Assessment 3:

Asian Management
MGMT3016

Individual Report

Name: Tran Thien Thanh Tung

Date due: Friday 22th Jan 2021, 11 pm.

Title: GSK – Save the Children: A Successful Example of

Semester and Campus: Trimester 3A 2020, Curtin Singapore Campus.

Word Count: 1854.

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 GSK – Save the Children: A Successful
Example of NGO – Corporate Collaboration

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Executive Summary

Nowadays, showing responsibility for the sustainable development of society follow the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a mandatory action of the corporates. One of the
effective solutions that can both bring benefits to businesses and also benefit the community is to
cooperate with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). This partnership is able to deal with
the Grand Challenges well. In this report, we analyze the successful partnership between a
leading pharmaceutical company in the world and one of the world's oldest and largest NGOs in
an effort to reduce mortality among children under 5 years old and deal directly with SDGs 3:
Good health and well-being.

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary.......................................................................................................................3

1. Introduction............................................................................................................................4

2. Corporate – NGO Collaboration..........................................................................................5

2.1. Corporation.......................................................................................................................5

2.2. NGO – Non-Governmental Organization.........................................................................6

2.3. Collaboration.....................................................................................................................8

3. The complementary combination.......................................................................................10

4. Achievements........................................................................................................................12

5. Beneficiaries..........................................................................................................................13

6. Conclusion.............................................................................................................................14

7. References.............................................................................................................................15

8. Appendices............................................................................................................................17

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 1. Introduction

According to UNICEF statistic, Under-five mortality has dropped 59% between 1990 and 2019,
however, it is always urgent to cut down (UNICEF 2020). Only in 2019, statistics show that
every day, about 14,000 children die under 5 years from preventable diseases (UNICEF 2020).
The majority of that numbers are gathered from developing countries in Asia and Africa, where
the fight to erase the Grand Challenges and towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
is still going hard (Franz and Fitzroy 2006). Poverty, lack of healthcare conditions combined
with a polluted environment, unsanitary conditions and lack of knowledge are also the reasons
for the very high child mortality rates in these regions. Studies show that eliminating Grand
Challenges and achieving SDGs can help remove barriers to accelerating economic growth in
countries, for example developing countries in Asia (Baron 2017). Under this context, the
pressure on companies to be socially responsible and sustainable for the community is growing.
One of the best solutions increasingly chosen by businesses today is to collaborate with Non-
Governmental Organizations – (NGOs) (Dahan et al. 2010). NGOs operate not for the sake of
revenue but for the sake of society, human rights or environmental issues (Galway, Corbett and
Zeng 2012), while corporations are specifically targeted for the profit of the organization via
providing services or products (Matsuoka 2018), their cooperation can contribute to the
elimination of Grand Challenges and towards the SDGs thereby benefiting both NGOs,
corporations and society. This report will detail the partnership between GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
and The Save the Children Fund towards the common goal of reducing child mortality in
disadvantaged regions of the world, part Large concentrations are concentrated in Asia and
Africa (Appendix 1).

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 2. Corporate – NGO Collaboration
2.1. Corporation
GlaxoSmithKline – GSK, founded in 2000, is a science-led global healthcare company in the
UK, headquartered in Brentford, with three main businesses: research, develop and manufacture
pharmaceutical medicines, vaccines and healthcare products (GSK n.d; Forbes 2019). They have
a special mission that to help people do more, feel better and live longer (GSK n.d). Their aim is
also very clear to become the largest medicines and the most trusted company in the world (GSK
n.d). In 2019, GSK spent £4.3 billion to adjust R&D. There are about 40 new medicines and 18
new vaccines in the research process in the third quarter of 2020 (GSK n.d).

As shown in Figure 1, GSK net profit after tax was £ 5,268 billion in 2019. Thereby,
pharmaceuticals contributed the largest share of overall income thereafter to consumers
healthcare and vaccines (GSK 2019).

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 2.2. NGO – Non-Governmental Organization
About 100 years ago, the Save the Children Fund, commonly called as Save the Children, was
founded by Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy Buxton (Save the Children n.d). Save the
Children is the most successful British charity that has been operating since World War I
(Baughan 2013).

Save the Children's strategy for 2019 – 2021, Figure 2, is to prioritize saving children in the most
inaccessible and worst-performing areas with goals that stick to Sustainable Development Goal
of zero preventable deaths by 2030 (United Nations n.d). They will focus on dealing with
malnutrition and pneumonia along with maintaining the provision of healthcare services to
children in special areas such as natural disasters, epidemics and war (Save the Children 2019).
Save the Children will work and collaborate with government and authorized organizations to
deliver the most realistic and effective results such as ensuring children's right and access to
education because education is the best way for them to escape poverty and promote social
development (Save the Children 2019). Over the years, wars have posed enormous threats to
children in many parts of the world, so Save the Children has specific strategies to protect
children such as Global calling campaign to prevent war from the public, politicians with
increasingly growing scale (Save the Children 2019).

