Publications
Publications
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(1,730)
- Faculty Publications (275)
- January 2018
- Technical Note
Business at the Base of the Pyramid: Understanding Impact and Impact Evaluations
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg
Unlike financial success, there is no clear consensus regarding how best to define and measure social impact. This HBS Technical Note written for students of the HBS MBA course Business at the Base of the Pyramid (BBOP), offers readers pragmatic perspectives on how the... View Details
- November 2017 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
Measuring True Value at Ambuja Cement
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Suraj Srinivasan and Namrata Arora
The case discusses the measurement of social and environmental impact at Ambuja Cements, one of India’s leading cement companies. Ambuja is a leader in CSR activities and is attempting to quantify its impact, both positive and negative, using the “True Value” framework... View Details
- November 2017 (Revised April 2019)
- Case
Summa Equity: Building Purpose-Driven Organizations
By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg
In 2015, Reynir Indahl left top Nordic private equity firm Altor Equity Partners to found Summa Equity (Summa). After long contemplation following the financial crisis, Indahl was convinced the financial system was producing negative externalities and that the current... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Purpose; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Social Impact; Investment Management; Management Practices; Innovation; Voice; Environmental Impact; Private Equity; Social Enterprise; Finance; Capital Markets; Management Practices and Processes; Innovation Leadership; Leadership; Innovation and Management; Entrepreneurship; Mission and Purpose; Value Creation; Financial Services Industry; Norway; Sweden; Scandinavia
- October 2017 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
JetBlue: Relevant Sustainability Leadership (A)
By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg
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
Keywords: Sustainability; Metrics; Leadership And Change Management; Airlines; Innovation; Purpose; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Sustainability Reporting; Change Management; Leadership; Financial Reporting; Environmental Sustainability; Mission and Purpose; Reports; Competitive Strategy; Measurement and Metrics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Air Transportation Industry; United States
- 2017
- Other Article
Designing an Agile Software Portfolio Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Performance
By: Alan MacCormack and Robert Lagerstrom
The modern industrial corporation encompasses a myriad of different software applications, each of which must work in concert to deliver functionality to end-users. However, the increasingly complex and dynamic nature of competition in today’s product-markets dictates... View Details
- August 2017
- Article
Effective Leadership of Surgical Teams: A Mixed Methods Study of Surgeon Behaviors and Functions
By: J. Stone, E. Aveling, M. Frean, M. Shields, C. Wright, F. Gino, T. Sundt and S.J. Singer
The importance of effective team leadership for achieving surgical excellence is widely accepted, but we understand less about the behaviors that achieve this goal. We studied cardiac surgical teams to identify leadership behaviors that best support surgical teamwork.... View Details
- July 2017 (Revised September 2017)
- Case
Donald Trump Calls Carrier Corporation
By: Andy Zelleke and Brian Tilley
This case examines the influence of political pressure on corporate decision-making. It questions whether fidelity to domestic operations ought to be a corporate social responsibility, and thus it challenges the limits of “social responsibility” as a corporate ideal.... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Board Decisions; Political Influence; Layoffs; Offshoring And Outsourcing; Manufacturing; United States; Mexico; Governing and Advisory Boards; Decision Making; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Political Elections; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Governance; Technology Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Connecticut; Indiana; Mexico
- July 2017 (Revised September 2017)
- Case
GM's Capital Allocation Framework
By: C. Fritz Foley, F. Katelynn Boland and Michael Lemm
In March of 2015, General Motors announced the details of a newly established capital allocation framework. This framework provided a target for return on invested capital, guidelines for capital structure choices, and policies related to payouts. Senior managers face... View Details
- 2017
- Chapter
U.S. High-Skilled Immigration, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: Empirical Approaches and Evidence
By: William R. Kerr
High-skilled immigrants are a very important component of U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship. Immigrants account for roughly a quarter of U.S. workers in these fields, and they have a similar contribution in terms of output measures like patents or firm starts. This... View Details
