Publications

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

December 2016
Article

Selective Regulator Decoupling and Organizations' Strategic Responses

By: Jonas Heese, Ranjani Krishnan and Frank Moers

Organizations often respond to institutional pressures by symbolically adopting policies and procedures but decoupling them from actual practice. Literature has examined why organizations decouple from regulatory pressures. In this study, we argue that decoupling... View Details

Keywords: Regulator Leniency; Beneficence; Mispricing; Upcoding; Nonprofit Organizations; Health Care and Treatment; Revenue; Health Industry

SSRN

02 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

Why We Still Need Twitter: How Social Media Holds Companies Accountable

specifically, play a strong role in keeping corporations accountable to customers, employees, and other stakeholders. With the decline in traditional media sources, particularly amid the closure of many local newspapers, Heese and Pacelli... View Details

Keywords: by Kasandra Brabaw; Technology

October 2008
Article

Organizational Responses to Environmental Demands: Opening the Black Box

By: Magali Delmas and Michael W. Toffel

This paper combines new and old institutionalism to explain differences in organizational strategies. We propose that differences in the influence of corporate departments lead their facilities to prioritize different external pressures and thus adopt different... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Management Practices and Processes; Decisions; Adoption

Read Now

June 2013 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Goldfinger: Charles W. Engelhard Jr. and Apartheid-era South Africa

By: Geoffrey Jones and Elliot R. Benton

This case considers the strategies of Charles W. Engelhard, an American mining magnate who made large investments in apartheid-era South Africa. Engelhard was widely believed to have been the model for the James Bond villan Auric Goldfinger. During the 1950s and 1960s... View Details

Keywords: Political Economy; Business History; FDI; Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact; South Africa; Mining; Ethics; Globalization; Government and Politics; History; Mining Industry; Africa; South Africa

Organizational psychologists have long held that monitoring workers saps them of their autonomy and thereby reduces their effectiveness. Yet technology has intensified such surveillance in recent years: Managers now track everything from clinicians’ handwashing to... View Details

September 2002 (Revised August 2003)
Case

Genzyme's Gaucher Initiative: Global Risk and Responsibility

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Andrew N. McLean

In Egypt, Genzyme's humanitarian commitment to treat all sufferers of the rare Gaucher disease worldwide first confronts its commercial imperative to recoup the huge investment required to bring the drug Cerezyme to market. Here Tomye Tierney must decide how to balance... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Investment; Emerging Markets; Negotiation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations; Sales; Commercialization; Expansion; Value Creation

28 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Shareholders Key to Corporate Reform

separating these two roles is vital for maintaining balance in the boardroom. Companies that fuse the roles of CEO and chairman collapse the governance triangle, undermining the system of checks and balances that is essential to View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia A. Montgomery & Rhonda Kaufman

15 Sep 2008
Research & Ideas

The Coming Transformation of Social Enterprise

sector. In a way they become the catalysts for internal change. Q: Many alumni get involved with corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Critics of CSR often cite... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson

08 Jan 2020
News

How Corporate Cultures Differ Around the World

01 Jul 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Social Interactions in Pandemics: Fear, Altruism, and Reciprocity

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf, and Farzad Saidi; Health

March 1998 (Revised October 2001)
Case

Teradyne: Corporate Management of Disruptive Change

By: Joseph L. Bower

Two cases deal with the introduction of a new product to Teradyne's line of semiconductor test equipment. This case deals with the problems facing the head of a start-up division responsible for developing and bringing to market a new product based on technology deemed... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Disruption; Management; Market Entry and Exit; Product; Problems and Challenges; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Technology

28 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

The Profit Power of Corporate Culture

Corporate culture is often thought of as a hard-to-define, or soft concept in management circles. Soft not in the sense that it isn't important—most CEOs will tell you that their ability to inculcate values and mission into the DNA of a... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

28 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: The Good Struggle: Responsible Leadership in an Unforgiving World

book excerpt Evolving Committments From The Good Struggle: Responsible Leadership in an Unforgiving World By JOSEPH L. BADARACCO In a turbulent, sometimes dangerous world, responsible leaders need a broader... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph L. Badaracco

Web

Quantum Theory & the Rise of the B Corporation | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

March 2008 (Revised December 2011)
Case

IBM Values and Corporate Citizenship

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter

IBM's transformation into a globally integrated enterprise (GIE) began with a conviction about what should never change. Since its founding in 1911, the company operated under a set of principles articulated by founder Thomas Watson and became known for a strong... View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Globalized Firms and Management; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Integration

2022
Article

Which Corporate ESG News Does the Market React To?

By: George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon

Using a dataset that classifies firm-level ESG news as positive and negative, we examine how stock prices react to different types of ESG news. We analyze 111,020 firm-day observations for 3,126 companies and find that prices react only to issues identified as... View Details

Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; Social Capital; Environment; Sustainability; CSR; Stock Price; Stock Market Expectations; Materiality; Market Reaction; Environmental Sustainability; Governance; Social Issues; Performance; News

SSRN