Publications
Publications
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(2,869)
- Faculty Publications (655)
- September 2020
- Case
Uber at a Crossroads (2017)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the history of Uber, its business model—including the ways it differed from that of the traditional taxi industry—and its competition with Lyft. The case is set in 2017, a year in which Uber was plagued by even more scandals than usual, though its... View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Business Model; Customer Satisfaction; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Price; Profit; Revenue; Investment; Government Legislation; Business History; Compensation and Benefits; Resignation and Termination; Employment; Wages; Lawfulness; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management Style; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Product Design; Organizational Culture; Problems and Challenges; Attitudes; Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Transportation Networks; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Valuation; Transportation Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- 2020
- Book
Better, Not Perfect: A Realist's Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness
By: Max Bazerman
Every day, you make hundreds of decisions. They’re largely personal, but these choices have an ethical twinge as well; they value certain principles and ends over others. Bazerman argues that we can better balance both dimensions—and we needn’t seek perfection to make... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Research on Corporate Sustainability: Review and Directions for Future Research
By: Jody Grewal and George Serafeim
We review the literature on corporate sustainability and provide directions for future research. Our review focuses on three actions: measuring, managing and communicating corporate sustainability performance. Measurement is the least developed of the three and... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Reporting; Sustainability Management; Nonfinancial Disclosure; Nonfinancial Information; Nonfinancial Performance; Materiality; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Disclosure; ESG Disclosure Metrics; ESG Ratings; ESG Reporting; Inequality; Corporate Social Responsibility; Accounting; Finance; Management; Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Diversity; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Disclosure; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact
- 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
Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Management; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Disclosure; ESG Disclosure Metrics; ESG Ratings; ESG Reporting; Social Impact; Impact Measurement; Social Innovation; Purpose; Corporate Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility; Strategy; Social Enterprise; Society; Accounting; Investment; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Corporate Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Services Industry; Chemical Industry; Technology Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; North America; Europe; Japan; Australia
- August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (A)
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in November 2019 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are contemplating what the best fulfillment format and... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (B)
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in February 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are looking over the results of the fulfillment pilot the... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Performance Hacking: The Contagious Business Practice that Corrodes Corporate Culture, Undermines Core Values, and Damages Great Companies
By: Robert D. Austin and Richard L. Nolan
August 7, 1955 is an important date in commercial aviation history. You could say it began the jet airliner age, though other dates might also qualify. Jet engines had proven successful in military aircraft. But no one knew then whether members of the general public... View Details
- June 2020
- Case
TransDigm: The Acquisition of Aerosonic Corp.
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel W. Fisher
In April 2013, TransDigm, a company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and commercial aircraft, announced an agreement to acquire Aerosonic Corporation for $39 million in cash (1.2 times Aerosonic’s sales of $31... View Details
- June 2020
- Case
MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe? (Abridged)
By: Boris Groysberg, John D. Vaughan and Matthew Preble
This is an abridged version of “MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?” HBS Case No. 416-004. Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Selection and Staffing; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Service Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- May 2020 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Playing the Field: Competing Bids for Anadarko Petroleum Corp
On April 8, 2019, Occidental’s CEO Vicki Hollub made a private offer to buy Anadarko Petroleum Corporation for $72 in cash and stock. Anadarko's CEO Al Walker said he would consider the offer, yet three days later, on April 11, he signed a merger agreement with Chevron... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Public Sentiment and the Price of Corporate Sustainability
By: George Serafeim
Combining corporate sustainability performance scores based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data with big data measuring public sentiment about a company’s sustainability performance, I find that the valuation premium paid for companies with strong... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investment Management; Investment Strategy; Big Data; Machine Learning; Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance; Performance; Asset Pricing; Investment; Management; Strategy; Human Capital; Public Opinion; Value; Analytics and Data Science
- April 2020 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
NTT DOCOMO's Race to 5G
By: Juan Alcácer, Horst Melcher and Akiko Kanno
The case, based on extensive interviews with NTT DOCOMO’s technology leaders, focuses on the opportunities and challenges that NTT DOCOMO faces with the launch of infrastructure and services for 5G wireless telecommunication technology. With higher data rates and... View Details
- April 2020 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
WeWork—November 2018
By: Paul A. Gompers, Patrick Sweeney and Alex Gachanja
In May 2017, SoftBank announced the official launch of the Vision Fund — which promptly became the largest technology-focused investment fund in the world, with nearly $100 billion in capital under its management. Reports from a few months prior hinted that SoftBank... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
CIAM: Home-Grown Shareholder Activism in France
By: Charles C.Y. Wang, Tonia Labruyere and Vincent Dessain
The case discusses the strategy of CIAM, a French activist investment firm, involved in a case of a buy-out of minority shareholders in the telecommunications sector. Altice NV, an international telecommunications company based in the Netherlands that owned more than... View Details
- 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
- December 2019
- Supplement
Mãe Terra and Unilever (B)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Mariana Cal
Unilever is making strides to integrate the operations of Mãe Terra—one of Brazil's leading brands for packaged organic foods—into its own structures, after acquiring the company in 2017. Mãe Terra’s CEO, Alexandre Borges, must decide whether to implement his original... View Details
Keywords: Brand Management; Sustainability; Mergers and Acquisitions; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Environmental Sustainability; Organizational Culture; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Brazil; Latin America
- December 2019
- Case
WeWork Files for an IPO
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
For the board of The We Company—better known as WeWork—August 14, 2019, promised to be a pivotal day. It was then that WeWork’s IPO prospectus, known as an S-1 filing, would be made public, giving potential investors, the media, and the general public a window into the... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
The U.S. employer-based health insurance tax exclusion created a system of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) with limited insurance choices and transparency that may lock employed households into health plans that are costlier or different from those they prefer to... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Internal Models, Make Believe Prices, and Bond Market Cornering
By: Ishita Sen and Varun Sharma
Exploiting position-level heterogeneity in regulatory incentives to misreport and novel data on regulators, we document that U.S. life insurers inflate the values of corporate bonds using internal models. We estimate an additional $9-$18 billion decline in regulatory... View Details
- November 2019
- Supplement
Hapag-Lloyd AG: Complying with IMO 2020
By: Benjamin C. Esty, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emer Moloney
A new environmental regulation known as IMO 2020 was creating what one industry analyst called “the biggest shakeup for the oil and shipping industries in decades.” According to the new regulation, all ocean-going ships would have to limit their sulfur emissions by... View Details