Publications

March 2024 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Hippo: Weathering the Storm of the Home Insurance Crisis

By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Sophia Pan

Rick McCathron, CEO of Hippo, considered how the firm’s underwriting model could account for the effects of climate change. Along with providing smart home packages, targeting risk-friendly customers, and using data-driven pricing, the Insurtech used technologically... View Details

03 Sep 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Supply Chain Screening Without Certification: The Critical Role of Stakeholder Pressure

Keywords: by Susan A. Kayser, John W. Maxwell & Michael W. Toffel

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

Other Article

Sustainable Strategies and Net-Zero Goals

By: Mark L. Frigo, Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Kaplan and Ramanna describe a rigorous approach, the E-liability method, for companies’ ESG reporting, especially as it pertains to GHG emissions measurements. They argue that the current standards for measuring... View Details

Keywords: Measurement; Sustainability; Net-zero Emissions; Environmental Sustainability; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Measurement and Metrics; Strategy

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10 Jun 2008
First Look

First Look: June 10, 2008

Working PapersAccounting Information as Political Currency Authors:Karthik Ramanna and Sugata Roychowdhury Abstract We test whether accounting can be used as political currency. Our setting is the US congressional election of 2004,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

September 2010 (Revised December 2011)
Case

Southwest Airlines One ReportTM

By: Robert G. Eccles, Beiting Cheng and Susan Thyne

In 2009, Southwest Airlines produced its first integrated annual report, the Southwest Airlines One Report, combing financial and nonfinancial performance information. This case examines Southwest's environmental and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Accounting; Financial Reporting; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Innovation and Invention; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Air Transportation Industry; United States

December 2018 (Revised May 2021)
Background Note

Making UK Energy Smarter

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

This case describes the history of the United Kingdom's domestic energy industry and the country's efforts to create a more competitive, greener, and distributed power sector. On July 24, 2017, the United Kingdom government and the industry regulator, the Office of Gas... View Details

September–October 2020
Article

Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value

By: George Serafeim

Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create... View Details

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02 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 3, 2018

environmental regulation. Previously, it was believed that corporate managers resisted the extra costs imposed by environmental regulation from the 1960s. This argument was primarily based on empirical... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2007 (Revised September 2008)
Case

Buildings and Energy

By: Forest L. Reinhardt and Nazli Uludere

Presents data on opportunities to conserve energy in buildings, which account for about a third of all energy use. Encourages readers to think about the impediments to energy efficiency in the buildings sector and the ways in which entrepreneurs can profitably surmount... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Energy Conservation; Construction; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Performance Efficiency; Environmental Sustainability; Construction Industry

October 1999
Case

Royal Dutch/Shell in Transition (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine

After the Brent Spar episode and the 1995 events in Nigeria, Shell undertakes an intensive review of its values and business principles. At the same time, it conducts the largest multi-stakeholder consultation in its history in an effort to better understand society's... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Transformation; Environmental Accounting; Energy Industry

2023
Working Paper

ESG: From Process to Product

By: George Serafeim

ESG measurement, analysis, management, and communication is a process that the financial industry has turned into a product, resulting in many investment funds using the ESG label. This has caused confusion, generating demand for a framework that defines... View Details

Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; ESG Reporting; Investment Fund; Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Services Industry

Article

ESG Integration in Investment Management: Myths and Realities

By: Sakis Kotsantonis, Christopher Pinney and George Serafeim

The authors’ aim in this article is to set the record straight on the financial performance of sustainable investing while also correcting a number of other widespread misconceptions about this rapidly growing set of principles and methods. Myth Number 1:... View Details

Keywords: ESG; Sustainability; Investment Management; Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Investment; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Governance

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February 2007 (Revised March 2007)
Case

UBS and Climate Change--Warming Up to Global Action?

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Forest L. Reinhardt and Elizabeth Raabe

Marco Suter, Executive Vice-Chairman, UBS Board of Directors, carefully studied the chart on his desk. It showed the public commitment of major financial institutions to help mitigate global warming. Evidently, UBS lagged behind its competitors. The graph was part of a... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Energy Conservation; Cost vs Benefits; Law; Financial Institutions; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Accountability; Financial Services Industry

06 Aug 2013
First Look

First Look: August 6

today's managers need to harness technological advances, manage and lead a dispersed and diverse workforce, anticipate and react to constant competitive and geopolitical change and uncertainty, compete on a global scale, and operate in a socially responsible and View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

October 2017 (Revised October 2022)
Case

JetBlue: Relevant Sustainability Leadership

By: George Serafeim

In 2017, JetBlue, the airline founded on the mission to “bring humanity back to air travel,” was considering becoming one of the first companies to report its sustainability performance according to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards. SASB... View Details

03 Nov 2015
First Look

November 3, 2015

employment regulation. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50041 November 2015 Accounting Review The Effect of Target Difficulty on Target Completion: The Case of Reducing Carbon Emissions By: Ioannou,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

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

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Accountability; Ethics; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

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