by Bill George - Publications - Faculty & Research

January 2021 (Revised April 2022)
Case

Best Buy's Corie Barry: Confronting the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: William W. George and Amram Migdal

This case examines the leadership of Corie Barry, the new CEO of Best Buy, with a focus on actions the company took in 2020 to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. The case includes a history of Best Buy’s strategy and leadership, including the transitions between the... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Change; Disruption; Volatility; Communication; Competency and Skills; Customers; Decision Making; Ethics; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Cash Flow; Financial Condition; Financial Liquidity; Goods and Commodities; Corporate Governance; Health Pandemics; Human Resources; Executive Compensation; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Resignation and Termination; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Innovation and Invention; Jobs and Positions; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Job Design and Levels; Job Interviews; Job Offer; Labor; Employment; Human Capital; Working Conditions; Law; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Management; Business or Company Management; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Management Style; Management Succession; Management Systems; Management Teams; Risk Management; Operations; Distribution; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Logistics; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Supply Chain; Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Outcome or Result; Personal Development and Career; Retirement; Work-Life Balance; Planning; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Labor and Management Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Science; Strategy; Retail Industry; North and Central America; United States; Minnesota

Citation

Educators

Purchase

Web

Entrepreneurship - Faculty & Research

the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed, and unknowable until an investment is made. At a macro level, experimentation by new firms underlies the Schumpeterian notion of creative destruction. However, at a micro level,... View Details

Web

Faculty & Research - Business & Environment

that when firms compete via supply functions, transferring high-cost capacity to the largest, most efficient firm—thereby diversifying its production technologies while increasing concentration—can lower prices by prompting the leader to... View Details

Article

Corporate Social Responsibility and Access to Finance

By: Beiting Cheng, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

In this paper, we investigate whether superior performance on corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies leads to better access to finance. We hypothesize that better access to finance can be attributed to a) reduced agency costs due to enhanced stakeholder... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Capital Constraints; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Stakeholder Engagement; Disclosure; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Capital

Citation

SSRN

Find at Harvard

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

January–February 2018
Article

Inclusive Growth: Profitable Strategies for Tackling Poverty and Inequality

By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat

More than a billion people in the developing world remain in extreme poverty and outside the formal economy. Traditional CSR programs have done little to alleviate the situation and rarely produce transformative change.
Instead of trying to fix local problems,... View Details

Keywords: Inclusive Growth; Sustainability; Social Impact; Business Strategy; Shared Value; Impact Investing; Inequality; Corporate Governance; Balanced Scorecard; Strategy Execution; Economic Growth; Developing Countries and Economies; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Investment

Citation

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

Web

Accounting & Management Awards & Honors - Faculty & Research

Theory and Practice of Intangibles, Intellectual Capital, and Sustainability by the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management at the 2022 EIASM Interdisciplinary Conference for “Regulated Human Capital Disclosures” with Thomas... View Details

Web

Finance - Faculty & Research

in MBS duration function as large-scale shocks to the quantity of interest rate risk that must be borne by professional bond investors. I develop a simple model in which the risk tolerance of bond investors is limited in the short run, so... View Details

Web

Aligning Reimbursement with Value - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

lengthier times to payment. Once IT systems can support bundled reimbursement, sending a single bill and processing a single claim will dramatically reduce the administrative costs of fee-for-service billing. View Details

Web

Human Relations and Harvard Business School – The Human Relations Movement – Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Historical Collections

into other programs at Harvard and further developed by Business School professors such as George Lombard, a leader in the field of organizational behavior. 2 Abraham Zaleznik in Richard C.S. Trahair, The... View Details

01 Sep 2023
News

In My Humble Opinion: Futures Investor

In the half-century since his graduation, Theodore Roosevelt IV (MBA 1972) has earned widespread respect as both a forward-thinking investment banker and an influential activist through his efforts to address climate change and preserve public lands. For much of that... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; climate change; investment banking; leadership; carbon tax

09 Mar 2016
News

Time for a shake-up at United Airlines

Web

Faculty & Research - Entrepreneurship

Using financial account data linking small businesses to their owner households, we examine how business owners’ consumption responded to changes in business revenues during the COVID-19 crisis. In the first two months following the National Emergency, business... View Details

Web

Healthy Outcomes - Managing the Future of Work

Caregiving Joseph Fuller Podcast The Caring Company Joseph Fuller & Sheila Marcelo 16 JAN 2019 | Managing the Future of Work Almost a third of workers—and more senior executives—say their careers have been adversely affected by caregiving... View Details

13 Dec 2011
First Look

First Look: Dec. 13

whether, when, and for which type of customer the introduction of a new channel helps and hurts sales in existing channels. Our framework separates short- and long-run effects by analyzing underlying channel capabilities. It suggests that... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

HBS - The year in Review

recognized by MBA students for their excellence and dedication with Faculty Teaching Award honors. Tony Mayo, Sophus Reinert, and Charlotte Robertson were acknowledged for their profound impact within and outside of the required... View Details

June 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Betting on Green Steel

By: George Serafeim and Sofoklis Melissovas

'Betting on Green Steel' traces the innovative journey embarked upon by a group of MBA students who have set out to conceive a novel steelmaker that pioneers the production of green steel. The ensemble is confronted with a series of critical choices that will shape the... View Details

Keywords: Decarbonization; Sustainability Management; Technology; Industrialization; Climate Risk; Energy; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Technology Adoption; Climate Change; Innovation and Invention; Business Strategy; Family Business; Steel Industry; Middle East; India

Citation

Educators

Purchase

October 2022
Case

Sustainable Finance at Itau BBA

By: George Serafeim, Maria Loumioti and Benjamin Maletta

As of August 2022, the Itau BBA had structured dozens of sustainability linked bonds, which made future interest payments a function of the borrower meeting a target for a sustainability metric, and had solidified its reputation as a pioneer of sustainable finance in... View Details

Keywords: Sustainable Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Environmental Sustainability; Growth Strategy; Debt Contracting; Performance Metrics; Risk Assessment; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Financial Instruments; Risk Management; Debt Securities; Measurement and Metrics; Banking Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Latin America

Citation

Educators

Purchase

01 Feb 2001
News

What Makes a Good Leader

of the 21st century. by Deborah Blagg and Susan Young Name: John Kotter, Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership Director: HBS Global Leadership Initiative Most recent book: John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do On vision: "People... View Details

Keywords: Management

2020
Working Paper

A Preliminary Framework for Product Impact-Weighted Accounts

By: George Serafeim and Katie Trinh

While there has been significant progress in the measurement of an organization’s environmental and social impacts from its operations, metrics to evaluate the impact of products once they come to market lag far behind. In this paper, we provide a framework for... View Details