Publications

November 2011 (Revised June 2015)
Case

COSCO: Implementing Sustainability

By: Christopher Marquis, Juelin Yin and Dongning Yang

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Shipping Industry

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Breaking the Code of Change

corporate leaders about the purpose of and means for change. In effect these two approaches to organizational change represent theories in use by senior executives View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer & Nitin Nohria

Building Sustainable Cities

By 2050 the number of people living in cities will have nearly doubled, to 6 billion, and the problems created by this rampant urbanization are among the most important challenges of our time. Of all resource-management issues, the author argues, water, electricity,... View Details

June 1998 (Revised July 1998)
Teaching Note

Teradyne: Managing Strategic Change, The Aurora Project, Managing Disruptive Change, and Corporate Management of Disruptive Change TN

By: Joseph L. Bower

Teaching Note for (9-397-113), (9-397-112), (9-397-114), and (9-398-121). View Details

Keywords: Change Management

18 Nov 2002
Research & Ideas

Where Morals and Profits Meet: The Corporate Value Shift

with HBS Working Knowledge's Carla Tishler, Paine explains why this shift has occurred, and why now. Tishler: Your research on corporate values and ethics dates back to the... View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler

January 2022
Article

Why is Corporate Virtue in the Eye of The Beholder? The Case of ESG Ratings

By: Dane Christensen, George Serafeim and Anywhere Sikochi

Despite the rising use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings, there is substantial disagreement across rating agencies regarding what rating to give to individual firms. As what drives this disagreement is unclear, we examine whether a firm’s ESG... View Details

Keywords: ESG Ratings; Rating Agency Disagreement; ESG Disclosure; Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Disclosure

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2013
Case

Travelers Insurance: Focusing on Climate Change and Natural Catastrophe Risk

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

The dilemma Evan Blue faces stems from a report by sustainability advocacy group Ceres that calls on companies to take climate change into consideration in their risk models and develop response strategies. The fictional vice president of Traveler's Insurance is tasked... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Business Strategy; Risk and Uncertainty; Insurance Industry

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

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

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13 Jan 2021
Research & Ideas

How 'Small C' Change Can Beat Large-Scale Rebuilding

to generate fresh momentum and bring in independent perspectives. It is easy to decipher the purpose. The team in action, after all, is the team portraying the downturn. But how effective is Big C change in... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Sascha L. Schmidt, and Sebastian Flegr; Sports

2016
Working Paper

Does Firm Innovation Affect Corporate Social Responsibility?

By: Rui Shen, Yi Tang and Ying Zhang

This study examines the relationship between firm innovation and CSR. Stakeholders’ concern over transaction-specific investments exacerbates when firms engage heavily in innovation activities. To secure stakeholders’ support, firms adopt CSR effectively as an ex ante... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Firm Innovation; Transaction-specific Investments; Firm Risk; Environmental Munificence; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Innovation and Invention

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December 2012 (Revised October 2013)
Case

Developing the Materiality Matrix at Telefónica

By: Robert G. Eccles, George Serafeim and Asun Cano-Escoriaza

Telefónica, one of the largest telecommunication companies in the world and headquartered in Spain, has been issuing a corporate sustainability report since 2002. In its 2011 Sustainability report, the company included a "materiality matrix," and was one of only five... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Reporting; Sustainable Strategy; CSR; Corporate Social Responsibility; Communication Technology; Environmental Accounting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Telecommunications Industry; Spain

March 2003 (Revised July 2004)
Case

Sustainable Development at Shell (B)

The case describes the complex and challenging process by which social and environmental concerns are integrated into the existing strategy of a large, multinational firm. This case focuses on a specific business within Shell Chemicals, the Close Looped Cleaning... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Growth and Development Strategy; Energy Industry

May 2016 (Revised August 2016)
Teaching Plan

Sustainability at Siemens

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Emer Moloney

June 2003 (Revised July 2003)
Case

Union City Schools: Sustaining The Turnaround

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Ryan Raffaelli

Under the leadership of Superintendent Thomas Highton, Union City Schools, New Jersey, underwent a 14-year turnaround. In 1989, the Union City School District was the second-worst-performing district in New Jersey. As Mr. Highton prepared to retire, 2002 student test... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Leading Change; Performance Consistency; Change Management; New Jersey

More and more companies recognize the importance of corporate responsibility to their long-term success—and yet the matter gets short shrift in most boardrooms, consistently ranking at the bottom of some two dozen possible priorities. Many years ago labor conditions... View Details

08 Jan 2016
News

Investing in Sustainability

increasing the country’s food supply. Sustainable America takes a two-pronged approach to these issues: education and investment. Sustainable America’s education initiatives... View Details

Keywords: April White; Agriculture

27 May 2014
News

How Separate Should a Corporate Spin-Off Be?

Keywords: spin-off; corporate strategy; organizational structure

March 1992 (Revised April 2000)
Case

Joline Godfrey and the Polaroid Corporation (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Nancy A Kamprath

Describes how Joline Godfrey, an intrapreneur at the Polaroid Corp., introduced and developed a project that could help Polaroid move to a more service- as opposed to product-oriented focus. Also depicts the mentor-protege relationship between Godfrey and Gerald... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Rank and Position; Leading Change; Problems and Challenges; Change; Electronics Industry; Consumer Products Industry