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Pharmaceutical Industry

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The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management
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Abstract

Pharmaceuticals have been a highly innovative, marketing-intensive, internationalized and heavily regulated industry, at least since the post-Second World War years. This industry has consistently shown a remarkable track record in innovativeness, economic and financial performance. Yet, throughout its whole history, pharmaceuticals have been characterized by harsh controversies: here classic market failures, economic trade-offs and social and ethical conflicts are brought to extremes. The history of pharmaceuticals has also been marked by major technological, organizational and institutional change. Indeed, some of the factors that have sustained the performance of the industry seem now to be weakening.

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Correspondence to Luigi Orsenigo .

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Orsenigo, L. (2018). Pharmaceutical Industry. In: Augier, M., Teece, D.J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-00772-8_362

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