Professor Co-Authors New Book on India’s Textile and Pharma Industries
Schulich’s Preet Aulakh, Professor of Strategy and Pierre Lassonde Chair in International Business, co-authored a book titled Coping with Global Institutional Change: A Tale of India’s Textile and Pharmaceutical Industries (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022). The research, supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant, examines how global institutions governing international trade impact national trade policies and business strategies.
Professor Aulakh and his co-author (Raveendra Chittoor, University of Victoria) focus on two global institutional changes initiated and implemented by the World Trade Organization in 2005. The TRIPS agreement imposed a patent regime which created challenges related to affordability of drugs for the pharmaceutical industry in developing economies, while the abolition of the quota regime threatened the livelihood of workers in the textile industries across the world. Using the case of India, the book examines how the country’s two industries coped with these changes through coordinated efforts in the multi-level national institutional system comprised of the state, industry, and individual business organizations in order to align the changing global norms with local needs and aspirations.
The findings of the book, which show both convergence and divergence across the two industries in the processes and outcomes of dealing with global institutional change, would be of interest to national policymakers as well as to scholars in multiple disciplines interested in the study of institutions and institutional change.