Knowledge and Information Flows in Supply Chains: a Study on Pharmaceutical Companies

Goods, information, financial and technology resources flow through supply chains, and pharmaceutical companies face a very specific challenge: ethical drugs must be prescribed by physicians to be bought or used by final consumers. That gives a unique design to their supply chains. This paper aims to understand how the supply chains of pharmaceutical companies are configured. It especially explores knowledge and information flows between those companies and physicians. Those companies have developed specialized units to manage their relationship with physicians. It is not a typical producer – distributor commercial relationship, since physicians work under strong professional regulations and code of ethics. It draws upon a qualitative field research: physician and customer relationship managers from four large multinational pharmaceutical companies were interviewed and their units ́ procedures were examined.