Publications

Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create... View Details

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Summer 2025
Article

Are ESG Improvements Recognized? Perspectives from the Public Sentiments

By: Shaolong Wu

While Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) increasingly guides investment management and corporate agendas nowadays, public reactions to firms' ESG performance remain under-studied. This paper fills this gap by investigating whether the public picks up firms' ESG... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Public Opinion; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance; Investment

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02 Jun 2022
News

Coming Corporate Criminal Liability for ESG Initiatives

13 Dec 2012
News

Is ESG Information for Investors Losing its Competitive Edge?

01 Mar 2019
News

ESG Returns Eventually Will Win Over Critics

2022
Working Paper

The Issuance and Design of Sustainability-linked Loans

By: Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim

Sustainability-linked loans (i.e., syndicated loans for which pricing is linked to a sustainability performance indicator) have rapidly evolved into a significant private debt product. We find that sustainability-linked lending has been available mostly to borrowers... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Management; Credit Products; Loan Contracts; Loans; Corporate Finance; Credit Risk; Environment; ESG; ESG Ratings; Climate Change; Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Risk and Uncertainty; Credit

September – October 2011
Article

The Rise and Consequences of Corporate Sustainability Reporting

By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

For many decades the cornerstone of corporate reporting has been financial information that is presented in a company's annual, semi-annual, and quarterly reports. These comprehensive financial reports—required by law for public companies in most countries... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; ESG Reporting; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Annual Reports; Operations; Strategy; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Performance; Business Model; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Disclosure

2025
Working Paper

Impact Investing and Worker Outcomes

By: Josh Lerner, Markus Lithell and Gordon M. Phillips

Impact investors claim to distinguish themselves from traditional venture capital and growth equity investors by also pursuing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives. Whether they successfully do so in practice is unclear. We use confidential Census... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Private Equity; Venture Capital; Wages

01 Jun 2023
News

Bridging the ESG Data Gap

environmental, social, and governance [ESG] performance for long-term value creation.” Murday developed and... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg

October 2017 (Revised October 2022)
Case

JetBlue: Relevant Sustainability Leadership

In 2017, JetBlue, the airline founded on the mission to “bring humanity back to air travel,” was considering becoming one of the first companies to report its sustainability performance according to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards. SASB... View Details

14 Jul 2022
News

Is It Time for Creditor Activism to Address ESG Risks?

2022
Book

Purpose + Profit: How Business Can Lift Up the World

The roadmap and best practices to reap the enormous value that can emerge when your business prioritizes social and environmental goals—such as climate change, diversity and inclusion, and sustainability—right alongside the pursuit of profit.

We not only... View Details

Keywords: ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Profitability; Business And Society; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Goals and Objectives; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Value Creation; Organizational Change and Adaptation

July 2019
Article

Market Reaction to Mandatory Nonfinancial Disclosure

By: Jody Grewal, Edward J. Riedl and George Serafeim

We examine the equity market reaction to events associated with the passage of a directive in the European Union (EU) mandating increased nonfinancial disclosure. These disclosures relate to firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and would be... View Details

Keywords: Nonfinancial Information; Nonfinancial Performance; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investor Behavior; Disclosure; Disclosure Regulation; Regulation; Sustainability; Corporate Performance; Information; Corporate Disclosure; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Performance; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance; Outcome or Result

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December 2011 (Revised May 2015)
Case

Aviva Investors

The Aviva Investors case describes the challenge of integrating sustainability considerations into the strategy and business practices of companies and into the decision making process of the investment community. Steve Waygood, Chief Responsible Investment Officer at... View Details

Keywords: Investing; Investment Management; Shareholder Activism; Disclosure; Stock Exchanges; Sustainability; Sustainable Development; Sustainability Reporting; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Social Impact; Activism; Investment; Management; Business and Shareholder Relations; Environmental Sustainability; United Kingdom

2020
Article

Research on Corporate Sustainability: Review and Directions for Future Research

By: Jody Grewal and George Serafeim

We review the literature on corporate sustainability and provide directions for future research. Our review focuses on three actions: measuring, managing and communicating corporate sustainability performance. Measurement is the least developed of the three and... View Details

10 Jun 2021
Blog Post

Managing Sustainable Advantage with Key ESG Cofounders, Anne-Marie Schoonbeek and Heleen van Poecke

together. Building on the friendship they formed at HBS, their MBAs, and learnings from their careers to date, Schoonbeek and van Poecke founded Key ESG, a software solution that helps businesses measure,... View Details

November 2017 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Summa Equity: Building Purpose-Driven Organizations

In 2015, Reynir Indahl left top Nordic private equity firm Altor Equity Partners to found Summa Equity (Summa). After long contemplation following the financial crisis, Indahl was convinced the financial system was producing negative externalities and that the current... View Details

April 2023
Case

Strive Asset Management

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Lynn S. Paine and Aldo Sesia

Strive Asset Management, which launched in 2022, was actively targeting several leading U.S. companies in the upcoming 2023 proxy voting season to stop acquiescing to those large asset managers and other institutional shareholders who were pressing those companies to... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Shareholder Activism; Asset Management; Investment Funds; Corporate Governance; Risk Management; Climate Change; Diversity; Equity; Financial Services Industry; United States