Publications

SSRN

Web

HBS Student Club Spotlight: Consulting for Impact | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

Web

Building an Impact Investing Ecosystem in China | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

June 2011
Background Note

It's a Social World

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Nancy Bartlett

Social media had fashioned the lives of individuals and communities by 2010, providing an opportunity and a challenge for companies of all sizes. This note provides background on various social media (e.g. social networks, forums, games and communication services) and... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Media; Service Operations; Sales; Opportunities; Corporate Strategy; Web

2009
Working Paper

Corporate Social Entrepreneurship

By: James E. Austin and Ezequiel Reficco

Corporate Social Entrepreneurship (CSE) is a process aimed at enabling business to develop more advanced and powerful forms of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship

Research Summary

Reforming Social Science

By: Max H. Bazerman

Social science research affects all of us. When researchers learned organ donation rates are higher in countries where human organs are automatically available for donation unless you specifically “opt-out” of the system, as opposed to countries like the U.S., where... View Details

Article

Does 'Liking' Lead to Loving? The Impact of Joining a Brand's Social Network on Marketing Outcomes

By: Leslie K. John, Oliver Emrich, Sunil Gupta and Michael I. Norton

Does “liking” a brand on Facebook cause a person to view it more favorably? Or is “liking” simply a symptom of being fond of a brand? We disentangle these possibilities and find evidence for the latter: brand attitudes and purchasing are predicted by consumers’... View Details

Keywords: Brands; Marketing Effectiveness; Brand Evaluation; Peer Influence; Brands and Branding; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Media

Web

Social Enterprise & Nonprofits Programs

24 Apr 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate Social Entrepreneurship

Keywords: by James E. Austin & Ezequiel Reficco

Article

The Payoff of Pay-for-Success

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Lisa Chase

Pay-for-success contracts also known as social impact bonds, have been widely touted as a clever way to fill the funding gap plaguing social programs by attracting a tranche of the trillions of dollars in private return-seeking capital. This article takes an in-depth... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Social Impact Bonds; Public Innovation; Social Enterprise; Investment; Innovation and Invention

Keywords: by Rene F. Kizilcec, Justin Reich, Michael Yeomans, Christoph Dann, Emma Brunskill, Glenn Lopez, Selen Turkay, Joseph J. Williams, and Dustin Tingley; Education

01 Jul 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Scaling Up Behavioral Science Interventions in Online Education

Article

Competition and Social Identity in the Workplace: Evidence from a Chinese Textile Firm

By: Takao Kato and Pian Shu

We study the impact of social identity on worker competition by exploiting the well-documented social divide between urban resident workers and rural migrant workers in urban Chinese firms. We analyze data on weekly output, individual characteristics, and coworker... View Details

Keywords: Social Identity; Coworker Effect; Productivity; Relative Performance Incentive; Intergroup Competition; Competition; Groups and Teams; Performance Productivity; Identity

2007
Book

Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector

By: Jane Wei-Skillern, James Austin, Herman Leonard and Howard Stevenson

"Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector provides an excellent overview of the many tools available to... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Society

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

Purchase

09 Feb 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Do Corporate Social Responsibility Ratings Predict Corporate Social Performance?

Keywords: by Aaron K. Chatterji, David I. Levine & Michael W. Toffel

Article

Designing Social Networks: Joint Tasks and the Formation and Endurance of Network Ties

By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

Can managers influence the formation of organizational networks? In this article, we evaluate the effect of joint tasks on the creation of network ties with data from a novel field experiment with 112 aspiring entrepreneurs. During the study, we randomized individuals... View Details

Keywords: Accelerators; Entrepreneur; Social Networks; Field Experiment; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Design; Networks; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Media; Information Technology Industry; India

October 2013 (Revised November 2015)
Case

Southwire and 12 For Life: Scaling Up? (A)

By: Jan W. Rivkin and Ryan Lee

Southwire, a leading maker of cable based in rural Georgia, has partnered with the local school system to staff a factory with at-risk high school students. The positive impact on student outcomes has been remarkable, and the factory makes a profit for the company. Now... View Details

Keywords: Partners and Partnerships; Production; Education; Business and Community Relations; Manufacturing Industry; Education Industry

Purchase

2008
Working Paper

The Future of Social Enterprise

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Herman B. Leonard and Susan McDonald

The Future of Social Enterprise considers the confluence of forces that is shaping the field of social enterprise, changing the way that funders, practitioners, scholars, and organizations measure performance. We trace a growing pool of potential funding sources to... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Investment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Performance Effectiveness; Social Enterprise; Consolidation; Value

October 2022 (Revised September 2024)
Case

mPharma: Scaling Access to Affordable Primary Care in Africa

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo

mPharma hopes to scale up to create the largest pan-African healthcare company ever to provide much-needed primary care in retail pharmacies; a reliable, fairly priced supply of drugs; and micro-insurance for drugs. They must prioritize launching a telemedicine... View Details