Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,853)
- Faculty Publications (579)
- February 2013 (Revised December 2015)
- Case
Groom Energy Solutions: Selling Efficiency
By: Michael W. Toffel, Kira R. Fabrizio and Stephanie van Sice
Groom Energy Solutions helps organizations reduce their energy use and costs through the implementation of energy efficiency measures, which create long-term financial and environmental benefits. With early success serving customers in the cold storage and industrial... View Details
Keywords: Groom Energy Solutions; Jon Guerster; Salem, MA; Energy Management; Energy Efficiency Paradox; Sustainability Management; Manufacturing; Cold Storage; Commercial Real Estate; Enterprise Smart Grid; Carbon Accounting; LED Lighting; Sustainability Research; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Entrepreneurship; Energy Entrepreneurship; Energy Services; Electricity; Startup; Expansion; Growth; Sustainability; Business Startups; Forecasting and Prediction; Energy Conservation; Revenue; Geographic Location; Human Resources; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Operations; Service Delivery; Strategic Planning; Science; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Society; Social Issues; Technology Adoption; Energy Industry; Green Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Utilities Industry; United States; Boston
- February 2013
- Article
Learning from Roger Fisher
Roger Fisher's career and writings not only offer lessons about negotiation but also about how an academic, especially in a professional school such as law or business, can make an important, positive difference in the world. By his relentless engagement in vexing... View Details
- January 2013 (Revised September 2013)
- Case
Royal DSM: Fighting Hidden Hunger
By: Rebecca Henderson, Noah Fisher and Mary Shelman
In 2007 Royal DSM, a leading life science and materials company, entered a partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP) to combat hidden hunger around the world by providing micronutrient solutions. The case investigates the unexpectedly large impact the partnership... View Details
- Article
Assent-maximizing Social Choice
By: Katherine A. Baldiga and Jerry R. Green
We take a decision theoretic approach to the classic social choice problem, using data on the frequency of choice problems to compute social choice functions. We define a family of social choice rules that depend on the population's preferences and on the probability... View Details
- 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
- December 2012 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
Nestlé: Agricultural Material Sourcing Within the Concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV)
By: Ray A. Goldberg and Lorin A. Fries
Corporate Head of Agriculture Hans Jöhr's mind raced in anticipation of the executive board meeting that afternoon. Jöhr recognized the meeting as a key opportunity to strategize far into the future, reexamining how his team's efforts in sustainable agricultural... View Details
- December 2012
- Article
What Drives Corporate Social Performance? The Role of Nation-level Institutions
By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim
Based on Whitley's "National Business Systems" (NBS) institutional framework (Whitley 1997, 1999), we theorize about and empirically investigate the impact of nation-level institutions on firms' corporate social performance (CSP). Using a sample of firms from 42... View Details
- November–December 2012
- Article
Toward a Theory of Extended Contact: The Incentives and Opportunities for Bridging Across Network Communities
By: Maxim Sytch, Adam Tatarynowicz and Ranjay Gulati
This study investigates the determinants of bridging ties within networks of interconnected firms. Bridging ties are defined as nonredundant connections between firms located in different network communities. We highlight how firms can enter into these relationships... View Details
- 2012
- Case
Advanced Leadership Pathways: Shelly London and Ethics Education—'Strengthening Our Moral Compass'
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Anne Arlinghaus
Shelly London and Ethics Education — 'Strengthening Our Moral Compass'
2009 AL Fellow
Following a successful career as a Senior Vice President, Vice President, and Chief Communications Officer at two large corporate companies, Shelly London set out to promote... View Details
Following a successful career as a Senior Vice President, Vice President, and Chief Communications Officer at two large corporate companies, Shelly London set out to promote... View Details
Keywords: Leadership Skills; Ethics Education; Initiatives; Morality; Moral Compass; Prima Facie; Grassroots Movement; Ethical Reasoning; Decision-making; Social Media; Media Relations; Family Dinner Project; Public Conversations Project; Laura Chasin; Computer Games; Video Games; Quandary; Organizational Structure; Infrastructure; Ethics; Education; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Decision Making; Leadership; Innovation and Management; Education Industry; Service Industry; North and Central America
