Publications

Agency theory, a new model of governance promulgated by academic economists in the 1970s, is behind the idea that corporate managers should make shareholder value their primary concern and that boards should ensure they do. The theory regards shareholders as... View Details

2022
Working Paper

A Conceptualization of Sub-Living Wages: Liabilities, Leverage, and Risk

By: Drew Keller, Katie Panella and George Serafeim

Currently the accounting system records employee wages as an expense in the income statement. However, paying below living wages can expose an organization to reputational and operational risks. In this paper, we offer an alternative conceptualization of the issue of... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Impact Accounting; Leverage; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Social Issues; Human Capital

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31 Mar 2017
News

Studies links institutional investing to corporate tax avoidance

June 2010 (Revised August 2010)
Case

State Grid: Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Christopher Marquis, Nancy Dai, Dongning Yang and Hong Wu

In October 2009, State Grid, the largest utility company in the world, and a pioneer and leader in CSR practices in China, was planning its 2009 CSR Report and long-term CSR implementation. Some of the specific challenges faced at the time include: How could the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Management Systems; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Accountability; Behavior; Change Management; Global Range; Employees; Utilities Industry; China

January–February 2018
Article

The New CEO Activists

By: Aaron K Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel

Though corporations have been lobbying the government and making campaign donations for a long time now, in recent years a dramatic new trend has emerged in U.S. politics: CEOs are taking very public stands on thorny political issues that have nothing to do with their... View Details

Keywords: Government Policy; Rights; Leadership & Corporate Accountability; Sustainability; Leadership; Corporate Accountability; Policy; Social Issues; Communication Intention and Meaning; United States

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November 1999 (Revised April 2002)
Case

International Business Machines Corporation (B)

By: David F. Hawkins

IBM changes pension plan from a defined benefit plan to a cash-balance plan. Teaching purpose: To understand pension accounting. View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Transformation; Business Earnings; Private Sector; Personal Finance; Cash; Information Infrastructure; Taxation; Accounting Industry; Accounting Industry

April 2011
Teaching Note

Accounting for the iPhone at Apple, Inc. (TN)

By: Francois Brochet and Krishna G. Palepu

Teaching Note for 111003. View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Revenue; Corporate Disclosure; Telecommunications Industry

17 May 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Consequences of Mandatory Corporate Sustainability Reporting

Keywords: by Ioannis Ioannou & George Serafeim

2023
Working Paper

Corporate Website-based Measures of Firms' Value Drivers

By: Wei Cai, Dennis Campbell and Patrick Ferguson

We develop and validate new text-based measures of firms’ financial and non-financial value drivers. Using the Wayback Machine to access public US firms’ archived websites from 1995-2020, we scrape text from corporate homepages. We use Kaplan and Norton’s (1992)... View Details

Keywords: Value; Corporate Strategy; Accounting; Analytics and Data Science

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April 1994 (Revised November 1998)
Case

Kendall Square Research Corporation (A)

By: William J. Bruns Jr.

Kendall Square Research was a small competitor in the supercomputer industry. As sales grew rapidly in 1992 and early 1993, the company sold stock to the public for the first time and analysts forecast higher earnings for 1993. However, when the company's revenue... View Details

Keywords: Revenue Recognition; Standards; Accounting Audits; Computer Industry

2022
Case

Can Salesforce Compete in the Carbon Accounting Market?

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

This case describes Salesforce's development of Sustainability Cloud, a suite of software tools built to help companies measure, track, and report carbon emissions and other sustainability metrics. The goal of this case is to provide students with a background and... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Accounting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Accountability; Applications and Software

24 Nov 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Accounting for Product Impact in the Consumer Finance Industry

Keywords: by George Serafeim and Katie Trinh; Financial Services

15 Apr 2024
News

Corporate Debt and Financial Crises

02 Dec 2014
Working Paper Summaries

International Trade, Multinational Activity, and Corporate Finance

Keywords: by C. Fritz Foley & Kalina Manova

March 2016 (Revised April 2019)
Technical Note

ESG Metrics: Reshaping Capitalism?

By: George Serafeim

In the past twenty-five years, the world had seen an exponential growth in the number of companies reporting environmental, social and governance (ESG) data. Investor interest in ESG data also grew rapidly. A growing belief that increasing levels of social inequality... View Details

Keywords: Capitalism; Sustainability; Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility; Responsibilities To Society; Environment; Social Impact Investment; ESG; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Measurement and Metrics; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Accountability; Accounting; Economic Systems

November 2021
Article

Corporate Strategy and the Theory of the Firm in the Digital Age

By: Markus Menz, Sven Kunisch, Julian Birkinshaw, David J. Collis, Nicolai J. Foss, Robert E. Hoskisson and John Prescott

The purpose of this article is to reinvigorate research in the intersection of corporate strategy and the theory of the firm in light of the rapid advancement of digital technologies. Using the theory of the firm as an interpretive lens, we focus our analysis on the... View Details

Keywords: Digitalization; Multi-business Firm; Scale And Scope; Theory Of The Firm; Corporate Strategy; Technological Innovation; Competitive Advantage; Organizational Design; Theory; Research; Digital Transformation

July 2002 (Revised March 2005)
Case

Kendall Square Research Corporation (A) (Abridged)

By: William J. Bruns Jr. and F. Warren McFarlan

Kendall Square Research was a small competitor in the supercomputer industry. Sales grew rapidly in 1992 and early 1993, and the company sold stock to the public for the first time. Analysts forecasted higher earnings for 1993, then the company's revenue recognition... View Details

Keywords: Revenue Recognition; Standards; Accounting Audits; Computer Industry

September – October 2011
Article

The Rise and Consequences of Corporate Sustainability Reporting

By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

For many decades the cornerstone of corporate reporting has been financial information that is presented in a company's annual, semi-annual, and quarterly reports. These comprehensive financial reports—required by law for public companies in most countries... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; ESG Reporting; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Annual Reports; Operations; Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Performance; Business Model; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Disclosure