Competitors and Pharmacy Type: Do They Affect Ethical Compliance?

1. Competitors and Pharmacy Type:Do They Affect Ethical Compliance? Prof Dr Abu Bakar Abdul Majeed Wan Sazrina Bt Wan Zaid Dr Lua Pei Lin Centre for Drug Policy & Health Economics Research Faculty of Pharmacy UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA, SHAH ALAM

2. Introduction • A business should react to the strategies and bargaining strength of customers, competitors and suppliers. • In community pharmacy, pharmacists need to juggle between business, management’s policy and professionalism all at once.

3. Introduction • When the pharmacists were asked why they promote and sell food supplements to healthy individuals who don’t need them, the common response was: “If I don’t sell them, they’ll just go to my competition down the street” (Nelson MV, 1988). • The culture of an organization can influence the employees behaviour (McGuire R, 2006).

4. Aims of Study • To examine the influence of competitor number towards ethical compliance among community pharmacists. • To examine the influence of different pharmacy settings towards ethical compliance among community pharmacists.

5. Methods (I) • A specific pharmacoethics instrument was administered by post to all 1,493 registered community pharmacists in Malaysia. • The ethical dimensions investigated include: 1) Business Practice (9 items) 2) Ethical Practice (11 items) 3) Professional Practice (5 items) 4) Personal Attitude (7 items)

6. Methods (II) • The scoring was on five-point Likert scales with score=1 being the most unethical and score=5 being the most ethical. • Data was analyzed using SPSS for Windows version 11. • Kruskal-Wallis test was used for group comparisons.

7. Results (Demographic) • A total of 266 respondents (20.3%) completed the instrument where 184 instruments were returned to researcher due to either the pharmacies were closed or the pharmacist resigned from that particular pharmacy.

8. Results (Demographic)

9. Results (Competitors)

10. Results (Pharmacy Type)

11. Results (Competitors) No significant difference was demonstrated in all the pharmacoethics dimensions (p>0.05).

12. Results (Pharmacy Type) • Independent Pharmacy with Branch/Branches exhibited significantly lower median scores for Ethical Practice (p=0.001) compared to others.

13. Discussion (I) • These findings generally indicate that the number of competitors does not affect pharmacists’ ethical compliance. • This is supported by past studies that suggested that competition might be good for ethical behaviour in the long run (Shleifer A, 2004).

14. Discussion (II) • However, the type of business seems to negatively affect Ethical Practice. • Past study showed that there are significant gap in the conceptualization of business ethics within different cultural influences (Vitell SJ et. al, 1993).

15. Conclusions • The number of competitors does not affect pharmacists’ ethical compliance. • Type of business negatively affect pharmacists’ ethical compliance particularly in their Ethical Practice aspects. • Interventions may be necessary to improve the ethical standards among all low-compliers in order to preserve the integrity of the pharmacy profession.

16. References • Nelson MV (1988). Promotion and selling of unnecessary food supplements: Quackery or ethical pharmacy practice? American Pharmacy NS28 (10):34–36. • Ruth McGuire (2006). Workplace cultures and pharmacy. The Pharmaceutical Journal (276):447–450. • Shleifer, A. (2004). Does competition destroy ethical behaviour? National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, 10269. • Vitell, S. J., et al (1993). The effects of culture on ethical decision-making: An application of Hofstede’s typology. Journal of Business Ethics, 12(10), 753–760.

17. Acknowledgement • Respondents – Community pharmacists. • Bahagian Perkhidmatan Farmasi, Jabatan Kesihatan Negeri (all States). • UiTM

18. Thank You.