Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(7,458)
- Faculty Publications (1,851)
- 2021
- Article
How Top Managers Use the Entrepreneurial Gap to Drive Strategic Change
By: Robert L. Simons and Antonio Davila
Prior research provides strong evidence for the association between business strategy and the design and use of management control systems. We complement this research by examining the role of management control systems in situations of strategic change. We report the... View Details
- Article
Targeting Weather Insurance Markets
By: Anita Mukherjee, Shawn Cole and Jeremy Tobacman
The suitability of insurance products often depends greatly on individual circumstances. This paper examines the challenges of heterogeneity in a relatively new product, weather‐indexed insurance. This index insurance product has been launched in over a dozen... View Details
Keywords: Index Insurance; Labor Markets; Self-insurance; Self-protection; Weather; Insurance; Markets; Household; Risk Management
- 2021
- Working Paper
How to Fix ESG Reporting
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna
Investors, advocacy groups, academics, and the 200 CEOs of the US Business Roundtable have asked corporations to take on an added purpose beyond a narrow pursuit of shareholder value. In response, many companies now issue ESG (Environmental, Societal, and Governance)... View Details
Keywords: ESG Reporting; Sustainability; Corporate Purpose; Greenhouse Gas; Activity-Based Costing; Environmental Sustainability; Environmental Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Measurement and Metrics; Goals and Objectives; Agreements and Arrangements; Corporate Accountability
- Article
The Harmonization of Lending Standards within Banks through Mandated Loan-Level Transparency
By: Jung Koo Kang, Maria Loumioti and Regina Wittenberg-Moerman
We explore whether the introduction of transparent reporting rules increases credit standard harmonization within a bank. We exploit the new loan-level reporting rules imposed on banks that borrow from the European Central Bank using repurchase agreements... View Details
- July 2021
- Case
'Why I Blew the Whistle': Mauro Botta v. PwC
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and Sarah Mehta
Set in April 2021, this case tells the story of Mauro Botta, a senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In 2016, Botta filed a whistleblower claim with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging that PwC had failed to fulfill its obligations to remain... View Details
- July 2021
- Supplement
CIAM: Home-Grown Shareholder Activism in France (B)
By: Charles C.Y. Wang, Tonia Labruyere and Vincent Dessain
This case is a complement to CIAM: Home-Grown Shareholder Activism in France (A) and describes the events after CIAM learned about a potential misuse of corporate assets at Altice/SFR. View Details
- July 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Pershing Square's Pandemic Trade (A)
By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Luis M. Viceira, Dean Xu and Lucas Baker
This case explores the decision that Bill Ackman, CEO and founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, was considering in late February 2020 about hedging the exposure of the fund’s portfolio from the potential financial fallout ensuing from an extreme event like... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Changing Role of Business in Society
Business interaction with the U.S. government, historically based on securing industry or company special interests at the expense of the public good, has enabled and furthered government dysfunction. Gridlock within the American political system has precluded the... View Details
Keywords: Politics; Shared Value; Social Progress Index; Competitiveness; Walmart; BlackRock; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG; Transparency; Campaign Contributions; Campaign Finance; Lobbying; Revolving Door; Political Ideology; Political Parties; Political Partisanship; Government And Business; Government Innovation; Elections; Democracy; Capitalism; Stakeholder Capitalism; Shareholder Engagement; Competition; Strategy; Government and Politics; Society; Social Issues; Human Needs; Wealth and Poverty; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Corporate Accountability; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; United States
- 2021
- Book
The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta
Trust is the most powerful force underlying the success of every business. Yet it can be shattered in an instant, with a devastating impact on a company’s market cap and reputation. How to build and sustain trust requires fresh insight into why customers, employees,... View Details
Keywords: Power; Corporate Culture; Future Of Work; Innovation; Technology Strategy; Automation; Stakeholder Engagement; Employee Attitude; Customer Behavior; Shareholder Value; Government And Business; Impact Investing; Corporate Change And Sustainability; Trust; Power and Influence; Globalization; Leadership; Organizational Culture; Innovation and Invention; Human Resources; Information Technology; Strategy; Corporate Accountability; Asia; Europe; South America; Middle East; North and Central America
- July 2021 (Revised July 2022)
- Case
Brigham & Women's Hospital: Using Patient Reported Outcomes to Improve Breast Cancer Care
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Navraj S. Nagra and Syed S. Shehab
Dr. Andrea Pusic, breast cancer reconstruction surgeon, wants to extend outcomes measurement beyond traditional surgical metrics of infections, complications, and survival rates. The case describes her development of a new mobile phone app, which collects patients’... View Details
