coverage of the world’s four largest TACs in five British daily newspapers and one industry publication between March 2012 and February 2013. 477 articles were identified for analysis through keyword searches of the LexisNexis database. Thematic coding of articles was conducted using Nvivo software. Findings Two conflicting framings of the alcohol industry emerge from our analysis. The first presents TACs as socially responsible actors; key partners to government in reducing alcohol-related harms. This is targeted at policy-makers and the public in an attempt to shape policy debates. The second framing highlights TACs’ potential for economic growth by establishing new markets and identifying new customer bases. This is targeted at an audience of potential investors. Conclusions A fundamental contradiction lies at the heart of these framings, reflecting the tensions that exist between TACs’ political and financial strategies. Alcohol industry involvement in policy-making thus involves a fundamental conflict of interests. Consequently, the UK government should reassess the prominence it currently affords to the industry in the development and delivery of alcohol policy.

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“…Internal company documents serve as a valuable source of information about industry-sponsored research for those producing evidence summaries [19], those concerned about an entire industry's global marketing behavior [20], and for those wishing to report a study's findings as a restorative author [21]. For example, the clinical study reports produced by pharmaceutical companies at the completion of a clinical trial typically include the protocol (what was planned) and a detailed description of study analyses and findings [17], [22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them?

et al. 2014

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ObjectiveTo describe the sources of internal company documents used in public health and healthcare research.MethodsWe searched PubMed and Embase for articles using internal company documents to address a research question about a health-related topic. Our primary interest was where authors obtained internal company documents for their research. We also extracted information on type of company, type of research question, type of internal documents, and funding source.ResultsOur searches identified 9,305 citations of which 357 were eligible. Scanning of reference lists and consultation with colleagues identified 4 additional articles, resulting in 361 included articles. Most articles examined internal tobacco company documents (325/361; 90%). Articles using documents from pharmaceutical companies (20/361; 6%) were the next most common. Tobacco articles used documents from repositories; pharmaceutical documents were from a range of sources. Most included articles relied upon internal company documents obtained through litigation (350/361; 97%). The research questions posed were primarily about company strategies to promote or position the company and its products (326/361; 90%). Most articles (346/361; 96%) used information from miscellaneous documents such as memos or letters, or from unspecified types of documents. When explicit information about study funding was provided (290/361 articles), the most common source was the US-based National Cancer Institute. We developed an alternative and more sensitive search targeted at identifying additional research articles using internal pharmaceutical company documents, but the search retrieved an impractical number of citations for review.ConclusionsInternal company documents provide an excellent source of information on health topics (e.g., corporate behavior, study data) exemplified by articles based on tobacco industry documents. Pharmaceutical and other industry documents appear to have been less used for research, indicating a need for funding for this type of research and well-indexed and curated repositories to provide researchers with ready access to the documents.

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Open Doorway to Truth: Legacy of the Minnesota Tobacco Trial

Cited by 53 publications

References 22 publications

The Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility: Techniques of Neutralization, Stakeholder Management and Political CSR

The Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility: Techniques of Neutralization, Stakeholder Management and Political CSR

Between a rock and a hard place: Economic expansion and social responsibility in UK media discourses on the global alcohol industry

Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them?

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