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- 2023
- Working Paper
The Politics of Philanthropy in China
By: Geoffrey Jones and Yuhai Wu
This working paper looks historically at business philanthropy in China. In the West, the literature has distinguished between entrepreneurial and customary philanthropy, while the phenomenon of spiritual philanthropy has been identified in many emerging markets. This... View Details
- May 9, 2023
- Article
8 Questions About Using AI Responsibly, Answered
By: Tsedal Neeley
Generative AI tools are poised to change the way every business operates. As your own organization begins strategizing which to use, and how, operational and ethical considerations are inevitable. This article delves into eight of them, including how your organization... View Details
- March 2023
- Article
Developing Moral Muscle in a Literature-based Business Ethics Course
By: Inge M. Brokerhof, Sandra J. Sucher, P. Matthijs Bal, Frank Hakemulder, Paul G. W. Jansen and Omar N. Solinger
Moral subjectivity (e.g., reflexivity, perspective-taking) is a necessary condition for moral
development. However, widely used approaches to business ethics education, rooted in
conceptualizations of ethical development as objective and quantifiable, often neglect... View Details
- April 2023
- Case
Twitter: The Freedom to Speak Freely and Be Heard
By: Randolph B. Cohen, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Mel Martin
In April 2022, serial entrepreneur Elon Musk announced that he would be interested in purchasing the social media site Twitter for $44 billion. With more than 100 million twitter followers, Musk had historically leveraged the site to engage with the customers of his... View Details
- April 2023 (Revised July 2023)
- Case
Fermenting Accounting Problems at Vermont Kombucha Corp.
By: Tatiana Sandino and Marshal Herrmann
Founded in 2005, Vermont Kombucha Corp. (V-Ko) was an early mover in the fledgling U.S. market for kombucha, a drink brewed for its health benefits. Early on, the company captured more than 90% of market share. Under the leadership of its founder and CEO, Joe Williams,... View Details
- April 2023
- Case
Burning the Sails to Save the Ship: The Pilati Family Dilemma
By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Jiawei Ye and Grace Headinger
Octavian Graf Pilati, rising generation member of an Austrian princely family, prepared to sell the palace his family had held for over three hundred years. In recent years, the Pilati family lands had been leveraged as loan collateral for an international venture that... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised April 2023)
- Case
Independent Governance of Meta’s Social Spaces: The Oversight Board
Julie Owono is a member of the Oversight Board, an outside entity with the authority to make binding decisions on tricky moderation questions for Meta's companies. She considers the Board's impact, and its future. View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Deep Responsibility and Irresponsibility in the Beauty Industry
By: Geoffrey Jones
This working paper employs the concept of deep responsibility to assess the social responsibility of the beauty industry over time. It shows that many of today’s problems with the industry have deep historical roots. Products have carried too many health hazards.... View Details
- 2023
- Book
Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership
By: Geoffrey Jones
Corporate social responsibility has entered the mainstream, but what does it take to run a successful purpose-driven business? This book examines leaders who put values alongside profits to showcase the challenges and upside of deeply responsible business. Should... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Responsibility; Business Ecuation; Socially Responsible Investing; Business Education; Ethics; Leadership; Business History; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Religion; Social Enterprise; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Banking Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Computer Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Education Industry; Fashion Industry; Financial Services Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Green Technology Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Electronics Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United Kingdom; Germany; United States; Japan; India; Latin America
- March 2023 (Revised September 2023)
- Case
Patagonia: 'Earth Is Now Our Only Shareholder'
By: Brian Trelstad, Nien-hê Hsieh, Michael Norris and Susan Pinckney
In September 2022, Yvon Chouinard, the iconoclastic founder of outdoor apparel company Patagonia, announced a new ownership model for his company. Chouinard and his family had held complete control of the company's voting and non-voting stock since its founding 50... View Details
Keywords: Trusts; Business Ventures; Business Organization; Family Business; Restructuring; Change; Disruption; Transition; Decision Making; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Financial Management; Governance; Corporate Governance; Investment Activism; Leadership; Labor; Law; Common Law; Management; Goals and Objectives; Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Ownership; Ownership Type; Family Ownership; Private Ownership; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Society; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Value; Value Creation; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States
- March 2023 (Revised March 2025)
- Module Note
LCA Module Overview: Society
By: Nien-hê Hsieh
Leadership and Corporate and Accountability (LCA) is a required course in the first-year MBA curriculum at Harvard Business School to help managers determine and deliver on their economic, legal, and ethical responsibilities. This note summarizes the cases and outlines... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
The Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy: Settling the Opioid Crisis
By: Kristin Mugford, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Susan Pinckney
How to get to a fair outcome for claimants in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy given its significant role in the U.S. opioid crisis. View Details
Keywords: Regulation; Ethics; Fairness; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Government Legislation; Courts and Trials; Laws and Statutes; Lawsuits and Litigation; Legal Liability; Crime and Corruption; Negotiation Offer; Negotiation Participants; Negotiation Style; Product Design; Product Development; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Trust; Government and Politics; Law; Negotiation; Operations; Ownership; Marketing; Social Psychology; Health Care and Treatment; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States
- March 2023 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Layoffs in the Tech Industry: 2022–2023
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Marilyn Morgan Westner
This case examines the mass layoffs that swept through the tech industry (2022-2023) through the lens of four companies: Twitter, Stripe, Meta, and Google. How these companies implemented workforce change through mass layoffs raises critical questions applicable beyond... View Details
- 2023
- Chapter
Marketing Through the Machine’s Eyes: Image Analytics and Interpretability
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Flora Feng and Kannan Srinivasan
he growth of social media and the sharing economy is generating abundant unstructured image and video data. Computer vision techniques can derive rich insights from unstructured data and can inform recommendations for increasing profits and consumer utility—if only the... View Details
- March 2023
- Teaching Note
Sustainability Reporting at Dollar Tree, Inc.
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 122-044. The case discusses the ESG strategy of Dollar Tree Inc., a U.S. Fortune 500 company in the deep discount retail industry and the shareholder pressure faced by the company. In 2022, the company faced a shareholder resolution from... View Details
Keywords: ESG; Sustainability; Shareholder Activism; Dollar Tree; Sustainability Reporting; ESG Reporting; Board Of Directors; Shareholder Engagement; GHG; Environmental Accounting; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Trends; Communication; Announcements; Voting; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Values and Beliefs; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Reports; Business or Company Management; Risk Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Outcome or Result; Strategic Planning; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Situation or Environment; Opportunities; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Strategy; Adaptation; Alignment; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Value Creation; Retail Industry; United States; Virginia
- Working Paper
Group Fairness in Dynamic Refugee Assignment
By: Daniel Freund, Thodoris Lykouris, Elisabeth Paulson, Bradley Sturt and Wentao Weng
Ensuring that refugees and asylum seekers thrive (e.g., find employment) in their host countries is a profound humanitarian goal, and a primary driver of employment is the geographic
location within a host country to which the refugee or asylum seeker is... View Details
- February 2023
- Article
Homophily and Acrophily as Drivers of Political Segregation
By: Amit Goldenberg, Joseph M. Abruzzo, Zi Huang, Jonas Schone, David Bailey, Robb Willer, Eran Halperin and James J. Gross
Political segregation is an important social problem, increasing polarization and impeding effective governance. Previous work has viewed the central driver of segregation to be political homophily, the tendency to associate with others who have similar views. Here we... View Details
- January 2023
- Case
Natura: Weathering the Pandemic at Brazil's Cosmetic Giant
By: Brian Trelstad, Pedro Levindo and Carla Larangeira
Brazil's Natura, a multi-brand cosmetics group, has taken several measures to safeguard the livelihoods of its thousands of employees and millions of sales representatives during the COVID-19 health and economic crisis. The company has also made strides in its efforts... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; ESG Reporting; Acquisition; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Making; Social Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Global Strategy; Corporate Governance; Health Pandemics; Human Resources; Human Capital; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Distribution Channels; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Customer Ownership; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Networks; Partners and Partnerships; Science-Based Business; Reputation; Human Needs; Social Issues; Strategy; Equality and Inequality; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Brazil; Latin America
- January 2023 (Revised November 2023)
- Technical Note
Ethical Analysis: Honesty and Self-Interest
By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Christopher Diak
Information asymmetry is pervasive in business and can often confer great advantage. This note distinguishes forms of deceptive behavior in the face of information asymmetry and aims to help students analyze their impermissibility. View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
'It Wouldn’t Have Mattered Anyway': When Overdetermined Outcomes Justify Our Sins
By: Stephanie C. Lin, Julian J. Zlatev and Dale T. Miller
We identify and document an “overdetermined outcome defense” which occurs when one learns
that circumstances besides one’s own actions were sufficient to produce a negative effect (e.g.,
deciding not to go to the gym, but later discovering that the gym had been... View Details