- January 2017 (Revised November 2018)
- Case
Vox Capital: Pioneering Impact Investing in Brazil
By: Julie Battilana, Marissa Kimsey, Falko Paetzold and Priscilla Zogbi
Vox Capital was the first certified impact investing fund in Brazil. Founded in 2009, it provides early-stage capital for companies offering innovative and scalable solutions to enhance the lives of low-income Brazilians, while aiming to simultaneously generate... View Details
- 2017
- Chapter
Empirical Evidence on the Behavior and Impact of Patent Trolls: A Survey
By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers
We survey the empirical literature on non-practicing entity (NPE) litigation behavior and its consequences. We document both aggregate trends and cross-sectional differences amongst various types of NPEs. Survey evidence illustrates a number of ways in which NPEs can... View Details
Keywords: Patent Trolls; NPEs; PAEs; Innovation; Patents; Lawsuits and Litigation; Innovation and Invention
- 2016
- Book
Building a Culture of Health: A New Imperative for Business
By: John A. Quelch and Emily C. Boudreau
This ambitious volume sets out to understand how every company impacts public health and introduces a robust model, rooted in organizational and scientific knowledge, for companies committed to making positive contributions to health and wellness. Focusing on four... View Details
- October 2016
- Article
Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-related Activity
By: Alan MacCormack and Daniel J. Sturtevant
Technical debt is created when design decisions that are expedient in the short-term increase the costs of maintaining and adapting this system in future. An important component of technical debt relates to decisions about system architecture. As systems grow and... View Details
- Fall 2016
- Article
The Impact of Supplier Inventory Service Level on Retailer Demand
By: Nathan Craig, Nicole DeHoratius and Ananth Raman
To set inventory service levels, suppliers must understand how changes in inventory service level affect demand. We build on prior research, which uses analytical models and laboratory experiments to study the impact of a supplier’s service level on demand from... View Details
- Article
Distance and Political Boundaries: Estimating Border Effects under Inequality Constraints
By: Fernando Borraz, Alberto Cavallo, Roberto Rigobon and Leandro Zipitria
The border effects literature finds that political boundaries have a large impact on relative prices across locations. In this paper we show that the standard empirical specification suffers from selection bias, and propose a new methodology based on binned-quantile... View Details
- May 2016 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
RegionFly: Cutting Costs in the Airline Industry
By: Susanna Gallani and Eva Labro
RegionFly is a small, private airline specializing in ultra-premium services. Founded shortly after the "Golden Age of airline travel," RegionFly's financial performance had been strong for several decades. More recently, however, the results have taken a downward... View Details
- March 2016 (Revised April 2019)
- Technical Note
ESG Metrics: Reshaping Capitalism?
By: George Serafeim
In the past twenty-five years, the world had seen an exponential growth in the number of companies reporting environmental, social and governance (ESG) data. Investor interest in ESG data also grew rapidly. A growing belief that increasing levels of social inequality... View Details
Keywords: Capitalism; Sustainability; Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility; Responsibilities To Society; Environment; Social Impact Investment; ESG; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Measurement and Metrics; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Accountability; Accounting; Economic Systems
- February 2016
- Article
Bridging Science and Technology Through Academic-Industry Partnerships
By: Sen Chai and Willy C. Shih
Partnerships that foster the translation of scientific advances emerging from academic research organizations into commercialized products at private firms are a policy tool that has attracted increased interest. This paper examines empirical data from the Danish... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Cohort Turnover and Operational Performance: The July Phenomenon in Teaching Hospitals
By: Hummy Song, Robert S. Huckman and Jason R. Barro
We consider the impact of cohort turnover—the planned simultaneous exit of a large number of experienced employees and a similarly sized entry of new workers—on operational performance in the context of teaching hospitals. Specifically, we examine the impact of the... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
A Normative Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategy, Know-How, and Competition
By: Gary P. Pisano
The field of strategy has mounted an enormous effort to understand, define, predict, and measure how organizational capabilities shape competitive advantage. While the notion that capabilities influence strategy dates back to the work of Andrews (1971), attempts to... View Details