Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(2,074)
- Faculty Publications (406)
- April 3, 2016
- Guest Column
The Power of C.E.O. Activism: How Politically Outspoken Executives Sway Public (and Consumer) Opinion
By: Aaron K. Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel
Some CEOs are making news by taking public stances on controversial social issues largely unrelated to their core business. This article summarizes the insights from our research paper that shows that such "CEO activism" can influence public opinion and consumer... View Details
Keywords: Leadership & Corporate Accountability; Non-market Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility; Politics; Political Influence; Political Strategy; Political Risk; Equity; Gender; Climate Change; Communication Strategy; Law; Leadership; Brands and Branding; Media; Problems and Challenges; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Public Opinion; United States; Georgia (state, US); North Carolina; Indiana; Indianapolis
- March 22, 2016
- Article
The Globalization of Corporate Environmental Disclosure: Accountability or Greenwashing?
By: Christopher Marquis, Michael W. Toffel and Yanhua Zhou
This article is a layman summary of "Scrutiny, Norms, and Selective Disclosure: A Global Study of Greenwashing," published in Organization Science 27, no. 2 (March–April 2016): 483–504. View Details
- 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
- March–April 2016
- Article
Scrutiny, Norms, and Selective Disclosure: A Global Study of Greenwashing
By: Christopher Marquis, Michael W. Toffel and Yanhua Zhou
Under increased pressure to report environmental impacts, some firms selectively disclose relatively benign impacts, creating an impression of transparency while masking their true performance. We identify key company- and country-level factors that limit firms' use of... View Details
- Article
Third-party Punishment as a Costly Signal of Trustworthiness
By: Jillian J. Jordan, Moshe Hoffman, Paul Bloom and David G. Rand
Third-party punishment (TPP), in which unaffected observers punish selfishness, promotes cooperation by deterring defection. But why should individuals choose to bear the costs of punishing? We present a game theoretic model of TPP as a costly signal of... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
Managerial Responsibility and the Purpose of Business: Doing One's Job Well
By: Nien-he Hsieh
Business managers routinely make decisions that significantly affect the lives of others in both positive and negative ways. In the light of these wide-ranging effects, much scholarship has been devoted to specifying the responsibilities of managers of for-profit... View Details
- Article
The Social Contract Model of Corporate Purpose and Responsibility
By: Nien-he Hsieh
Of the many developments in business ethics that Thomas Donaldson has helped pioneer, one is the application of social contract theory to address questions about the responsibilities of business actors. In Corporations and Morality, Donaldson develops one of the... View Details
- September 2015
- Article
Design and Implementation of a Privacy Preserving Electronic Health Record Linkage Tool in Chicago
By: Abel Kho, John Cashy, Kathryn Jackson, Adam Pah, Satyender Goel, Jorn Boehnke, John Eric Humphries, Scott Duke Kominers and et al.
Objective
To design and implement a tool that creates a secure, privacy preserving linkage of electronic health record (EHR) data across multiple sites in a large metropolitan area in the United States (Chicago, IL), for use in clinical... View Details
To design and implement a tool that creates a secure, privacy preserving linkage of electronic health record (EHR) data across multiple sites in a large metropolitan area in the United States (Chicago, IL), for use in clinical... View Details
Keywords: Information; Customers; Safety; Rights; Ethics; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Chicago
- July 2015
- Article
Executives' 'Off-the-Job' Behaviors and Financial Reporting Risk
By: Robert Davidson, Aiyesha Dey and Abbie Smith
We examine how executives' behavior outside the workplace, as measured by their ownership of luxury goods (low “frugality”) and prior legal infractions, is related to financial reporting risk. We predict and find that chief executive officers (CEOs) and chief financial... View Details
- July 2015
- Article
The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Investment Recommendations: Analysts' Perceptions and Shifting Institutional Logics
By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim
We explore the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings on sell-side analysts' assessments of firms' future financial performance. We suggest that when analysts perceive CSR as an agency cost, due to the prevalence of an agency logic, they produce... View Details
- Article
Integrated Reporting and Investor Clientele
By: George Serafeim
In this paper, I examine the relation between Integrated Reporting (IR) and the composition of a firm's investor base. I hypothesize and find that firms that practice IR have a more long-term oriented investor base with more dedicated and fewer transient investors.... View Details
