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- 07 Jul 2003
- Research & Ideas
4+2 = Sustained Business Success
success. A company that consistently follows this formula has better than a 90 percent chance of sustaining superior business performance. The 160 companies in our study—which we call the Evergreen Project—were divided into forty quads,... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Making the Business Case for Environmental Sustainability
Can a business case be made for acting sustainably? This is a difficult question to answer precisely, largely because there is no generally accepted definition of the term "sustainability". Is it acting sustainably to protect the human rights of the firm's workforce?... View Details
Henderson, Rebecca. "Making the Business Case for Environmental Sustainability." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 15-068, February 2015.
- 2020
- Working Paper
How ESG Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors
By: George Serafeim
Management and disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have received substantial interest over the last decade. In this paper, we outline a framework of how ESG issues become financially material, affecting corporate profitability and valuation.... View Details
Keywords: Materiality; ESG; Pharmaceutical Companies; Business Ethics; Sustainability; Environment; Disclosure; Disclosure And Access; Regulation; Social Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Social Issues; Corporate Governance; Ethics; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Accountability; Resource Allocation; Finance; Accounting; Valuation
Freiberg, David, Jean Rogers, and George Serafeim. "How ESG Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-056, November 2019. (Revised November 2020.)
- November 2015 (Revised August 2016)
- Case
Unilever's New Global Strategy: Competing through Sustainability
In January 2009, when Paul Polman was appointed CEO of Unilever, he inherited a company in long-term decline at the beginning of a major global financial crisis. As the first outsider ever recruited to lead the company, Polman lost little time in challenging the... View Details
Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Competitive Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Consumer Products Industry
Bartlett, Christopher A. "Unilever's New Global Strategy: Competing through Sustainability." Harvard Business School Case 916-414, November 2015. (Revised August 2016.)
- 23 May 2011
- Op-Ed
Leading and Lagging Countries in Contributing to a Sustainable Society
Editor's note: Please see related story, Corporate Sustainability Reporting: It's Effective. To what extent companies contribute to a sustainable society is a question... View Details
Keywords: by Robert G. Eccles & George Serafeim
- 21 Mar 2014
- Working Paper Summaries
Speaking of Corporate Social Responsibility
- 06 Jan 2012
- Op-Ed
Where Green Corporate Ratings Fail
News Corporation—a multinational media conglomerate that includes BSKYB, Dow Jones, Fox News, 20th Century Fox and Star, among other units—announced earlier this year that it has become climate neutral, meaning that its operations have no net impact on global climate... View Details
- August 2009 (Revised August 2010)
- Case
Calera Corporation
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Thomas J. Steenburgh and Lauren Barley
Brent Constantz, founder, CEO, and president of Calera Corporation, felt a surge of optimism as he gazed at the recently commissioned prototype flue gas processing line at Calera's R&D facility in Moss Landing, California. It was late May 2009, and Calera was an... View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Product Design; Product Development; Environmental Sustainability; Commercialization; Green Technology Industry
Lassiter, Joseph B., III, Thomas J. Steenburgh, and Lauren Barley. "Calera Corporation." Harvard Business School Case 810-030, August 2009. (Revised August 2010.)
- March 2009 (Revised July 2010)
- Case
State Street Corporation
To maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color. State Street Corp. reports a 13% gain in EPS in 2008 amidst a global financial crisis. The stock price declines 59% on the day of the earnings report. This one day decline was exceeded in the... View Details
Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Crisis; Financial Liquidity; Financial Markets; Crisis Management; Financial Services Industry
Fruhan, William E. "State Street Corporation." Harvard Business School Case 209-112, March 2009. (Revised July 2010.)
- 25 Jan 2008
- Panel Discussion
Corporate Global Citizenship in the 21st Century
As the global agenda is increasingly shaped outside the traditional framework of nation states, corporations not only have licence to operate in the global system, but also a civic duty to contribute to its sustainable health. How should corporations exercise their... View Details
Porter, Michael E. "Corporate Global Citizenship in the 21st Century." World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2008.
- July–August 2014
- Article
Sustainability in the Boardroom: Lessons from Nike's Playbook
By: Lynn S. Paine
One surprising role of Nike's corporate responsibility committee is to provide support for innovation. More and more companies recognize the importance of corporate responsibility to their long-term success—and yet the matter gets short shrift in most boardrooms,... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Globalized Firms and Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry
Paine, Lynn S. "Sustainability in the Boardroom: Lessons from Nike's Playbook." Harvard Business Review 92, nos. 7/8 (July–August 2014): 87–94.
