Frederick AhenHochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin | HWR
Frederick Ahen
PhD
About
47
Publications
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Introduction
I study about grand challenges/wicked problems and emergent big questions as well as the frontier medico-techno-scientific solutions for fixing them. I also study about the endlessly fascinating domain of strategic corporate responsibility (SCR) of business and non-business actors in the pharmaceutical industry.
Currently, I am enjoying the journey of discovery into the management of neuromedical innovations, sustainable global health governance and consumer/patient protection.
Additional affiliations
April 2015 - December 2018
Publications
Publications (47)
This autoethnographic account is based on my PhD journey. I employ critical and interpretive approaches in studying burning issues in international business, society, and global health politics. My focus on the proliferation of pharmaceutical counterfeits can legitimately be considered a “commercial crime” investigation category. It is a reality th...
Purpose: This multidisciplinary study seeks to determine the nature and structure of the informal markets for counterfeit medicines, the co-factors underpinning the demand and supply of counterfeit Western allopathic medicines (WAM), traditional and alternative medicines (TAM), and potential institutional responses in Ghana.
Method: This study is...
This new title: "A Research Agenda for International Business and Management", edited by Ödül Bozkurt and Mike Geppert, could not have come out at a better time. We are in a pivotal moment in human history. Ours is marked by the debilitating effects of SARS-CoV-2 and its COVID-19 disease along with unpredictable additional variants of infirmities a...
Measured against the gloomy pre-COVID-19 predictions, Africa has fared far better than most regions in managing the pandemic. This much, however, has received less attention. This paper answers the question: how have the new rituals of self determination in public health affected the successful management of COVID-19 in Africa, and how can the cont...
In this Editorial, we synthesise the articles in the Special Issue with unique insights into sustainable waste management innovations and sustainable business practices [...]
The need for green business practices and green innovations underscores a growing recognition that climate change is now an existential threat not just to population health but also to the survival of businesses that are unable to embrace green practices with a sense of urgency. This paper contributes to the literature on market violence as an inhi...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how “manias” in global health governance lead to health inequalities even before, during and in the aftermath of acute health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. “Manias” as used here refer to obsessive ir/rational behaviors, misguided policy/strategic choices and the exercise of power that bene...
Purpose:This paper aims to determine the underlying structural foundations that explain why mega (large-scale) corruption exists in an ever-more sophisticated form and how and why the phenomenon remains an intractable threat to global socio-economic stability and sustainable development.
Design/methodology/approach: Post-colonial theory is used alo...
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to revisit the interdisciplinary roots of international business (IB) by challenging the compartmentalized and obscured nature of certain major themes in current IB research. Here, the author broadens IB’s natural scope by introducing the links with global health while preemptively removing the existing limits o...
Little is known about how subsidiaries of MNCs implement political CSR across Africa. The purpose of this paper is to determine how corporations respond to the many ‘pressures’ to align competing socio-economic demands through political CSR and how that affects local communities in global supply chains. Based on field work in an emerging economy, w...
Little is known about how subsidiaries of MNCs implement political CSR across Africa. The purpose of this paper is to determine how corporations respond to the many ‘pressures’ to align competing socio-economic demands through political CSR and how that affects local communities in global supply chains. Based on field work in an emerging economy, w...
This paper has a three-fold purpose: to challenge the current conceptualization of firm-stakeholder engagement, to popularize ‘allemansrätten’, the Scandinavian social innovation tradition for environmental value creation and environmental governance for ensuring ecological balance, and to introduce the concept of usufructual rights and the tutelag...
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore in depth the anatomy of post-truth in the quest to set a new research agenda. The author interrogates knowledge production/dissemination and the political positions of those behind them. This study diagnoses and challenges existing claims of supremacy of certain hegemonic epistemological and ontologic...
The complex structure of the tragic aspects of globalization has been accounted for in extant literature. What remains unclear is how deglobalization, isolationism and all the radically disruptive movements and politics in-between will shape transnational corporations’ (TNCs) organizational practices. The purpose of this study is to interrogate and...
The recent expiration of several blockbuster pharmaceutical patents offers new opportunities for generic drug production in Africa. Moreover, 2015 marked a critical juncture; a transition from the Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals. The implications for African economies in the area of generic drug production and global h...
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and conceptions vary across sectors and nations. However, there is a general tendency among academics and practitioners to present CSR in Africa as activities characterized by philanthropy due to the existence of institutional voids. This review of the current literature demonstrates that weak institu...
Global health and environmental wellbeing are mutually reinforcing and interdependent. This mutuality invokes two major analytical orientations: it emphasizes a direct nexus between ecological strategies and global health outcomes. These in turn revitalize the essential quest for comprehensive policies and responsible strategies for enhancing both...
