DIGITAL MATURITY, GOVERNANCE/SUSTAINABILITY SIGNALS, AND BUSINESS MODELS IN U.S. PHARMACIES

This thesis reviews and examines digital transformation and sustainability related governance and how they are publicly communicated across different sectors in the U.S. pharmacy sector. Particularly there will be a focus into the compounding pharmacy segment and its contrasts with the large pharmaceutical companies. The study is motivated by a difference in disclosure practices between the two pharmacy sectors. While large public pharmacy-related firms frequently publish yearly reports containing sustainability and digital signals, most compounding pharmacies do not produce comparable publicly accessible reports. This creates an important gap in comparing digital maturity and governance visibility across sectors. To manage the disclosure gap, the study uses a two layer design approach. First a benchmark of selected pharmaceutical companies is used to conduct an analysis in reporting disclosures from 2017 and 2024. The analysis uses selected digital and sustainability/governance variables. The inclusion of each variable is backed with specific sources found throughout the initial chapters. The thesis then complements this analysis with a descriptive examination of selected compounding pharmacies using publicly available evidence such as company websites. A separate set of variables is purposely used to find relevant data for the different pharmacy sector. The findings indicate that the large public pharmaceutical companies show an increase in both digital and sustainability themed reporting between 2017 and 2024, suggesting more relevancy in recent years. Compounding pharmacies show a different type of public signaling, mostly centered around digital collaborations with direct clients such as providers and patients. The sustainability themes are also much more muted than the first sample, opting for a more familiar approach transmitted through different language rather structured reporting language. The study concludes that the themes reviewed are not publicly visible in the same way throughout different pharmacy sectors. This requires differentiated research into each area. In general, public signals have increased throughout the years, and certain digital and sustainable signals reviewed did have positive correlation, but of course this does not imply causation.