Publications

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June 2022
Case

PFA Pensions: The Climate Plus Product

By: Daniel Green, Victoria Ivashina and Alys Ferragamo

The case explores whether alternative investments play a unique role in achieving low carbon dioxide emissions at the portfolio level. This case is set in April of 2020 and follows Kasper Ahrndt Lorenzen, Chief Investment Officer, and Peter Tind Larsen, Head of... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Carbon Footprint; Alternative Assets; Alternative Investment Vehicles; Pension Fund Investing; Private Equity; Renewable Energy; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Denmark

June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Can Goodr Fight Food Insecurity at Scale?

By: Daniel Isenberg and William R. Kerr

Jasmine Crowe founded Goodr to redirect food waste to people in need. Now a profitable enterprise, she’s searching for Series A funding and encountering pushback. Scaling and contract concerns are also at the forefront of her mind, but so are her values. Feeding... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Investor Demand; Food; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Values and Beliefs; Social Issues; Race; Opportunities; Contracts; Mission and Purpose; Financing and Loans

2022
Working Paper

A Conceptualization of Sub-Living Wages: Liabilities, Leverage, and Risk

By: Drew Keller, Katie Panella and George Serafeim

Currently the accounting system records employee wages as an expense in the income statement. However, paying below living wages can expose an organization to reputational and operational risks. In this paper, we offer an alternative conceptualization of the issue of... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Impact Accounting; Leverage; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Social Issues; Human Capital

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May 2022
Case

Timnit Gebru: 'SILENCED No More' on AI Bias and The Harms of Large Language Models

By: Tsedal Neeley and Stefani Ruper

Dr. Timnit Gebru—a leading artificial intelligence (AI) computer scientist and co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team—was messaging with one of her colleagues when she saw the words: “Did you resign?? Megan sent an email saying that she accepted your resignation.” Heart... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Employment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Technological Innovation

May 2022 (Revised May 2024)
Case

The Freedom Fund (A): Ending Modern Slavery

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Courtney Han

The Freedom Fund founded in 2013 to end modern slavery had raised more than half its intended target (by 2025) of $200 million. In 2021, impressed by its decentralized-partnering style of operations, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott awarded the Fund a gift of $35 million... View Details

Keywords: Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Spending; Decisions; India; Thailand; Ethiopia

2022
Book

A Political Economy of Justice

By: Danielle Allen, Yochai Benkler, Leah Downey, Rebecca Henderson and Joshua Simons

Defining a just economy in a tenuous social-political time.
If we can agree that our current social-political moment is tenuous and unsustainable—and indeed, that may be the only thing we can agree on right now—then how do markets, governments, and people... View Details

Keywords: Political Economy; Social Justice; Capitalism; Business And Society; Economy; Society; Fairness; Economic Systems; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; United States

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March–April 2022
Article

Uncovering the Mitigating Psychological Response to Monitoring Technologies: Police Body Cameras Not Only Constrain but Also Depolarize

By: Shefali V. Patil and Ethan Bernstein

Despite organizational psychologists’ long-standing caution against monitoring (citing its reduction in employee autonomy and thus effectiveness), many organizations continue to use it, often with no detriment to performance and with strong support, not protest, from... View Details

Keywords: Monitoring; Transparency; Polarization; Body Worn Cameras; Quasi Field Experiment; Analytics and Data Science; Employees; Perception; Law Enforcement

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March 2022 (Revised March 2025)
Technical Note

Ethical Analysis: Society

By: Nien-hê Hsieh

How should managers determine and deliver on their responsibilities to society? This note summarizes prevailing approaches to this question and outlines an approach centered on what distinguishes society from other key constituencies, such as investors or customers.... View Details

Keywords: Social and Collaborative Networks; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Organizational Structure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Ethics; Analysis

March 2022
Case

The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program: 2009-2021

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Julia Kelley

In December 2021, more than a decade after its founding, Goldman Sachs’s 10,000 Small Businesses program was still going strong — and the firm now needed to evaluate potential program modifications to reach a wider group of small business owners. Launched in the... View Details

March 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Clara Wu Tsai and Brooklyn Loan Innovation