Within the context of the pharmaceutical industry, there are numerous controversial issues that have still not received satisfactory answers. In this era of neo-liberal capitalism, ‘responsibilizing’ every stakeholder announces the freedom of the MNCs from regulations and productive stakeholder engagement for enacting sincere corporate social respo...
Employing a Habermasian approach to critical theory, this chapter problematizes the current relationship between business schools and society. It is argued that Enlightenment is ‘an unfinished project’ and that the central role of the twenty-first-century business school pedagogy and curricula must reflect teaching, learning, and research that have...
Purpose
– Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an issue-oriented substantive domain. Nevertheless, there are countless socio-economic, medico-techno-scientific, environmental and ethical philosophical questions that are far from being settled. In pursuit of a more desirable and sustainable future, this work problematizes current corporate respo...
Purpose
– This paper aims to answer two questions: How do technologies of governance explain how global governance is enacted? and What alternatives can be proposed for a sustainable future for the governed 7 billion?
Design/methodology/approach
– Using institutional theory and Galtung’s (1971) structural theory of imperialism as critical theoreti...
Purpose
– This purpose of this paper is to integrate corporate responsibility (CR) doctrine into corporate strategy by problematizing existing notions of traditional corporate social responsibility. We provide a theoretical and empirical basis for the proposition that the bridge between CR and corporate irresponsibility is the embeddedness of strat...
Purpose
– This study aims to explain how sustainable global health presents an emerging new form of competition and socio-political and functional pressure for which strategic organizational renewal is a prerequisite for the organic resilience and co-evolution of pharmaceutical firms with their environment.
Design/methodology/approach
– Through a...
Purpose - This chapter seeks to theoretically demonstrate that authentic corporate strategy is entrenched in an ethical responsibility, and ethical responsibility requires a strategic framework to qualify as a sustainable value co-creation process that determines the long-term success of the firm. Design/methodology/approach-Through economic philos...
In an ideal textbook world, the noble concept of sustainable development sounds less complex and more feasible to actualize. Nevertheless, the fierce scramble to appear socially responsible also involves sophisticated corporate ingenuity characterized by deviance (Cohen, 1966), which is aimed mostly at rent seeking without regard to social and envi...
This article is motivated by the increasing concern about the ever-declining security of pharmaceutical products due to the abundance of counterfeit network actors. We argue that if networks are effective mechanisms for criminal organizations to infiltrate into any value chain, then networks should also work for responsible businesses in their ques...
Questions
Questions (18)
My open access article has been downloaded 5369 times! #myOAarticle https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41463-019-00057-7.
Please have a look.
The Programmatic Issue comprises of the following papers, all of which are accessible for free on Emerald Insight:
Societally engaged, critical International Business research: A programmatic view on the role and contribution of cpoib
by Christoph Dörrenbächer and Snejina Michailova
Understanding Cross-Border Crime: The Value of International Business Research
by Peter Enderwick
Modern Slavery and International Business Scholarship: The Governance Nexus
by Brent Burmester, Snejina Michailova and Christina Stringer
Global health and international business: New frontiers of International Business research
by Frederick Ahen
MNCs’ corporate environmental responsibility in emerging and developing economies: Towards an action research approach
by Florian Becker-Ritterspach, Katharina Simbeck and Raghda El Ebrashi
Corporate engagement in humanitarian action: Concepts, challenges, and areas for international business research
by Jasper Hotho and Verena Girschik
Luxury International Business: A Critical Review and Agenda for Research
by Joanne Roberts
Critical and Mainstream International Business Research: Making Critical IB an Integral Part of a Societally Engaged International Business Discipline
by Christoph Dörrenbächer and Jens Gammelgaard
Critical Engagement in International Business: Creating meaning for a broad constituency
by George M. Cairns
Dear colleagues,
We are soon wrapping up year 2018. In 2018 we witnessed several novel issues, but also a lot of the same old problems (climate change, inequality, political instability, corruption, innovations, progress in economic development, education etc. Which big theme (in your field or generally) strikes you as the most defining issue of 2018 and what are your expectations for a change or what can be done differently in 2019?
Your comments........
Dear colleagues,
We are soon wrapping up year 2018. In 2018 we witnessed several novel issues, but also a lot of the same old problems (climate change, inequality, political instability, corruption, innovations, progress in economic development, education etc. Which big theme (in your field or generally) strikes you as the most defining issue of 2018 and what are your expectations for a change or what can be done differently in 2019?
Your comments........
AI’s Ethical Implications: The Responsibility Of Firms, Policymakers and Society? Freely available at :
