Communicating access and transparency in corporate social responsibility reports: GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi

The pharmaceutical industry has a long history of controversial business practices relating to unfair pricing models and ethical misconduct. As a result, companies have tried to use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to build organizational legitimacy. This Major Research Project assesses the priorities being communicated within the CSR reports of two pharmaceutical companies – Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) – following the 2013 bribery scandal in China, in which Sanofi’s business practices were investigated and GlaxoSmithKline was found guilty of misconduct. By using Kenneth Burke’s concept of terministic screens, this project examines how terminology is used (or not used) to address structural problems and to deflect or direct stakeholder attention. This analysis uses CSR literature pertaining to the pharmaceutical industry, rhetorical theory and the notion that communication can be constitutive of an organization as the basis for analysis. By examining the use of two major terministic screens, “access” and “transparency”, it is clear that both companies prioritize communicating access over transparency. With regards to addressing access, Sanofi and GSK highlight philanthropic commitments rather than the initiatives pertaining to pricing policy. Through the use of transparency, GSK emphasizes their commitments to openness of information and enforcement equally. In contrast, Sanofi uses transparency to point the reader towards more reactive initiatives relating to enforcement and compliance. By using Burke’s concept of terministic screens, it is clear that both companies have selected their terminology to guide readers through a carefully selected path in which attention is diverted away from larger structural problems such as inadequate global medication pricing and transparency strategies.

Communicating access and transparency in corporate social responsibility reports: GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi

The pharmaceutical industry has a long history of controversial business practices relating to unfair pricing models and ethical misconduct. As a result, companies have tried to use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to build organizational legitimacy. This Major Research Project assesses the priorities being communicated within the CSR reports of two pharmaceutical companies – Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) – following the 2013 bribery scandal in China, in which Sanofi’s business practices were investigated and GlaxoSmithKline was found guilty of misconduct. By using Kenneth Burke’s concept of terministic screens, this project examines how terminology is used (or not used) to address structural problems and to deflect or direct stakeholder attention. This analysis uses CSR literature pertaining to the pharmaceutical industry, rhetorical theory and the notion that communication can be constitutive of an organization as the basis for analysis. By examining the use of two major terministic screens, “access” and “transparency”, it is clear that both companies prioritize communicating access over transparency. With regards to addressing access, Sanofi and GSK highlight philanthropic commitments rather than the initiatives pertaining to pricing policy. Through the use of transparency, GSK emphasizes their commitments to openness of information and enforcement equally. In contrast, Sanofi uses transparency to point the reader towards more reactive initiatives relating to enforcement and compliance. By using Burke’s concept of terministic screens, it is clear that both companies have selected their terminology to guide readers through a carefully selected path in which attention is diverted away from larger structural problems such as inadequate global medication pricing and transparency strategies.

What Do We Mean by “Reform?”: On the Seductiveness of Reform in Teaching and Teacher Education and It's Mischievous Influences

Drawing on literary critic Kenneth Burke's concept of “terministic screens,” the author explores some of the history and a few of the troubling implications for the work of teachers and teacher educators that flow from the idea of reform. Concluding that “reform is a bad idea,” the author argues for an alternative conception of educational improvement, one that is more life-affirming and hopeful. Seeking to weaken the conceptual and ethical hold of reform on policy-makers and educators, the author argues with John Goodlad that educational improvement first and foremost must be understood as a learning problem, an issue of educational renewal.

Preliminary Results of a Study Assessing Engineering Students' Formation of Identity as Rhetorician

The difficulty of teaching communicationskills to engineering students in a way that facilitates thetransfer of knowledge to workplace situations is widelyacknowledged. At the College of Engineering at theUniversity of Saskatchewan we have tried to address thisdifficulty by developing a programme that attempts to addthe identity of effective communicator to the students’identity as engineer. The purpose of this study is to beginto assess whether students are forming this identity. UsingBurke’s concept of terministic screens and the analyticaltools of cluster criticism, we analyze the transcripts ofinterviews of students returning from internshipexperiences to assess whether students’ language choicesreflect a rhetorical orientation to the world and thus thedevelopment of an identity of rhetorician

Construction of Whiteness through Nomination, Predication, Argumentation and Intensification or Mitigation

In this paper, Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa has been analysed from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. In particular, how Kingsley constructs whiteness through strategies such as nomination, predication, argumentation and intensification or mitigation has been explored. The natives from minor culture are represented from the western terministic screens, to use K. Burke’s phrase. The findings show that the strategies used are related to the positive construction of self (West) and the negative presentation of Other (Africa).

Towards a theoretical basis for operationalizing knowledge communication

Knowledge communication is an emerging means of understanding the individual processes involved in constructing and passing knowledge from person to person. Knowledge communication works together with technical communication in the knowledge society. The concept of knowledge communication compliments technical communication by allowing for the interpersonal aspects of knowledge creation and diffusion. Combing technical and knowledge communication, then, covers the three major components of the knowledge economy – creation, diffusion, and use of knowledge. In this paper I propose that we consider three approaches to understanding the interaction between technical communication and knowledge communication – Culture as a system, Communities of Practice, and the intersection of Kenneth Burke’s notions of terministic screens and entitlement.

Genre Innovation: Evolution, Emergence, or Something Else?

In trying to understand genre innovation and the appearance of what seem to be “new genres” in both new and old media, researchers have relied heavily on the concepts of “evolution” and “emergence,” without theorizing these concepts. These terms are usually associated with science, to analyze biological and physical processes, and both carry entailments worth examining. What work does each model of change do and what work does each keep us from doing? When we adopt the language of evolution or emergence, what do we import to our conceptualization of genres, of large-scale rhetorical action, and of the rhetorical organization of culture? Evolution is anti-essentialist, while emergence allows for the phenomenology of essence; both are terministic screens in Burke’s sense and thus incomplete and partial. There may be no general conceptual model adequate to the variety of cultural phenomena and domains in which genres are of interest, but we can continue to learn by testing our observations of particular examples against these useful concepts. We should be conscious of the assumptions we make about essences and relationships, of how and why we identify something as a genre; we should also be alert to the differences between classification by abstraction and classification by descent.

Nostalgia, Ritual, and the Rhetorical Possibility of Southern Baking

Although the South is well known for its desserts, it might not always be clear how Southern dessert traditions developed as they did and how they figure in shaping the identities of the region’s people and practices. Burke (1966) reminds us that terministic screens direct our attention to certain realities and away from others, whereby we forget that baking constituted back breaking, sweaty repression for certain groups of Southerners. This chapter argues that familiar Southern desserts may tie us to our pasts, but through certain types of nostalgia and ritual they also provide space to help change the South’s narratives about race, gender, and community. Southern desserts are suspect in limiting women’s subjectivities, worry modern health sensibilities with their Southern sweetness, and carry the weight of troubling African American history. Our meal ends, however, by investigating how these traditions might offer a taste of connection and resilience along with satisfaction.