Corporate Social Responsibility - Publications - Faculty & Research

02 Aug 2022
Research & Ideas

6 Strategies for Building Socially Responsible—and Profitable—Companies

A dozen years ago, Harvard Business School Professor George Serafeim wondered why some companies operated with an eye toward the greater good, while most did not. Back then, he always got the same response: Corporate leaders thought social and environmental practices... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

29 Oct 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Public Sentiment and the Price of Corporate Sustainability

Keywords: by George Serafeim

06 Oct 2003
Research & Ideas

The Growth of the Social Enterprise

practices designed to promulgate a particular culture, commitment to diversity, strategy for corporate involvement, and other core elements of City Year's theory of social change. It is expanding... View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler

March 2024
Article

Differences in Care Team Response to Patient Portal Messages by Patient Race and Ethnicity

By: Mitchell Tang, Rebecca Mishuris, Lily Payvandi and Ariel Dora Stern

Importance: The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with substantial growth in patient portal messaging. Higher message volumes have largely persisted, reflecting a new normal. Prior work has documented lower message use by patients who belong to minoritized racial... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Technology Adoption; Prejudice and Bias; Equality and Inequality; Communication Technology; Race; Ethnicity; Health Industry

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Courses | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

disciplines. The Required Curriculum incorporates social enterprise cases and topics in several courses ranging from finance to entrepreneurship. As a result, all students learn about social enterprise... View Details

05 Jul 2006
Op-Ed

Corporate Governance Activists are Headed in the Wrong Direction

Activist corporate governance reformers are spending too much time—and capturing too much of the media's attention—on fringe issues. One current initiative, for example, focuses on promoting "majority voting" for directors, a... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Hinsey

The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership

Agency theory, a new model of governance promulgated by academic economists in the 1970s, is behind the idea that corporate managers should make shareholder value their primary concern and that boards should ensure they do. The theory regards shareholders as... View Details

10 Nov 2003
Research & Ideas

The Hard Numbers on Social Investments

the Domini Index (investments in socially responsible mutual funds) realized a 13 percent return, and the S&P 500 returned 11 percent. The average returns of traditional angel investing are hard to... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

28 Oct 2020
News

Corporate America is breaking with Donald Trump

May 2012
Technical Note

Frameworks for Dialogue and Research about Social Impact Investing

By: Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard

Social Impact Investment is a rapidly expanding field, but terminology in the field is poorly defined and imprecise. This note suggests frameworks that help to clarify important dimensions of SII projects, distinguishing and clarifying key differences in approaches to... View Details

Keywords: Development Stage Enterprises; Entrepreneurial Management; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurial Finance; Financial Instruments; Performance Measurement; Balanced Scorecard; Investment Funds; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Research; Framework; Entrepreneurship; Financial Services Industry

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2024
Working Paper

What Do Impact Investors Do Differently?

By: Shawn Cole, Leslie Jeng, Josh Lerner, Natalia Rigol and Benjamin N. Roth

In recent years, impact investors – private investors who seek to generate simultaneously financial and social returns – have attracted intense interest and controversy. We analyze a novel, comprehensive data set of impact and traditional investors to assess how the... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Socially Responsible Investing; Investment Decisions; Public Goods; Impact Investment; Investment; Private Equity; Venture Capital

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About | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

John Hancock’s Bond and Corporate Finance group. Margot Dushin Director of Programs Margot Dushin joined the Social Enterprise Initiative in 1996. Margot plays a principal role in the View Details

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Kim Coupounas Archives | Social Enterprise

Curriculum Social Enterprise Student Club Social Entrepreneurship Summer Fellows Technology for Good Transformative Impact Tri-Sector Impact 1 Results Quantum Theory & the Rise of the B View Details

April 2010
Teaching Note

IBM: The Corporate Service Corps (TN)

By: Christopher Marquis, Alison Comings and Bobbi Thomason

Teaching Note for [409106]. View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Employees; Partners and Partnerships; Non-Governmental Organizations; Developing Countries and Economies; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Programs; Global Strategy; Computer Industry; Information Technology Industry; Ghana; Tanzania; Romania; Philippines; Viet Nam

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Research Summary

Corporate Investment and Stock Market Listing: A Puzzle?

In joint work with John Asker and Alexander Ljungqvist, we investigate whether short-termism distorts the investment decisions of stock market listed firms. To do so, we compare the investment behavior of observably similar public and private firms using a new... View Details

19 Aug 2019
News

A New Purpose for the Corporation

Offering an update of their statement on “the purpose of a corporation”, the Business Roundtable, an influential group of some of America’s top chief executives, noted that “we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders”—and not just their shareholders.... View Details

15 Dec 2008
Research & Ideas

The Surprisingly Successful Marriages of Multinationals and Social Brands

What happens when giant multinational corporations acquire relatively small companies that enjoy iconic status as socially progressive brands? According to recent research out of Harvard Business School,... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products; Food & Beverage

21 Sep 2016
News

Ideas with Economic and Social Impact

Corporation (IFC) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Her report, Financing High-Growth Firms, the Role of Angel Investors, written for and published by the OECD in 2011, has attracted interest from... View Details

August 2000
Article

Corporate Reorganizations and Non-Cash Auctions

By: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and S. Viswanathan

This paper extends the theory of non-cash auctions by considering the revenue and efficiency of using different securities. Research on bankruptcy and privatization suggests using non-cash auctions to increase cash-constrained bidder participation. We examine this... View Details