Medicine and pharmacy — facts and myths about the development of an innovative pharmaceutical industry in Poland

Innovation is fundamental to the pharmaceutical industry and a key to improvements in healthcare. Its effectiveness depends on huge, constant investments in research. This innovative industry directly affects the course of studies in healthcare and medicine. Its efforts translate directly into the length and quality of our lives. For several years now, the progress underway in pharmaceutical industry has produced measurable benefits. Doctors have new pharmaceuticals at their disposal, including many types of antibiotics and anti-viral drugs, vaccines and a wide range of drugs which save lives or make them more comfortable. In the near future, ever more efficient cures for neoplastic, rheumatic, neurological, psychic, metabolic, circulatory or respiratory diseases can be expected. Innovation is necessary. The human population is ageing, and the task of an innovative pharmaceutical industry is to keep it in a good condition. The use of innovative drugs can translate directly into lowering the costs of illness. A continuous reduction in spending on healthcare has been observed. The costs of inventing an innovative drug are enormous though (US$ 800 million), and studies on a new drug last between 10 and 13 years. An essential element in recovering the incurred costs and ensuring funds needed for new research is protection by patent. Innovative pharmaceutical companies in Poland are committed to increasing the competitiveness and sustaining the development of not only the market, but also the entire pharmaceutical sector. It is a group of companies of crucial importance to the Polish healthcare system, as it influences improvement in the quality of medical services. Through their investments and spending on research and development, innovative companies accelerate economic growth. In Poland, the innovative pharmaceutical industry is represented by the Association of Pharmaceutical Companies Representatives in Poland (SPFFwP). An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “The Ethics of Intellectual Property Rights and Patents,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 23–24 April, 2004.     

Rights, Responsibilities, and Respect: A Balanced Citizenship Model for Schools of Business

In a world increasingly described as turbulent and chaotic, management scholars have acknowledged the importance of a virtue-based set of criteria to serve as a moral rubric for the stakeholders that an organization serves. Business schools play a unique role in helping their students to understand the ethical issues facing business. Business schools can also model the way for creating a clear statement of values and principles, by creating a bill of rights for business schools that recognizes the importance of rights and responsibilities and articulates the important ethical issues that apply not only to business but to the business school context. Four models for creating a bill of rights in schools of business are presented and a framework of a bill of rights is provided. The advantages of a virtue ethics model for a bill of rights are explained as the most practical approach for business faculty to consider.     

A Lighthouse In The Desert? Evaluating The Effects Of Creativity Training On Employee Innovation

The contribution of three different creativity training programmes to employees' workplace idea generation and implementation was evaluated. The research was conducted within a government organization, where 191 employees (a mixture of participants and non‐participants in creativity training) were surveyed. Analyses showed that creativity training participants in one type of course only were more likely to generate ideas back at work and that this relationship was mediated by their creative ability and motivation to innovate. However, in terms of later implementation of those ideas, the environmental factors of management support and divisional climate were much more strongly related than the creativity training.     

Israeli Teachers’ Perceptions of Lateness: A Gender Comparison

The study examines the relationship between distributive justice and teachers’ lateness, focusing on the mediation effect of organizational commitment and taking into account gender differences. The sample consisted of 1,016 teachers from 35 high schools in Israel. Results, based on multi-level analysis, showed that, for women, organizational commitment partially mediated the relation between perceived distributive justice and lateness. No such effect was found for men. The findings are explained in terms of women using lateness behavior to establish a balance between their amount of effort and the measure of their perceived reward.     

