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Accounting & Management Faculty - Faculty & Research

Terrie F. and Bradley M. Bloom Associate Professor of Business Administration Tatiana Sandino Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Business Administration George Serafeim Charles M. Williams Professor of... View Details

May 2013
Article

The Performance Frontier: Innovating for a Sustainable Strategy

By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim

By now most companies have sustainability programs. They're cutting carbon emissions, reducing waste, and otherwise enhancing operational efficiency. But a mishmash of sustainability tactics does not add up to a sustainable strategy. To endure, a strategy must address... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Innovation; Environment; Corporate Reporting; Corporate Social Responsibility; Governance; Strategy; Value; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance; Environmental Sustainability; Innovation and Invention

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October 2013 (Revised February 2019)
Teaching Note

Red Hen Baking Company

By: Richard Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Lisa Paige

The case explores the decision to expand in a small business setting. In 2007, the Red Hen Baking Company (RHB) was deciding whether to move from its cramped and inefficient Duxbury, Vermont facility to a new facility in nearby Middlesex, Vermont. It had been in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Capital; Risk Management; Expansion

January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
Case

BlackRock: Linking Purpose to Profit

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Aiyesha Dey and George Serafeim

The case revolves around the actions that Barbara Novick, co-founder and Vice-Chair of Blackrock, and Michelle Edkins, Global Head of Investment Stewardship, would need to take in response to the controversial CEO letters from Laurence (Larry) Fink, Chairman and CEO of... View Details

07 Jul 2023
Blog Post

Harvard Innovation Labs: Where Passion and Purpose Meet

The Harvard Innovation Labs ecosystem has been called a place of “structured serendipity” where innovation is fueled by connection and collaboration. The labs enable students and alumni from across Harvard’s 13 schools to take the seed of... View Details

27 Aug 2013
First Look

First Look: August 27

jointly develops an offshore tract-performs relative to a solo firm. I employ a regression discontinuity strategy based on bids in first-price sealed-bid auctions for the rights to develop leases. By focusing on leases where one... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2023 (Revised May 2023)
Case

OneTen at Delta Air Lines: Catalyzing Family-Sustaining Careers for Black Talent (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag

It was December 10, 2020, and Ed Bastian, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Delta Air Lines (Delta), had just finished a meeting with Joanne Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, and Keyra Lynn Johnson, the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.... View Details

Keywords: Recruitment; Training; Race; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Job Design and Levels; Air Transportation Industry; United States

November 2017 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Summa Equity: Building Purpose-Driven Organizations

By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg

In 2015, Reynir Indahl left top Nordic private equity firm Altor Equity Partners to found Summa Equity (Summa). After long contemplation following the financial crisis, Indahl was convinced the financial system was producing negative externalities and that the current... View Details

September–October 2020
Article

Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value

By: George Serafeim

Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create... View Details

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Accounting & Management Awards & Honors - Faculty & Research

Intangibles, Intellectual Capital, and Sustainability by the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management at the 2022 EIASM Interdisciplinary Conference for “Regulated Human Capital Disclosures” with Thomas Bourveau, Maliha... View Details

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Placement - Doctoral

Department of Management (cross-appointment) Dissertation: Management and Disclosure of Corporate Sustainability Performance Advisors: Paul M. Healy (Co-Chair), George Serafeim (Co-Chair), Srikant M. Datar ,... View Details

August 2020
Case

Zoom Video Communications: Eric Yuan's Leadership During COVID-19

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Christopher Stanton, Andy Wu and George Gonzalez

In the first half of 2020, worldwide lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic brought explosive growth to the Zoom Video Communications platform, as people replaced in-person work and social events with videoconferencing. Months into the pandemic, CEO Eric Yuan... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Communication Technology; Customer Value and Value Chain; Values and Beliefs; Technological Innovation; Leadership; Crisis Management; Organizational Culture; Working Conditions; Strategy; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Health Pandemics; Technology Industry; United States; California

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The “Hawthorne Effect” – The Human Relations Movement – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

research. Harvard’s role in the Hawthorne experiments gave rise to the modern application of social science to organization life and lay the foundation for the human relations movement and the field of organizational behavior (the study of organizations as social... View Details

September 2023
Article

Stock Price Reactions to ESG News: The Role of ESG Ratings and Disagreement

By: George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon

We investigate whether ESG ratings predict future ESG news and the associated market reactions. We find that the consensus rating predicts future news, but its predictive ability diminishes for firms with large disagreement between raters. Relation between news and... View Details

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06 Dec 2013
Op-Ed

HBS Faculty Remember Nelson Mandela

in the same spirit by which he had lived during his imprisonment, Mandela joined George Washington in the select company of revolutionaries who use their newly-gained power to establish freer regimes... View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria, Linda Hill, Rosabeth Moss Kanter & Gautam Mukunda

2019
Chapter

The Consequences of Mandatory Corporate Sustainability Reporting

By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

A key aspect of the governance process inside organizations and markets is the measurement and disclosure of important metrics and information. In this chapter, we examine the effect of sustainability disclosure regulations on firms’ disclosure practices and... View Details