- 2021
- Article
Decarbonizing Everything
By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim, David Turkington and Hui (Stacie) Wang
We analyze how the use of different climate risk measures leads to different portfolio carbon outcomes and risk-adjusted returns. Our findings are synthesized in a rules-based investment framework, which selects a different type of climate metric across industries and... View Details
Keywords: Climate Risk; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Disclosure; ESG Disclosure Metrics; ESG Ratings; Investing; Investing For Impact; Investment Strategy; Environment; Decarbonization; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Environmental Management; Environmental Accounting; Investment; Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Investment Return
- July 2021
- Article
Information Transparency, Multihoming, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment in the Daily Deals Market
By: Hui Li and Feng Zhu
Platform competition is shaped by the likelihood of multi-homing (i.e., complementors or consumers adopt more than one platform). To take advantage of multi-homing, platform firms often attempt to motivate their rivals’ high-performing complementors to adopt their own... View Details
- July 2021
- Article
Material Sustainability Information and Stock Price Informativeness
By: Jody Grewal, Clarissa Hauptmann and George Serafeim
As part of the SEC’s revision of Regulation S-K, many investors proposed the mandatory disclosure of sustainability information in the form of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data. However, progress is contingent on collecting evidence regarding which... View Details
Keywords: Voluntary Disclosure; Accounting Standards; Sustainability; Nonfinancial Information; Corporate Social Responsibility; Stock Price Informativeness; Synchronicity; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Accountability; Stocks; Price; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Accounting; Standards
- Article
On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women's Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply and Gender Norms
By: Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, Rohini Pande, Erica Field and Charity Troyer Moore
Can increasing control over earnings incentivize a woman to work, and thereby influence norms around gender roles? We randomly varied whether rural Indian women received bank accounts, training in account use, and direct deposit of public sector wages into their own... View Details
- July–August 2021
- Article
SPACs: What You Need to Know
By: Max Bazerman and Paresh Patel
Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, have been around in various forms for decades, but during the past two years they’ve taken off in the United States. In 2019, 59 were created, with $13 billion invested; in 2020, 247 were created, with $80 billion... View Details
- 2021
- Chapter
Towards a Unified Framework for Fair and Stable Graph Representation Learning
By: Chirag Agarwal, Himabindu Lakkaraju and Marinka Zitnik
As the representations output by Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are increasingly employed in real-world applications, it becomes important to ensure that these representations are fair and stable. In this work, we establish a key connection between counterfactual... View Details
- Article
What Is Your Status Portfolio? Higher Status Variance across Groups Increases Interpersonal Helping but Decreases Intrapersonal Well-being
By: Catarina R. Fernandes, Siyu Yu, Taeya M. Howell, Alison Wood Brooks, Gavin J. Kilduff and Nathan C. Pettit
Individuals belong to multiple groups across various domains of life, which in aggregate constitute a portfolio of potentially distinct levels of experienced status. We propose a two-factor model for assessing the effects of an individual’s status portfolio, based on... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Accounting for Product Impact in the Oil and Gas Industry
By: Katie Panella, George Serafeim and Katie Trinh
We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor companies within the oil and gas industry. We design a monetization methodology that allows us to calculate monetary product impact estimates of... View Details
Keywords: Product Innovation; Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; Social Corporate Responsibility; Corporate Social Responsibility; Social Impact; Oil; Oil ＆ Gas; Oil And Gas; IWAI; Impact-Weighted Accounts; Product Design; Product Positioning; Society; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Product
- 2021
- Working Paper
Accounting for Product Impact in the Pharmaceuticals Industry
By: Amanda Rischbieth, George Serafeim and Katie Trinh
We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor companies within the pharmaceuticals industry. We design a monetization methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact estimates of accessible... View Details
Keywords: Product Innovation; Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; Social Corporate Responsibility; Corporate Social Responsibility; Social Impact; Pharmaceutical Companies; Pharmaceuticals; IWAI; Product Design; Product Positioning; Society; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Product; Safety; Pharmaceutical Industry
- 2021
- Working Paper
Impact Accounting for Product Use: A Framework and Industry-specific Models
By: George Serafeim and Katie Trinh
This handbook provides the first systematic attempt to generate a framework and industry-specific models for the measurement of impacts on customers and the environment from use of products and services, in monetary terms, that can then be reflected in financial... View Details