- Summer 2012
- Article
How to Become a Sustainable Company
By: Robert G. Eccles, Kathleen Miller Perkins and George Serafeim
Using field and survey data we identify the characteristics of sustainable companies, and we develop a two-stage model that can help companies develop a culture of innovation, trust, and the ability for transformational change. View Details
- July 2012
- Supplement
Generation Investment Management, Video
By: Sandra J. Sucher
Examines the Investment process of Generation Investment Management, a "sustainable" investing firm established in 2004 by David Blood and U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Places students in the position of David Lowish, director of global industrials, who must decide... View Details
- 2012
- Article
Exploring Re-Identification Risks in Public Domains
By: Aditi Ramachandran, Lisa Singh, Edward Porter and Frank Nagle
While re-identification of sensitive data has been studied extensively, with the emergence of online social networks and the popularity of digital communications, the ability to use public data for re-identification has increased. This work begins by presenting two... View Details
- March–April 2012
- Article
The Rise and Fall of Small Worlds: Exploring the Dynamics of Social Structure
By: Ranjay Gulati, Maxim Sytch and Adam Tatarynowicz
This paper explores the interplay between social structure and economic action by examining some of the evolutionary dynamics of an emergent network that coalesces into a small-world system. The study highlights the small-world system's evolutionary dynamics at both... View Details
- June 2012
- Article
Consequence-Cause Matching: Looking to the Consequences of Events to Infer Their Causes
By: Robyn A. LeBoeuf and Michael I. Norton
We show that people non-normatively infer event causes from event consequences. For example, people inferred that a product failure (computer crash) had a large cause (widespread computer virus) if it had a large consequence (job loss), but that the identical failure... View Details
- May 2012 (Revised February 2015)
- Case
Maersk Line and the Future of Container Shipping
By: Forest Reinhardt, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Frederik Nellemann
- Spring 2012
- Article
The Need for Sector-Specific Materiality and Sustainability Reporting Standards
By: Robert G. Eccles, Michael P. Krzus, Jean Rogers and George Serafeim
Even though the supply of sustainability information has increased considerably in the last decade, companies are still failing to disclose material information in a comparable format. We believe this has two downsides. On the one hand, companies are not adequately... View Details
- March 2012 (Revised October 2012)
- Case
Gary Hirshberg and Stonyfield Farm
By: Nancy F. Koehn, Nora N. Khan and Elizabeth W. Legris
Gary Hirshberg and Stonyfield Farm is the story of one entrepreneur's vision and journey to create a market-leading, environmentally responsible business founded on the principles of product quality, organizational alignment, and sustainability. A former environmental... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurs; Values; Development Stage Enterprises; Innovation; Management By Objective; Experimentation; Emerging Technologies; Mission and Purpose; Management Style; Values and Beliefs; Social Issues; Organizational Culture; Environmental Sustainability; Business Growth and Maturation; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Innovation and Invention; Food and Beverage Industry; New Hampshire
- 2012
- Chapter
The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers: Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort
By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani
Software development occurs in a patchwork or "confederacy" of different types of institutions (universities, small start-ups, multinational enterprises, government agencies, etc.) utilizing varied work approaches. Here we speculate on one possible explanation for this... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
~Why Do We Redistribute so Much but Tag so Little? Normative Diversity, Equal Sacrifice and Optimal Taxation
Tagging is a free lunch in conventional optimal tax theory because it eases the classic tradeoff between efficiency and equality. But tagging is used in only limited ways in tax policy. I propose one explanation: conventional optimal tax theory has yet to capture the... View Details
- January 2012 (Revised September 2015)
- Case
Tough Decisions at Marks and Spencer
By: George Serafeim
In 2007, under the leadership of CEO Stuart Rose, the iconic British retailer Marks and Spencer, with great fanfare, announced its "Plan A" initiative. Based on the five essential pillars of climate change, waste, sustainable materials, fair partnership, and health,... View Details