- Teaching Interest
Leadership and Corporate Accountability
By: Paul M. Healy
This course focuses on the responsibilities of companies, their leaders, and their boards. Its aim is to deepend students' understanding of the economic, legal, and ethical dimensions of these responsibilities and to provide practical guidance on driving performance... View Details
- Article
B Corps: Can It Remake Capitalism in Japan?
By: Geoffrey Jones
This article examines the B Corporation movement that originated in the United States in 2006. The founders sought to create a new type of company whose governance structure mandated them to consider financial, social and environmental performance. A certification... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Responsibility; Sustainability; B Corporations; Stakeholder Capitalism; Governance; Organizational Structure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Japan
Jones, Geoffrey. "B Corps: Can It Remake Capitalism in Japan?" Keizaikei [Kanto Gakuin Journal of Economics and Management] 284 (November 2021): 1–12.
- May 23, 2011
- Article
Leading and Lagging Countries in Contributing to a Sustainable Society
By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim
To determine the extent to which corporate and investor behavior is changing to contribute to a more sustainable society, researchers Robert Eccles and George Serafeim analyzed data involving over 2,000 companies in 23 countries. One result: a ranking of countries... View Details
Keywords: Change; Society; Corporate Disclosure; Natural Environment; Rank and Position; Social Issues; Financial Statements; Behavior
Eccles, Robert G., and George Serafeim. "Leading and Lagging Countries in Contributing to a Sustainable Society." Harvard Business School Working Knowledge (May 23, 2011).
- Forthcoming
- Article
Deep Responsibility, SDGs, and Asia: A Historical Perspective
By: Geoffrey Jones
Although it was only in 2015 the 17 SDGs were adopted by UN Member States, many of the underlying ideas can be found in the strategies of some businesses going back to the nineteenth century. Asia was the home of many of the most advanced concepts of business... View Details
Keywords: ESG; Multinational Corporation; Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Governance; Leadership; Asia
Jones, Geoffrey. "Deep Responsibility, SDGs, and Asia: A Historical Perspective." Asian Business & Management (forthcoming). (Pre-published online February 7, 2025.)
- 2022
- Article
Which Corporate ESG News Does the Market React To?
By: George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon
Using a dataset that classifies firm-level ESG news as positive and negative, we examine how stock prices react to different types of ESG news. We analyze 111,020 firm-day observations for 3,126 companies and find that prices react only to issues identified as... View Details
Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; Social Capital; Environment; Sustainability; CSR; Stock Price; Stock Market Expectations; Materiality; Market Reaction; Environmental Sustainability; Governance; Social Issues; Performance; News
Serafeim, George, and Aaron Yoon. "Which Corporate ESG News Does the Market React To?" Financial Analysts Journal 78, no. 1 (2022): 59–78.
- April 14, 2015
- Article
The Type of Socially Responsible Investments That Make Firms More Profitable
By: George Serafeim
Keywords: Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Sustainability; Investing; Investment Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Profit; Investment; Environmental Sustainability
Serafeim, George. "The Type of Socially Responsible Investments That Make Firms More Profitable." Harvard Business Review (website) (April 14, 2015).
- October 14, 2019
- Article
Cracking the Code of Sustained Collaboration
By: Francesca Gino
When most organizations strive to increase collaboration, they approach it too narrowly: as a value to cultivate—not a skill to teach. So they create open offices, talk up collaboration as a corporate goal, and try to influence employees through other superficial means... View Details
Keywords: Collaboration; Listening; Empathy; Feedback; Organizational Culture; Interpersonal Communication; Training; Programs
Gino, Francesca. "Cracking the Code of Sustained Collaboration." Harvard Business Review 97, no. 6 (November–December 2019): 73–81.
- 2015
- Chapter
Corporate and Integrated Reporting: A Functional Perspective
By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim
In this chapter, we present the two primary functions of corporate reporting (information and transformation) and why currently isolated financial and sustainability reporting are not likely to effectively perform these functions. We describe the concept of integrated... View Details
Eccles, Robert G., and George Serafeim. "Corporate and Integrated Reporting: A Functional Perspective." In Corporate Stewardship: Achieving Sustainable Effectiveness, edited by Susan Albers Mohrman, James O'Toole, and Edward E. Lawler. Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing, 2015.
- September 2011 (Revised February 2013)
- Case
Trucost: Valuing Corporate Environmental Impacts
By: Michael W. Toffel and Stephanie van Sice
Trucost provided corporate environmental performance data and analysis to institutional investors and corporate managers, but after operating for a decade had yet to achieve profitability. Trucost was struggling to effectively differentiate its high quality products... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Distribution Channels; Investment; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Information; Value; Environmental Sustainability; Financial Services Industry
Toffel, Michael W., and Stephanie van Sice. "Trucost: Valuing Corporate Environmental Impacts." Harvard Business School Case 612-025, September 2011. (Revised February 2013.)