Trust, the pharmaceutical industry and regulators in the UK

Abstract

In recent years trust has been employed in academic, industry and policy circles as a common buzzword to describe some of the most complex issues underpinning the relationship between industry and regulators in relation to risk. The ongoing perception of a trust crisis in the pharmaceutical sector is the starting point for analysing how institutional trust is construed by the pharmaceutical industry. Through evidence collected from a set of interviews to individuals working in the pharmaceutical sector, this chapter examines what is meant when the industry talks about trust in respect to regulators. The chapter reviews the three broad functions of trust in relation to institutions as identified in the vast literature on trust; it details the role of the media in relation to trust vis-à-vis regulators and the industry; it defines which applied functions of trust were identified from the interviews; it considers the problems associated with operationalising trust from an industry perspective; and speculates on what can be learned for other sectors. Five typologies of trust which coincide with the diverse roles this plays for the various constituents are derived from the interviews.