Impact Measurement - Publications - Faculty & Research

Web

Impact Investments

principal to above-market. Therefore, impact investing is defined by both intention of generating social and/or environmental outcomes and measuring those outcomes. Impact... View Details

October 2020 (Revised November 2020)
Case

Wilderness Safaris: Impact Investing and Ecotourism Conservation in Africa

By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Wood and Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard

In 2018 the majority ownership of publicly owned Wilderness Safaris, the leading high-end ecotourism company in Africa with safari operations in eight countries, was acquired by The Rise Fund, one of the world’s largest private social impact investing funds, and by FS... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

22 Oct 2014
Video

Social Impact Investing: Challenges Ahead

Web

Making Donor Dollars Work: Measuring Impact in Rural Ecuador | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

20 Mar 2013
News

Sizing Up Social Impact

January 2018
Technical Note

Business at the Base of the Pyramid: Understanding Impact and Impact Evaluations

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg

Unlike financial success, there is no clear consensus regarding how best to define and measure social impact. This HBS Technical Note written for students of the HBS MBA course Business at the Base of the Pyramid (BBOP), offers readers pragmatic perspectives on how the... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Social Issues; Value Creation; Human Needs; Performance Evaluation

Citation

Educators

Purchase

14 Nov 2019
Video

Health Minute: Measure Costs Correctly for Better Patient Outcomes

14 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

The New Measures for Improving Nonprofit Performance

investment in a nonprofit was handled strategically it would yield a greater impact for the people served. In an organization with compelling leadership, vision, and evidence of outcomes that were making a material difference in the lives... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

2006
Article

Performance Measure Properties and the Effect of Incentive Contracts

By: J. Bouwens and L. van Lent

Using data from a third-party survey on compensation practices at 151 Dutch firms, we show that less noisy or distorted performance measures and higher cash bonuses are associated with improved employee selection and better-directed effort. Specifically, (1) an... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Data and Data Sets; Problems and Challenges; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Netherlands

Citation

Find at Harvard

24 Apr 2014
News

The way to measure success

exponentially to positively impact the lives of millions. Through his family foundation and the New England Patriots Charitable Foundation, Kraft has donated hundreds of millions to nonprofit organizations. Kraft and his late wife, Myra,... View Details

January 2020
Case

SK Group: Social Progress Credits

By: George Serafeim, Ethan Rouen and David Freiberg

SK Group was one of the largest companies South Korea. A family-run conglomerate consisting of around 120 subsidiaries and employing more than 100,000, SK was tightly knit into the fabric of Korean society. SK viewed their future success as contingent upon the strength... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

04 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Start to Measure Your E-commerce Success

stringent economic environment and the widely publicized negative impacts of many e-commerce initiatives has caused many senior managers to question the payoffs of e-commerce investments. As companies assess the choice of appropriate... View Details

Keywords: by Marc J. Epstein

October 2023
Case

Prime Coalition: Estimating Climate Impact

By: Natalia Rigol, Benjamin N. Roth, Brian Trelstad and Amram Migdal

A case on CRANE, a tool to help investors and green technology companies estimate the future climate impact of new technologies and products, called emissions reduction potential (ERP). The case includes material on CRANE’s methodology for estimating future carbon... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Environmental Accounting; Analysis; Climate Change; Green Technology; Innovation and Invention; Measurement and Metrics; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Risk and Uncertainty; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Enterprise

Citation

Educators

Purchase

Spring 2014
Article

What Impact? A Framework for Measuring the Scale & Scope of Social Performance

By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan

Organizations with social missions, such as nonprofits and social enterprises, are under growing pressure to demonstrate their impacts on pressing societal problems such as global poverty. This article draws on several cases to build a performance assessment framework... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Performance Evaluation

Citation

Find at Harvard

Read Now

01 Sep 2016
News

Charting Alumni Impact

The impact of an educational institution is often measured anecdotally, using the achievements of its alumni. In late 2015, Harvard released the results of the inaugural University-wide research study to... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell

2021
Working Paper

Corporate Environmental Impact: Measurement, Data and Information

By: David Freiberg, DG Park, George Serafeim and T. Robert Zochowski

As an organization’s environmental impact has become a central societal consideration, thereby affecting industry and organizational competitiveness, interest in measuring and analyzing environmental impact has increased. We develop a methodology to derive comparable... View Details

Keywords: Environment; Impact; Measurement; Environmental Ratings; Corporate Valuation; Financial Materiality; Sustainability; Environmental Impact; Environmental Strategy; Impact-Weighted Accounts; IWAI; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Valuation

Citation

SSRN

Read Now

2020
Working Paper

A Preliminary Framework for Product Impact-Weighted Accounts

By: George Serafeim and Katie Trinh

While there has been significant progress in the measurement of an organization’s environmental and social impacts from its operations, metrics to evaluate the impact of products once they come to market lag far behind. In this paper, we provide a framework for... View Details