组织信任氛围对任务绩效的作用途径

通过问卷调查与结构方程建模分析组织信任对于员工工作绩效的影响途径。203名被试和他们的上司参与了问卷调查。结果分析采用潜变量路径分析方法。我们构建多组模型与构思模型,通过两个阶段的检验,分析了组织信任的作用机制。结果表明：组织信任作用于心理安全感,而心理安全感通过两条独立途径影响工作绩效,分别是工作聚焦与工作改进。心理安全感能够促进员工针对工作的不断改进的行为和探索新工作方法的意愿,同时也有利于员工集中精力在工作上,从而提高个人工作业绩     

对改善农村医疗卫生人才队伍现状的思考

农村卫生技术人才匮乏给农村卫生事业发展带来了严峻的挑战,导致这一现状的缘由应从多层面进行分析。作为医学领域新思想、新知识、新技术的创造者和发源地以及医学人才培养摇篮的高等医学院校在改变这种格局中担负着重大的使命。探讨如何以客户意识作为教育及办学价值取向,从而为改善农村卫生队伍现状开拓了思路。     

Learning climate scale: Construction,reliability and initial validity evidence

The current study developed an instrument for measuring learning climate in organizations. A review of the organizational learning and facilitation of workplace learning literature resulted in three theoretically relevant dimensions referring to facilitation, appreciation, and error avoidance. The 3-dimensional learning climate scale (LCS) was tested in a heterogeneous sample of Dutch wage earners (N = 1013). Confirmatory factor analysis and analysis of measurement invariance were conducted to establish the factorial structure of the measure. Also, convergent, divergent, and construct validity of the LCS were investigated. The findings showed that the newly developed instrument for learning climate has good psychometric properties: the three-factor structure was supported and the sub-scales were reliable. Furthermore, the LCS showed good convergent and divergent validity.     

Joint effects of social networks and information giving on innovative performance after organizational entry

We combine the social network approach and organizational socialization literature in order to examine the influence of social networks and proactive behavior on newcomers' innovative performance. A sample of new employees completed questionnaires on social network and proactive measures, and their supervisors rated their innovative performance. The results suggest that both sparse (low density) social networks and newcomers' information giving were related to innovative performance. The results also indicate that information giving moderated the relation between sparse social networks and innovative performance: when newcomers' information giving was high, the characteristics of their social networks were not related to their innovative performance.     

Situating Standards in Practices: Multi Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Treatment in India

Public health care needs to cope with a basic dilemma between providing standardized care within public programmes across entire and at times resource-constrained countries and adapting this care locally when responding to individual needs. This tension between standardization and local adaptation becomes particularly obvious for the prolonged and complicated treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Situated standardization, as introduced by Zuiderent-Jerak [2007a, 2007b] offers a way out of this dilemma. It helps to focus on how standards need to be situated in practice rather than viewing standardization and local adaptation as mutually exclusive practices. How do actors relate standardization and individual care in their practices of treating MDR-TB? Results from qualitative fieldwork at the first MDR-TB treatment sites of the Indian TB programme show that actors situate standards in a particular way. They assess the role of guidelines in a particular situation and on that basis recognize the core recommendations of guidelines or go beyond the guidelines. This allows actors to negotiate how standards should be situated and reconciles the dilemma between local adaptation and standardization. Having guidelines internalized, as is common for Indian TB control, bears both promises and pitfalls for engaging in standardization processes in a situated manner. The results contribute to science and technology study scholarship on guideline development. They highlight how actors coordinate the situating of standards and how this depends upon cultures of control. This illustrates the potential of qualitative studies on local adaptation for guideline developers by revealing existing practices of relating and negotiating local adaptation and standardization.     

Les effets des demandes au travail et de la justice organisationnelle sur l’épuisement professionnel : quels effets médiateurs du soutien social et de l’estime de soi ?

This study focuses on the burnout framework and aims at examining the links between, on the one hand, the psychological burden, decision latitude, organizational justice and self-esteem and, on the other hand, the burnout. We measure the mediator effect of the social support. The data derived from a questionnaire submitted to 122 managers allowed us to establish a correlation matrix, linear regressions on the burnout and mediation analyzes. The results indicate that the predominant variables would be the organizational justice, support from colleagues, self-esteem and affects. The mediator effect of the social support between the different types of justice and the burnout was partially validated.