Abstract:

So far as the innovative sector of the pharmaceutical industry itself is concerned, the paper describes the extent to which various manufacturing companies have developed an international dimension and the broad categories into which they fall in terms of corporate structure and organisation, particularly as these touch upon central or national survey research requirements. The paper continues with a brief description of the pharmaceutical industry's evolution as an international operation and of the internal and external factors which have prompted such developments.The paper describes some of the underlying attitudes towards this subject which, from the point of view of an agency, appear to obtain amongst some components of the industry, especially where the relevance or value of centralized approaches are called into question. Several examples are given of situations in which centralized projects have encountered problems and of the failure of communication which has generally been a primary cause of such incidents. The paper concludes with descriptions of measures taken to minimise the likelihood of such problems recurring, whether or not surveys are organised centrally or are decentralized, and the suggestion that, whatever its nature, international research is most useful conducted with a maximum involvement of all interested parties.