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 2.3. Collaboration
GSK - Save the Children partnership was established in 2013 for the purpose of expertise and
skill combination, resources sharing toward the novel solutions to reduce child mortality (GSK
2021). According to statistics, every year more than 10 million children die and most of them
from the developing countries (Black, Morris and Bryce 2003). There are more than 5.5 million
under 5 children died in 2015, and that number is still high in 2020, about 5.2 million, by the
preventable diseases (GSK 2021, WHO 2020).

Unlike charitable funds established in a traditional way, GSK - Save the Children collaboration
are the complementary combination in R&D capabilities, supply chain, procurement and
vaccines with professional resources, full knowledge of supporting vulnerable children (GSK
2021). The Figure 3 demonstrates the Corporate-NGO business model which GSK – Save the
Children fits to the Case 2, both GSK and Save the Children have the same mission as mentioned
in Section 2.1 and 2.2, however there are the lack of abilities and incomplete business model to
achieve the goal of reduction child mortality rate in the world (Dahan et al. 2010).

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GSK – Save the Children collaboration specifically intends to improve the accessibility to basic
healthcare of people who are most vulnerable (GSK 2021). They also work for the ensurable
health knowledge facilitation of the workforces in the poverty areas such as training and
equipping medical equipment (GSK 2021). In addition, researching and developing new drugs
suitable for children parallel advocating for better child health policies at local and global level is
also concerned (GSK 2021).

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 3. The complementary combination
As the foregoing, in Section 2.3, the imperfections of both organizations are compensated for by
each other. The first factor affecting the success of the collaboration is the organizational culture
that fit with the both vision and aims of the two sides (Dahan et al. 2010; Poret 2019). In this
case, their common vision is the end of preventable death for children under five (Figure 4). In
order to achieve this success, DSK provides medical and pharmaceutical experts and its
specialized knowledge such as supply chain, procurement and management systems (GSK
2021). Whilst Save the Children has the knowledge of the inter-culture with the ability to work
with governments in numerous countries for many years, they bring better accessibility for GSK-
Save the Children to reach all corners in the world (Poret 2014; Save the Children Fund 2021).

GSK- Save the Children supports host governments under the Universal health coverage (UHC)
program aims to achieve the goal of an entire population having access to health services,
immunizations or medicines without economic concern. In addition, increasing the professional
knowledge training for the local healthcare team is also one of the important goals.

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Secondly, the corporation's ability to utilize resources and support from NGOs also contributes
to the success of the partnership (Dahan et al. 2010). Therefore, in Figure 5, a process from
research to access and problem solving is created with the appropriate participation of resources
from both sides to achieve the best work efficiency.

The specific roles in the process of working together such as in the R&D stage is the
combination of the GSK's new expertise and research with Save the Children's ability to work
with countries to create new solutions, such as the chlorhexidine gel project, which has helped
more than 30,000 children living in Kenya. Save the Children shows its strength in advocating
and promoting policies such as successfully calling for investments in health care workers and
free of charge for maternal health care at Burkina Faso from Departments of Health in Mali and
Niger.

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 4. Achievements
After 6 years of operation, GSK - Save the Children partnership has achieved great results which
are briefly described in Figure 6. Including outstanding numbers such as nearly 3 million
children in 46 countries have been supported, over 118,000 children under five immunised, over
20,000 healthworkers trained, over 258,000 children treated for malaria, pneumonia or diarrhoea
(GSK 2021).

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 5. Beneficiaries
The benefits of GSK - Save the Children cooperation are shared between the company, the NGO
and the local community (Poret 2014). Firstly, as outlined in section 2.1, the partnership with
Save the Children to save children is in line with the company's pursuit from the start, and
furthermore it also contributes to building reputation and trustworthiness which have presented
through the prestigious awards obtained (Appendix 2). In addition, undertaking activities aimed
towards a common goal of the community, such as in this case, sustainable development goal 3 -
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages, can also contribute to attract
employees, keep working focus and improve motivation through meaningful jobs for the
community. In terms of business brand and network, through the NGO - Save the Children GSK
has reached millions of customers and legally be able to entry in 45 countries with the
enthusiastic supports from the local government. Secondlly, the NGO – Save the Children gains
access to the GSK supply chain system, which saves significant operational costs of the
organization. In addition, technical support, pharmaceuticals, vaccines and specialist knowledge
as well as professional medical care team training are of great benefit to this NGO. Finally, in
terms of society and local communities, the activities of GSK - Save the Children partnership in
conjunction with the government produce extremely realistic results such as the numbers listed
in Section 4. Besides, long-term benefits remain, such as a trained healthcare team and trained
knowledge. After operations, the supply chain of drugs or medical devices has also been
established and can be developed in the future. Efforts to make new drugs more suitable for poor
children are also a long-term and sustainable boon for society. Furthermore, the presence of these
institutions also contributes to host country governments accelerating the process towards SDGs
in 2030, particularly in this case is Goals 3.

