Publications

11 Oct 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance

Keywords: by Claudine Gartenberg, Andrea Prat, and George Serafeim

25 Sep 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Corporate Purpose and Firm Ownership

Keywords: by Claudine Gartenberg and George Serafeim

April 2023
Article

The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences

By: Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, David B. Huffman and Uwe Sunde

Incentivized choice experiments are a key approach to measuring preferences in economics but are also costly. Survey measures are a low-cost alternative but can suffer from additional forms of measurement error due to their hypothetical nature. This paper seeks to... View Details

Keywords: Survey Validation; Experiment; Preference Measurement; Surveys; Economics; Behavior; Measurement and Metrics

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June 2019 (Revised August 2024)
Module Note

Purpose Brands

By: Rory McDonald, Clayton M. Christensen and Shaye Roseman

Introduces a framework for innovation and brand building that is connected to an understanding of customers' Jobs to Be Done. View Details

Keywords: Brand ＆ Product Management; Brand Architecture; Brand Building; Innovation; Product Development Strategy; Product Differentiation; Brands and Branding; Product Development

Article

The Social Contract Model of Corporate Purpose and Responsibility

By: Nien-he Hsieh

Of the many developments in business ethics that Thomas Donaldson has helped pioneer, one is the application of social contract theory to address questions about the responsibilities of business actors. In Corporations and Morality, Donaldson develops one of the... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

Article

Earnings Dynamics and Measurement Error in Matched Survey and Administrative Data

By: Dean Hyslop and Wilbur Townsend

This article analyzes earnings dynamics and measurement error using a matched longitudinal sample of individuals’ survey and administrative earnings. In line with previous literature, the reported differences are characterized by both persistent and transitory factors.... View Details

Keywords: Earnings Dynamics; Measurement Error; Panel Data; Validation Study; Business Earnings; Measurement and Metrics; Forecasting and Prediction

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September 3, 2020
Article

How to Measure a Company’s Real Impact

By: Ronald Cohen and George Serafeim

Impact transparency will reshape capitalism. By shifting the pursuit of profit away from negligently creating problems to purposefully creating valuable solutions for the world, it will redefine success, so that its measure is not just money, but the positive impact we... View Details

Keywords: Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; Impact Investment; Impact Investment Funds; Accountability; Accounting Information; Corporate Performance; Sustainability; Social Impact; Capitalism; Accounting; Corporate Accountability; Performance; Measurement and Metrics; Social Enterprise; Society

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June 2000
Article

On the Regulatory Application of Efficiency Measures

The last decade has witnessed a change to more powerful incentive schemes and the adoption by a large number of regulators of some form of price cap regimes. The efficiency frontiers literature tackles the problem of measuring the X factor in a price cap regime... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods; Performance Efficiency

November 2021
Article

The Effects of Retirement on Sense of Purpose in Life: Crisis or Opportunity?

By: Ayse Yemiscigil, Nattavudh Powdthavee and Ashley V. Whillans

Does retirement lead to an existential crisis or present an opportunity to experience a renewed sense of purpose in life? Prior research has documented a negative association between retirement and sense of purpose in life, suggesting that retirement could lead people... View Details

Keywords: Aging; Meaning; Socioeconomic Status; Life Experiences; Retirement; Well-being

Guest Column

What Is the Purpose of Business?

By: Rakesh Khurana and Herbert Gintis

Keywords: Business Ventures

Research Summary

Growing as a Purposeful Leader

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger

Leaders today have to lead in the context of extraordinary changes and challenges. The demands of today's stakeholders have risen significantly, and what is expected of senior leaders is quickly evolving in terms of their mission (more than profit),... View Details

December 2013 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Atlanta Schools: Measures to Improve Performance

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

The widespread cheating scandal that rocked the Atlanta public school system in 2010 and 2011 illustrates how high-stakes performance pressure, without sufficient risk controls, can drive dangerous behavior. After becoming superintendent of the low-income and... View Details

Educators

August 2009
Case

Life Stories of Recent MBAs: Leadership Purpose

By: Nitin Nohria, Matthew D. Breitfelder and Daisy A Wademan Dowling

Keywords: Business Education; Leadership

2011 - 2011
Conference Presentation

The Limits of Measuring Social Impact

By: Alnoor Ebrahim

September 2002 (Revised October 2002)
Case

GolfLogix: Measuring the Game of Golf

By: John T. Gourville and Professor Jerry N. Conover

GolfLogix has developed a small, GPS-based device to help golfers track their play. They must decide how best to distribute these devices: 1) sell them directly to golfers through traditional retail channels; 2) sell them to courses, which would then provide them to... View Details

Keywords: Distribution Channels; Product Launch; Brands and Branding; Innovation and Invention; Measurement and Metrics

Educators

1999
Chapter

Measuring the Performance of Australian Enterprises

By: Ian D. Gow and Stuart Sydney Kells

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Business Ventures; Australia

Working Paper

Measuring the Perceived Liquidity of the Corporate Bond Market

By: Sergey Chernenko and Adi Sunderam

We propose a novel measure of bond market liquidity that does not depend on transaction data: the strength of the cross-sectional relationship between mutual fund cash holdings and fund flow volatility. Our measure captures how liquid funds perceive their portfolio... View Details

Keywords: Bond Market; Bonds; Financial Liquidity; Measurement and Metrics

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2015
Working Paper

Measurement Errors of Expected-Return Proxies and the Implied Cost of Capital

By: Charles C.Y. Wang

Despite their popularity as proxies of expected returns, the implied cost of capital's (ICC) measurement error properties are relatively unknown. Through an in-depth analysis of a popular implementation of ICCs by Gebhardt, Lee, and Swaminathan (2001) (GLS), I show... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Cost of Capital; Investment Return