- 2015
- Article
Regulator Leniency and Mispricing in Beneficent Nonprofits
By: Jonas Heese, Ranjani Krishnan and Frank Moers
We posit that nonprofits that provide a greater supply of unprofitable services (beneficent nonprofits) face lenient regulatory enforcement for mispricing in price-regulated markets. Consequently, beneficent nonprofits exploit such regulatory leniency and exhibit... View Details
- May 2015 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Colgate-Palmolive Company: Marketing Anti-Cavity Toothpaste
By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez
In October 2013, Colgate-Palmolive Company, the world's leading oral care company, was about to launch its new Colgate® Maximum Cavity Protection™ plus Sugar Acid Neutralizer™ toothpaste in Brazil. Oral care category accounted for 46 percent of Colgate's $17.4 billion... View Details
Keywords: New Product Management; Consumer Segmentation; Global Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility; Healthcare; Sustainability; Health Care and Treatment; Environmental Sustainability; Marketing; Segmentation; Product Development; Product Launch; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Product Positioning; Consumer Products Industry; Brazil; United States
- May 2015
- Teaching Note
Aviva Investors
By: George Serafeim
Keywords: Responsibility; Responsibilities To Society; Sustainability; Sustainability Reporting; Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Sustainability; Activist Investors; Investment Management; Investment Strategy; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Environmental Sustainability; Investment Activism
- Article
Why Do Firms Have 'Purpose'? The Firm's Role as a Carrier of Identity and Reputation
By: Rebecca Henderson and Eric Van den Steen
Why do so many firms publicly espouse a "purpose" beyond simple profit maximization? And why do so many managers and employees appear to care deeply about this purpose and to believe that it is critically important? In this paper we argue that the conventional answers... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Incentives versus Reciprocity: Insights from a Field Experiment
By: Doug J. Chung and Das Narayandas
We conduct a field experiment in which we vary the sales force compensation scheme at an Asian enterprise that sells consumer durable goods. With variation generated by the experimental treatments, we model sales force performance to identify the effectiveness of... View Details
- March 2015
- Case
Statoil: Transparency on Payments to Governments
By: George Serafeim
The Statoil case describes the challenge of increasing transparency, in extractive industries, around host county government payments. The case describes Statoil's reasoning behind voluntarily disclosing host country government payments, and the events that led to this... View Details
Keywords: Corruption; Disclosure; Disclosure Strategy; Regulation; Industry Self-regulation; Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Bribery; Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility; Government Legislation; Cost vs Benefits; Corporate Disclosure; Mining; Mining Industry; United States
- March 2015 (Revised February 2017)
- Case
Shanghai: GDP Apostasy
By: George Serafeim
Balancing economic growth alongside environmental sustainability and social inclusion was becoming increasingly important in China. The case describes Shanghai's decision to abandon growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as its primary metric of measuring success.... View Details
Keywords: China; Gdp; Measurement; Measurement Problems; Accountability; Sustainability; Sustainable Development; Strategy Execution; Strategy; Balanced Scorecard; Strategy Map; Macroeconomics; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Accountability; Accounting; Environmental Sustainability; Development Economics; Corporate Governance; Shanghai
- February 2015 (Revised September 2017)
- Supplement
Omar Selim: Building a Values-Based Asset Management Firm (B)
By: George Serafeim, Rebecca Henderson and Shannon Gombos
The case describes the decision of Omar Selim to set up Arabesque as an independent organization and how he organized Arabesque to use both financial and environmental, social and governance (ESG) data in order to deliver performance for its clients. View Details
- November 2014
- Article
The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Processes and Performance
By: Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim
We investigate the effect of corporate sustainability on organizational processes and performance. Using a matched sample of 180 U.S. companies, we find that corporations that voluntarily adopted sustainability policies by 1993—termed as High Sustainability... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Sustainability Research; Sustainability Reporting; Sustainability Targets; Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Accountability; Reporting; Corporate Governance; Investor Clientele; Investor Communication; Stock Market; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Performance; United States