By: Archie L. Jones, Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Henry McGee

Philanthropist Clara Wu Tsai is committed to racial equity and investing in Brooklyn-based minority business owners. In the wake of the George Floyd murder, she decides to create a new initiative called the Social Justice Fund and commit an initial $50 million over 10... View Details

Keywords: Minority-owned Businesses; Racial Equity; Entrepreneurship; Race; Values and Beliefs; Small Business; Partners and Partnerships; Social Issues; Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Decision Making; Brooklyn

March 2022 (Revised April 2022)
Teaching Note

France Télécom (A), (B), and (C)

By: Ashley Whillans

This case series discusses the evolution of France Télécom (now Orange) from a national telephone monopoly to a private company. During this process, the company faced numerous challenges including the entry of new competition from other countries and a workforce that... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Compensation and Benefits; Employee Relationship Management; Business Organization; Well-being; Communications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; France

March 2022
Case

In Data We Trust: Be Mobile Africa and Furthering Financial Inclusion Across the African Continent

By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Pierre Marchesseault

To Cédric Jeannot, leveraging technology to promote financial inclusion was personal. After no established financial institution would accept his technology platform to lower transaction costs for free, Jeannot launched FinTech company Be Mobile Africa in May 2020.... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Fintech; Emerging Market; Fundraising; Financial Inclusion; Strategy; Expansion; Management; Entrepreneurship; Personal Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Africa; Togo; Nigeria; Ghana

March 2022
Case

Metric

By: Christina Wallace, Rebecca Cink and Maria Lappas

Megan Murday, the founder of Metric, an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) analytics startup, must decide which customer segment to target as a beachhead market. She received positive feedback from a Swiss venture capital (VC) firm, indicating their... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Mission and Purpose; Customers

2022
Chapter

Sustainability for People and the Planet: Placing Workers at the Center of Sustainability Research

By: Julie Yen, Julie Battilana and Emilie Aguirre

Though workers face a series of critical challenges in contemporary work organizations, they are often overlooked in conversations about sustainable business. In this chapter, we argue that prioritizing the rights and well-being of workers is a core dimension of... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Employees; Well-being; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Structure; Social Issues

February 2022
Case

Paul Polman

By: Elizabeth A. Keenan, Youngme Moon and Susie Ma

Over his 40-year career, Paul Polman had led some of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, making his biggest mark as CEO of Unilever—a multi-national corporation that produced everything from soap to soup. Polman was also well-regarded as a leader in corporate... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Leadership; Corporate Accountability; Personal Development and Career; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Social Issues; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

February 2022
Teaching Plan

Community Solutions

By: Brian Trelstad and Tom Quinn

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 322-021. Community Solutions was an anti-homelessness nonprofit founded in 2011 after protagonist Rosanne Haggerty grew frustrated with the limited impact of traditional housing and outreach strategies. It set an ambitious goal, reached... View Details

Keywords: Homelessness; Social Issues; Housing; Human Needs; Poverty; Welfare; Business and Community Relations; Analytics and Data Science; Business Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

February 2022
Case

Business Roundtable 2019 Statement: A New Paradigm or Business as Usual?

By: Charles C.Y. Wang and Amram Migdal

This note focuses on the antecedents of, reactions to, and clarifications about The Business Roundtable’s August 19, 2019, “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” The note includes background information on corporate governance as practiced in the United States in... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Business History; Mission and Purpose; Agency Theory; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; United States

February 2022
Article

Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century

By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva

This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Income Taxes; Corporate Taxation; Firms; Inventors; State Taxation; Business Taxation; R＆D Tax Credits; Taxation; Innovation and Invention; History; United States

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January 2022
Case

Bee-ing Better at Bombas

By: Elizabeth A. Keenan, Youngme Moon and John Masko

David Heath and Randy Goldberg founded Bombas in 2013 to serve two missions: to deliver the “best socks in the history of feet,” and to donate socks (the most requested item in homeless shelters) to Americans experiencing homelessness. Eight years later, Bombas had... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Values and Beliefs; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Digital Marketing; Distribution; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Quality; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Human Needs; Poverty; Growth and Development Strategy; Apparel and Accessories Industry; New York (city, NY)