Publications

Professor Toffel is the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management. His research examines how companies are addressing climate change (especially decarbonization) and other environmental and working condition issues in their operations and supply... View Details

11 Mar 2008
First Look

First Look: March 11, 2008

firm's balanced scorecard to provide useful information for detecting problems in its strategy. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-081.pdf No Harm, No Foul: The Outcome Bias in Ethical Judgments Authors:Francesca Gino,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

December 2012
Case

Blink Booking

By: William R. Kerr, Magnus Thor Torfason and Alexis Brownell

Rebeca Minguela hopes to create an arbitrage platform, similar to Rocket Internet, that can bring start-up ideas and opportunities to Spain. However, Blink Booking, her first venture and proof of concept, is rocked by a co-founder's breach of confidence and departure.... View Details

Keywords: Clones; Cloning; Rocket Internet; Start-up; Equity Split; Arbitrage; Incubator; Mobile App; Expansion; Spain; Europe; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Internet and the Web; Information Technology Industry; Accommodations Industry; Travel Industry; Spain; Europe

2022
Chapter

Redirecting Rawlsian Reasoning Toward the Greater Good

By: Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Max Bazerman

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls employed the ‘veil of Ignorance’ as a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial thinking. By imagining the choices of decision-makers who are blind to biasing information, one might see more clearly the organizing... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Prejudice and Bias; Decision Making

Article

The Business Case for Investing in Physician Well-Being

By: Tait D. Shanafelt, Joel Goh and Christine A. Sinsky

Importance: Widespread burnout among physicians has been recognized for more than two decades. Extensive evidence indicates that physician burnout has important personal and professional consequences.
Observations: A lack of awareness regarding... View Details

Keywords: Physicians; Well-being; ROI; Health; Welfare or Wellbeing; Ethics; Investment Return; Health Industry

2008
Chapter

Corporate Honesty and Business Education: A Behavioral Model

By: Rakesh Khurana and Herbert Gintis

Since the mid-1970s neoclassical economic theory has dominated business school thinking and teaching in dealing with the nature of human motivation. However valuable in understanding competitive product and financial markets, neoclassical economic theory employs an... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Ethics; Managerial Roles; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Culture; Business and Shareholder Relations; Mathematical Methods; Behavior

August 2021 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Northvolt: Making the World's Greenest Battery

By: Jurgen R. Weiss and Emilie Billaud

In 2021, the demand for lithium-ion batteries increased rapidly, particularly for electric vehicles. Anxious not to be reliant on Asian players, Europe was keen on developing its own home-grown capacity to control the value chain, maintain employment in Europe, and get... View Details

April 2025 (Revised May 2025)
Case

Adobe: GenAI Opportunity or Threat?

By: Sunil Gupta, Rajiv Lal and Allison Ciechanover

In December 2022, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen faced a pivotal strategic decision due to the rapid rise of generative AI image models from OpenAI, Midjourney, and StabilityAI. Adobe, a leader in digital media and marketing software with a 40-year legacy of innovation and... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Ethics; AI and Machine Learning; Trust; Business Strategy; Technology Industry; San Jose

Fall 2020
Article

Climate in the Boardroom: Struggling to Reconcile Business as Usual and the End of the World as We Know It

By: Rebecca Henderson

How does one witness to businesspeople about climate change? Climate change is a problem for the collective and the long term, whereas business often requires a ruthless focus on the individual and the quarter. Climate change is an ethical catastrophe whose solution... View Details

Keywords: Sustainable Business; Climate Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability

Read Now

2010
Working Paper

Integrity: A Positive Model That Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics, and Legality Abridged

By: Werner H. Erhard, Michael C. Jensen and Steve Zaffron

We present a positive model of integrity that, as we distinguish and define integrity, provides powerful access to increased performance for individuals, groups, organizations, and societies. Our model reveals the causal link between integrity and increased... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Performance Productivity; Information Technology; Knowledge; Moral Sensibility; Opportunities; Competitive Advantage; Legal Liability; Cost vs Benefits

SSRN

April 2020 (Revised April 2023)
Supplement

TransDigm in 2017: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

TransDigm was a highly acquisitive company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and commercial customers. Over the ten years ending in 2016, its stock price had increase ten times, and both EBITDA and revenues had grown... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Ethics; Private Equity; Financial Strategy; Growth Management; Performance Evaluation; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Horizontal Integration; Value Creation; Competitive Advantage; Aerospace Industry; Air Transportation Industry; United States

Winter 2022
Article

Vaccines and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from Failure and Success

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Tabarrok

The losses from the global COVID-19 pandemic have been staggering—trillions in economic costs, on top of significant losses of life, health, and well-being. The world made significant and successful investments in vaccines to mitigate the pandemic, yet there were... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Vaccination; Market Design; Health Pandemics; Loss; Outcome or Result; Opportunities; Crisis Management

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October 1988 (Revised May 1990)
Case

Ford Motor Co.: The Product Warranty Program (A)

Raises powerful issues concerning product warranty policy as a strategic marketing variable. Also raises several exciting issues concerning the role of product policy in competitive battles, product line issues, interfunctional coordination issues, and some ethical... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Marketing Strategy; Insurance; Product; Policy; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; United States

08 Oct 2024
Video

Can capitalism adapt to a changing world?

Web

MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences | MBA

MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences Joint degree with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Students are affiliated with Harvard Medical School through the Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. Play A joint degree that blends business, science,... View Details

March 11, 2020
Editorial

A Bolder Vision for Business Schools

By: P. Tufano

Business schools teach to a model that dates back to the 1950s. Given the growing demands on business to take a lead in confronting societal challenges, business schools need to update how they train business leaders and how they compete, argues Oxford’s Saïd School... View Details

Keywords: Business Schools; Business And Society; Business Education; Leadership Development; Business and Stakeholder Relations

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January 2009 (Revised October 2009)
Case

GLOBALGAP: Food Safety and Private Standards

By: David E. Bell and Mary Louise Shelman

In response to new laws governing liability and several food safety scares in the 1990s, European retailers drove the creation of a universal production standard based on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) for fresh fruit and vegetables and a third-party certification... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Food; Governance Compliance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business and Government Relations; Safety; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe