Our worldwide research, development, manufacturing and marketing activities put AstraZeneca in the global spotlight on a wide range of issues that affect or concern our stakeholders and society.
We know that effective management of these issues is critical to maintaining trust and confidence in AstraZeneca as a company committed to delivering business success responsibly. This means having systems in place for identifying the challenges and opportunities associated with our corporate responsibility, together with frameworks and clear accountabilities for managing these consistently and appropriately in line with our strategic objectives.
In early 2010, AstraZeneca announced a refreshed business strategy. Our overall direction remains the same but we have accelerated our effort in some key areas to make sure we are well positioned to manage the challenges ahead. We are transforming our R&D to leverage the best of what we have and building the capabilities that we need for world-class performance. We will grow our business by further increasing our footprint in emerging markets - strengthening our sales and marketing capability alongside capital investment in new facilities. We are boosting our efforts to source innovation from outside AstraZeneca’s walls and working in partnerships throughout the value chain that broaden the base for success. Across all these areas, we continue to drive efficiency and effectiveness, including increased outsourcing to a diverse range of strategic suppliers.
Our work to implement these objectives is underpinned by our commitment to sustainable development of our business which delivers value for our stakeholders and for us. To that end, our CR objectives must stay closely aligned to, and support delivery of our business strategy. In the light of our accelerated strategy and the feedback from our stakeholder engagement, we reviewed and re-shaped our CR priority action plan during the year to put the areas most impacted by the changes to our business at the top of our agenda. This means a specific focus on R&D ethics, sales and marketing practice, access to healthcare, human rights and supplier management. We will be maintaining focus on all other aspects of our corporate responsibility, such as patient safety and the environment whilst working to ensure that we manage effectively the particular challenges associated with the changes to our strategy.
Our new Responsible Business Plan, which includes associated objectives, targets and KPIs, maps our agenda. Because this is a dynamic and evolving area, we will continue to engage with our stakeholders and work within the business to explore how we can further improve our performance.
Our processes also enable us to identify the issues which do not need to be included in the Plan, but about which people want to hear. We continue to communicate openly throughout this Responsibility section of our website about our position on these issues, including any associated performance measures where possible.
We use a combined CR and compliance ‘responsible business’ scorecard with defined objectives and accountabilities to track performance consistently across all aspects of our business. Importantly, the scorecard has enabled quarterly reporting to SET, the Audit Committee and Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, as well as annual reporting to the Board.
This section tells you more about how we identify, prioritise and manage the issues relating to our business that affect or concern our stakeholders.
The content of this page was externally assured by Bureau Veritas, February 2011.