Publications

January 2024
Supplement

Accounting Red Flags or Red Herrings at Catalent? (B)

By: Joseph Pacelli, ZeSean Ali and Tom Quinn

GlassHouse Research identified accounting red flags at Catalent. Fiat Lux Partners countered most of GlassHouse’s claims. Who was right? This update explores the aftermath of the short seller duel. View Details

May 2003
Article

Accountability in Practice: Mechanisms for NGOs

By: Alnoor Ebrahim

Keywords: Corporate Accountability; Non-Governmental Organizations

Find at Harvard

2022
Working Paper

The Gender Gap in Confidence: Expected But Not Accounted For

By: Christine L. Exley and Kirby Nielsen

We investigate how the gender gap in confidence affects the views that evaluators (e.g., employers) hold about men and women. If evaluators fail to account for the confidence gap, it may cause overly pessimistic views about women. Alternatively, if evaluators expect... View Details

Keywords: Confidence; Experiments; Gender; Perception; Values and Beliefs; Performance Evaluation; Analysis

Research Summary

Strategic participation of social movement organizations

Social movements and related social movement organizations (SMOs) play an important role in the formation of new industries and market niches, as well as the emergence of new organizational forms. I argue that as SMOs become more sophisticated and... View Details

2019
Working Paper

Does Public Ownership and Accountability Increase Diversity? Evidence from IPOs

By: Rembrand Koning and John-Paul Ferguson

Does public ownership improve employment diversity? Organizational researchers theorize that increased transparency to regulators and the public should lead firms to conform to legal and social norms—but that social closure and decoupling should preserve the status... View Details

Keywords: IPO; Initial Public Offering; Employees; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; United States

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

14 Jun 2010
Research & Ideas

The Hard Work of Measuring Social Impact

to accountability demands from a variety of constituents. (These papers are: "The Many Faces of Nonprofit Accountability" [PDF] and "The Limits of Nonprofit Impact: A Contingency Framework for Measuring View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

June 2024
Article

The Monitoring Role of Social Media

By: Jonas Heese and Joseph Pacelli

In this study, we examine whether social media activity can reduce corporate misconduct. We use the staggered introduction of 3G mobile broadband access across the United States to identify exogenous increases in social media activity and test whether access to 3G... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Misconduct; Twitter; Corporate Accountability; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Social and Collaborative Networks

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

Find at Harvard

2014
Chapter

Corporate Social Responsibility and Multinational Corporations

By: Nien-he Hsieh and Florian Wettstein

A central question that arises from the perspective of global ethics is what standards ought to apply to the activities of multinational corporations (MNCs). This chapter surveys the contemporary theoretical literature on this question. The first section provides... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Corporation; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Standards

19 Aug 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Globalization of Corporate Environmental Disclosure: Accountability or Greenwashing?

Keywords: by Christopher Marquis & Michael W. Toffel

March 2016 (Revised April 2019)
Technical Note

ESG Metrics: Reshaping Capitalism?

By: George Serafeim

In the past twenty-five years, the world had seen an exponential growth in the number of companies reporting environmental, social and governance (ESG) data. Investor interest in ESG data also grew rapidly. A growing belief that increasing levels of social inequality... View Details

Keywords: Capitalism; Sustainability; Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility; Responsibilities To Society; Environment; Social Impact Investment; ESG; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Measurement and Metrics; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Accountability; Accounting; Economic Systems

Educators

June 2011 (Revised June 2012)
Case

Sephora Direct: Investing in Social Media, Video, and Mobile

By: Elie Ofek and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Julie Bornstein, senior vice president of Sephora Direct, is seeking to double her budget for social media and other digital marketing initiatives for 2011. A number of digital efforts implemented in the past two years seem to be bearing fruit and there is a desire to... View Details

Keywords: History; Leadership; Marketing Strategy; Marketing; Emerging Markets; Investment Return; Investment Funds; Budgets and Budgeting

Educators

Article

The Global Rise of Democracy: A Network Account

By: Magnus Thor Torfason and Paul Ingram

We examine the influence of an interstate network created by intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) on the global diffusion of democracy. We propose that IGOs facilitate this diffusion by transmitting information between their member states and by interpreting that... View Details

Keywords: International Relations; Networks; Society; Transformation; Power and Influence; Country; Globalization

Find at Harvard

March 2001 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Sustainable Development & Socially Responsible Investing: ABB in 2000

By: Forest L. Reinhardt

Several investment firms and mutual funds position themselves as providers or facilitators of opportunities for socially responsible investment. This case addresses the impact of these firms on publicly traded companies. Focuses on managers at ABB, a large... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Social Enterprise; Corporate Governance; Business Strategy; Capital Markets; Management Teams; Business and Community Relations; Trade; Electronics Industry; Switzerland

Educators

18 Feb 2020
Working Paper Summaries

A Preliminary Framework for Product Impact-Weighted Accounts

Keywords: by George Serafeim, Katie Trinh, and Robert Zochowski

Research Summary

Of Measurement and Mission: Accounting for Performance in Non-Governmental Organizations

By: Debora L. Spar

As members of civil society NGOs would seem to have a built-in proclivity towards representation: towards working on behalf of some group of people, or toward some specific goal. Yet in practice such moments of accountability are rare. Unlike other social agents,... View Details

November 2016
Article

Corporate Sustainability: First Evidence on Materiality

By: Mozaffar Khan, George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon

Using newly available materiality classifications of sustainability topics, we develop a novel dataset by hand-mapping sustainability investments classified as material for each industry into firm-specific sustainability ratings. This allows us to present new evidence... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Investments; Corporate Social Responsibility; Accounting; Corporate Reporting; Regulation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Investment; Corporate Governance

2021
Working Paper

Impact Accounting for Product Use: A Framework and Industry-specific Models

By: George Serafeim and Katie Trinh

This handbook provides the first systematic attempt to generate a framework and industry-specific models for the measurement of impacts on customers and the environment from use of products and services, in monetary terms, that can then be reflected in financial... View Details

Keywords: Impact Measurement; Product Impact; Customer Welfare; Environment; ESG; Product; Customers; Well-being; Environmental Sustainability; Measurement and Metrics; Accounting; Financial Statements; Analysis; Framework

SSRN