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This study aims to explore Poles’ views regarding pharmaceutical industry transparency, prompted by the Sunshine regulations in the USA and certain European countries.

An online survey of a quota sample of 1,057 respondents was conducted. The sample reflected the structure of the Polish population in terms of sex, age, size of place of residence, province and education.

Poles prioritize legal requirements for the disclosure of gifts, work payments and conference support to doctors over meals. Almost half of Poles (46.7%) would check doctors’ relationships with the pharmaceutical industry if they could, while 38.9% stated they would not seek care from doctors with a relationship. Older individuals, males, those with children and those unvaccinated against COVID-19 are more likely to support increased transparency in industry–doctor relationships. Poles prioritize transparency with patient organizations over doctors. More than half of them believe these organizations should receive support from the state (54.6%) than from the industry (43.4%). A majority of Poles (65.9%) desire to know a patient organization’s income sources before requesting their assistance, and as much as 69.3% of respondents want the law to require disclosures. Older individuals and recent health-care users are more likely to support transparency in pharmaceutical industry–patient organization relationships. Given significant social support for Sunshine regulations, legislators should consider its implementation, as in Poland, only self-regulations of the pharmaceutical industry exist.

In Poland, the discussion about implementing a transparency policy in these relationships has not even started. Furthermore, this study shows that there is significant public interest in such disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze media coverage of the pharmaceutical industry before and after the COVID-19 lockdown to determine whether the coverage changed in light of a global health-care crisis and the fast-track development of vaccines and antiviral treatments.

The top five US newspapers were audited, comparing the 12-month periods before and after March 2020 coinciding with the pandemic lockdown, yielding 493 front-page articles and editorials. Each headline and full-text article was separately analyzed and categorized as either positive, negative or neutral toward the pharmaceutical industry. A frequency analysis of the hot button issues covered in each article was conducted.

Year 1 and Year 2 audit results were compared to identify changes in media coverage pre- and post-lockdown. The amount of coverage of the industry increased 145% and the tone of both headlines and articles shifted dramatically. Only one of the five newspapers had a net positive article rating of the industry pre-lockdown, four of five were net positive post-lockdown. The proportion of positive headlines increased 165%. The top issues discussed in the coverage shifted from persistent challenges for the industry (e.g. opioid crisis, high cost of drugs) to the emergence of the virus and status of vaccine development.

This research establishes how media coverage of the pharmaceutical industry changed as the industry responded to a global health-care crisis and identifies implications for industry stakeholders.

This paper aims to explore gender differences in payments made to physicians by the pharmaceutical and medical device industries via the performance of a systematic review of articles based on the Open Payments Database (OPD).

Three databases (Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed) were searched for articles published from September 30, 2014 to May 10, 2019, using two search terms: “Sunshine Act” and “Open Payments.” The systematic review is reported according to preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.

The search identified 359 abstracts. Thirty-nine articles were selected for full review, and 17 of these met the inclusion criteria. Although the articles considered are based on the same database, they adopt diverse approaches and analyses are conducted in different ways. A substantial proportion of the studies show total payments from the two industries to be higher for male physicians than for female physicians. However, a few exceptions exist, higher female mean or median values occurring for payments involving research, ownership, honoraria, grants, royalties/licenses and travel/lodgings. Also, in the case of obstetric–gynecological specializations, a higher proportion of women than men are shown to cooperate with the industries.

There is gender inequality in terms of industries’ funding for doctors. While analyses of secondary OPD data show that a gender inequality exists, they do not provide an understanding of why this occurs. However, from the exceptions identified, it can be speculated that this phenomenon is connected with greater adherence to ethical standards on the part of female physicians and/or the likelihood that fewer opportunities for industrial cooperation are extended to them.

The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), a multicriteria decision support system that has been successfully applied to numerous decision-making situations, has been applied to patient assessment. The AHP was used with Timeslips™, a group storytelling program that encourages creative expression among dementia patients, to determine the optimal scale for pre and post assessment among the nine most common agitation and anxiety scales. The AHP used the six criteria identified by qualitative assessment of the nine scales: (1) validity/reliability, (2) observation period, (3) training required, (4) time to administer, (5) most appropriate administrator, and (6) accessibility/cost. The AHP indicated that the Overt Agitation & Anxiety Scale was optimal for use with Timeslips; the process and results are discussed.

