Publications

June 2013 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Goldfinger: Charles W. Engelhard Jr. and Apartheid-era South Africa

By: Geoffrey Jones and Elliot R. Benton

This case considers the strategies of Charles W. Engelhard, an American mining magnate who made large investments in apartheid-era South Africa. Engelhard was widely believed to have been the model for the James Bond villan Auric Goldfinger. During the 1950s and 1960s... View Details

Keywords: Political Economy; Business History; FDI; Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact; South Africa; Mining; Ethics; Globalization; Government and Politics; History; Mining Industry; Africa; South Africa

17 Apr 2022
Book

How to Avoid the 'Ethical Slide' That Leads Companies Astray

Company managers have likely heard the old quip: Business ethics is a contradiction in terms. That’s because too often, business is viewed as a hard-hearted enterprise, driven... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

2015
Book

Political Standards: Corporate Interest, Ideology, and Leadership in the Shaping of Accounting Rules for the Market Economy

By: Karthik Ramanna

There are certain institutions underlying our modern market-capitalist system that are largely outside the interest and understanding of the general public—e.g., rulemaking for bank capital adequacy, actuarial standards, accounting standards, and auditing practice. In... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Financial Institutions; Financial Reporting; GAAP; IFRS; Lobbying; Capitalism; Sustainability; Accounting; Finance; Business and Government Relations; Leadership; Accounting Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States; China; India

2007
Book

From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession

By: Rakesh Khurana

Is management a profession? Should it be? Can it be? This major work of social and intellectual history reveals how such questions have driven business education and shaped American management and society for more than a century. The book is also a call for reform.... View Details

Keywords: Social History; Business Education; Moral Sensibility; Profit; Leadership; Managerial Roles; United States

29 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

Are You Paying a Tip--or a Bribe?

according to Magnus Thor Torfason, an assistant professor in Harvard Business School's Entrepreneurial Management Unit. His article for Social Psychological & Personality Science, "Here's a Tip: Prosocial Gratuities Are Linked to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

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

Keywords: Performance; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs

SSRN

21 Apr 2005
Keynote Speech

Value Shift: Is Compliance a Catalyst for Sustainable Business Performance?" Panel moderator. "Frontlines Forum: Shift to Value

By: Lynn S. Paine

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Business Ventures; Performance; Governance Compliance

2022
Chapter

Luxury Tourism and Environmentalism

By: Geoffrey Jones

This chapter examines the evolution of luxury tourism and its environmental impact. Whilst mass tourism is widely seen as environmentally damaging, the impact of luxury tourism is nuanced. During the first stage of the growth in the nineteenth century, the numbers of... View Details

Register to Read

26 Jan 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman & Francesca Gino

2011
Book

Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It

By: Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Failure; Performance Evaluation; Sales; Consumer Products Industry

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

"In the end, Enron was at the center of a truly delinquent society. Once Enron's ethical drift took hold, its collapse was only a matter of time," says HBS professor emeritus Malcolm S. Salter. As he explains in this Q&A and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

Sharing the Responsibility of Corporate Governance

Harvard Business School professor Constance Bagley studies the intersection of business and law, and is interested in how companies can use legal resources as a competitive asset. In this interview, Bagley... View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler

September 2018 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Careem: Base Camp or Mountain Peak? Designing an OS for Scaling

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Gamze Yucaoglu and Alpana Thapar

This case focuses on designing a fast growing organization. It is part of a two-case set that is taught together to cover the scaling journey.
Careem, a Dubai-based ride-hailing service aimed to ‘simplify and improve the lives of people, and build an awesome... View Details

Keywords: Scale; Values; Rights; Operating Systems; Business Startup; Transportation; Organizational Design; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Organizational Culture; Values and Beliefs; Decision Making; Managerial Roles; Dubai; United Arab Emirates; Middle East

2021
White Paper

Report on Racial Inclusion in the Boardroom: A Workshop Convened by Harvard Business School's Leadership Initiative and Board Leadership Project

By: James I. Cash, Linda A. Hill, Hubert Joly, Lynn S. Paine and Suraj Srinivasan

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Inclusion; Organization Culture; Corporate Governance; Diversity; Equity; Governing and Advisory Boards; Race; Fairness; Organizational Culture

2022
Book

A Political Economy of Justice

By: Danielle Allen, Yochai Benkler, Leah Downey, Rebecca Henderson and Joshua Simons

Defining a just economy in a tenuous social-political time.
If we can agree that our current social-political moment is tenuous and unsustainable—and indeed, that may be the only thing we can agree on right now—then how do markets, governments, and people... View Details

Keywords: Political Economy; Social Justice; Capitalism; Business And Society; Economy; Society; Fairness; Economic Systems; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; United States

April 2014
Article

Can an 'Ethical' Bank Support Guns and Fracking?

By: Christopher Marquis and Juan Almandoz

A case study is presented on business ethics and bank management. The situation facing the president of a community bank established to operate as a green business and to consider ethical issues of bank loans when it is considering an application for a large commercial... View Details

July 2012 (Revised April 2013)
Case

Peter Jepsen

By: Howard H. Stevenson, Michael J. Roberts and James M. Sharpe

About to break bank covenants, Peter Jepsen has to deal with a contentious prior owner, improve profitability and staff appropriately all while maintaining credibility with his investors, in the furniture hardware company he has owned for less than a year. View Details

January 2015 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Omar Selim: Building a Values-Based Asset Management Firm (A)

By: George Serafeim, Rebecca Henderson and Shannon Gombos

The sustainable investing market was a recent phenomenon in the first decade of the 21st century. However, an increasing number of investors began to integrated Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues in investment decisions. At Barclays Capital, Omar Selim... View Details