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 6. Conclusion
As more and more Corporate - NGO organizations are established to aim for SDGs to ensure the
sustainable development of businesses and society, GSK - Save the Children is a successful
model of corporates – NGO collaboration to learn for improving cooperation efficiency. It could
be seen that this cooperation not only brings revenue or market share benefits to businesses but
also benefits the community, promotes the strength of NGOs, and supports governments in
developing countries toward closer and closer to the SDGs. The short-term performance of GSK
- Save the Children shows that they can achieve SDG 3 in the short-term and develop towards
related goals such as Goal 2, 8 and 11 in long-term.

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 7. References
Baughan, Emily. 2013. "‘Every Citizen of Empire Implored to Save the Children!’ Empire,
Internationalism and The Save the Children Fund in Inter-War Britain". Historical
Research 86 (231): 116-137. https://doi-org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/10.1111/j.1468-
2281.2012.00608.x.
Black, Robert E, Saul S Morris, and Jennifer Bryce. 2003. "Where and Why are 10 Million
Children Dying Every Year?". The Lancet 361 (9376): 2226-2234. doi:10.1016/s0140-
6736(03)13779-8.
Dahan, Nicolas M., Jonathan P. Doh, Jennifer Oetzel, and Michael Yaziji. 2010. "Corporate-
NGO Collaboration: Co-Creating New Business Models for Developing Markets". Long
Range Planning 43 (2-3): 326-342. doi:10.1016/j.lrp.2009.11.003.
Forbes. 2019. "Glaxosmithkline (GSK)". Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/companies/glaxosmithkline/?sh=75e2a641409f.
Franz, Jennifer, and Felix Fitzroy. 2006. "Child Mortality in Central Asia: Social Policy,
Agriculture and the Environment". Central Asian Survey 25 (4): 481-498.
doi:10.1080/02634930701210476.
Galway, Lindsay P., Kitty K. Corbett, and Leilei Zeng. 2012. “Where are the NGOs and
Why? the Distribution of Health and Development NGOs in Bolivia.” Globalization
and Health 8: 38.
https://search-proquestcom.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/docview/1267117088/661F849A88054
6FFPQ/1?accountid
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GSK. n.d. "About Us". GSK.com. Accessed January 20. https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/about-us/.
GSK. 2019. "Annual Report 2019". Brentford: GSK. https://www.gsk.com/media/5894/annual-
report.pdf.
GSK. 2021. "Save the Children Partnership". gsk.com.
https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/about-us/save-the-children-partnership/.
Matsuoka, Akira. 2018. “What made Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project
Possible?” Journal of Financial Crime 25 (3): 795-810. https://search-
proquestcom.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/docview/2136546869/fulltextPDF/
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Poret, Sylvaine. 2014. Corporate-NGO Partnerships in CSR Activities: Why and how. St. Louis:
Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis. https://link.library.curtin.edu.au/gw?url=https://www-
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activities-why-how/docview/1698410187/se-2?accountid=10382.
Poret, Sylvaine. 2019. "Corporate–NGO Partnerships Through Sustainability Labeling Schemes:
Motives and Risks". Sustainability 11 (9): 2689. doi:10.3390/su11092689.
Save the Children. n.d. "Our History". Savethechildren.org.uk. Accessed January 20.
https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/our-history.
Save the Children. 2019. "Our Strategy". Savethechildren.org.uk.
https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are/our-strategy.

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Save the Children Fund. 2021. "Who We Work With". Savethechildren.org.uk.
https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/who-we-work-with.
United Nations. 2021. "Goal 3: Ensure Healthy Lives and Promote Well-Being for All at All
Ages". United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Accessed January 20.
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/health/.
UNICEF. 2020. "Child Mortality". UNICEF. https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/under-
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%20declined%20by%2059%20per,a%20matter%20of%20urgent%20concern.
WHO. 2020. "Children: Improving Survival and Well-Being". who.int.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/children-reducing-mortality.

8. Appendices
Appendix 1 – GSK – Save the Children’s Operations Map

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Appendix 2 – Awards for the partnership.

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