The accuracy of forecasts has a critical impact on an organization. A new, practical, and meaningful forecast performance measure, percentage forecasting error (PFE), was introduced by the authors in an earlier publication. In this chapter, we examined the accuracy of the PFE under several different scenarios and found the results to indicate that PFE offers forecasters an accurate and practical alternative to assess forecast accuracy.

In many educational and professional environments, diversely talented teams are created to solve problems requiring different skill sets. In the educational setting teams may be used to conduct a learning project; in a work setting teams may be used to develop a new product. Teams are usually constructed from “players” in different functional departments. Because the “best” player in each department can’t be on all teams, constructing teams so that all teams function optimally is a challenging and often arbitrary process. This chapter describes a multiple criteria model for team selection that balances skill sets among the groups and varies the composition of the teams from period to period. The results of applying this team selection model to a cohort-structured Executive MBA (EMBA) program and to team selection in a Fortune 100 corporation are presented. The results of this project suggest that an implantation of a quantitative method, such as our Model III, markedly improves team performance and achieves that improvement in a timelier manner.

The purpose of this study is to analyze newspaper coverage of ethical issues in the pharmaceutical industry.

The top five US newspapers were audited over two years and yielded 376 articles, which appeared as front‐page stories or editorials. First, headlines were analyzed and categorized as positive, negative, or neutral toward the industry. Next, the full‐text of each article was analyzed and ethical issues in each article were categorized. Then, articles were evaluated to determine whether the opposing point of view was included. Finally, comparisons were made between the identified issues and the issues cited by PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry's trade association.

Analysis of the ethical issues revealed different results for the two years. In 2004, the most common issues covered were drug pricing, data disclosure and importation/reimportation. In 2005, drug safety was the number one issue, due to Vioxx^® with drug pricing a distant second. Headlines were negative 57.1 percent in 2004 and 43.9 percent in 2005. Full‐text articles were negative 69.5 percent in 2004 and 60.1 percent in 2005. The opposing point of view was included 77.7 percent in 2004 and increased to 82.7 percent in 2005. Ethical issues cited by PhRMA, (e.g. drug pricing), received heavy coverage but several identified issues were not on PhRMA's list, notably drug safety.

Pharmaceutical companies need to take action to address the negative impression about them.

This research establishes a practical methodology to evaluate newspaper coverage of ethical issues involving the pharmaceutical industry.

A common problem that many universities face, especially with their specialized programs, is coordinating faculty availability and class offerings. The schedule is usually developed using paper and pencil after numerous iterations. As a result, the objectives of the program, such as course integration, length of course, and student workload, are most likely compromised in lieu of faculty availability. This chapter describes a multiple objective approach to this class assignment problem that considers the program’s objectives and faculty preferences. The results of applying this class assignment model to an Executive MBA (EMBA) program are presented.

Producing good forecast is a vital aspect of a business. The accuracy of these forecasts could have a critical impact on the organization. We introduce a new, practical, and meaningful forecast performance measure called percentage forecast error (PFE). The results of comparing and evaluating this new measure to traditional forecasting performance measures under several different simulation scenarios are presented in this chapter.

The purpose of this paper is to try to understand better whether performance appraisal (PA) helps performance evaluators (PEs) to manage more effectively and meet employees' expectations in US‐based corporations.

A 54‐item research instrument was developed and implemented using structured interviews with 54 PEs, who worked at five US‐based corporations (Aetna Insurance, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Valspar, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals). Responses were statistically analyzed with descriptive statistics and decision trees.

Time dedicated to implementing PA was the most important factor leading to ethical issues. PEs with the highest educational levels and most experience spent the least amount of time (1.86 vs 3.19 hours) implementing PA. Most PEs (79.6 percent) solicited feedback about employees' performance from employees' peers but 20 percent did not. Additionally, not a single PE had PA as a specific objective, making it difficult to sequester time necessary for PA. Older PEs felt PA helped them manage more effectively and PEs who were Black or White and from Marketing/Sales were most favorable about meeting employees' PA expectations. There were no remarkable differences among PA systems at the five corporations, e.g. 360‐degree training.

Structured interviews required delicate interaction due to sensitivity about the US economy and resulting layoffs within interviewees' corporations.

PEs, particularly older managers with higher educational levels, should have a PA objective and be held accountable to it to ensure that they dedicate time necessary to complete PA in the way the PA system intends.

The paper provides insight about PA within the US corporate setting and will be highly interesting to those in that field.