Publications

15 Apr 2024
Book

Struggling With a Big Management Decision? Start by Asking What Really Matters

book Your True Moral Compass: Defining Reality, Responsibility, and Practicality in Your Leadership Moments. In the following excerpt from the book, Badaracco, the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics, explains why it’s important for... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

September 2017
Case

Harvard Men's Soccer

By: Alison Wood Brooks and Katherine Coffman

In the fall of 2016, the Crimson, Harvard’s undergraduate newspaper, broke a story revealing that the 2012 Harvard Men’s Soccer team had produced a sexually explicit “scouting report” about the Women’s Soccer team. The story generated national headlines and... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Ethics; Gender; Social Issues

18 Nov 2002
Research & Ideas

Where Morals and Profits Meet: The Corporate Value Shift

how companies can become what I term "center-driven"—oriented toward strategies that make both ethical and financial sense. In the schema I lay out, companies can choose to be "dues payers" that View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler

September 2019 (Revised February 2022)
Supplement

Glenn Defense Marine Asia (B)

By: Susanna Gallani, Anja Anliker, Luke Hodges and Amram Migdal

This case describes the growth of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA) under the leadership of Leonard Glenn Francis. GDMA provided ship husbanding and logistical support services to the United States Navy when Navy ships visited various ports in Southeast Asia. The case... View Details

September 2019 (Revised February 2022)
Case

Glenn Defense Marine Asia (A)

By: Susanna Gallani, Anja Anliker, Luke Hodges and Amram Migdal

This case describes the growth of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA) under the leadership of Leonard Glenn Francis. GDMA provided ship husbanding and logistical support services to the United States Navy when Navy ships visited various ports in Southeast Asia. The case... View Details

2024
Working Paper

The Fading Light of Democratic Capitalism: How Pervasive Cronyism and Restricted Suffrage Are Destroying Democratic Capitalism as a National Ideal…and What to Do about It

By: Malcolm S. Salter

What are we to do about declining public trust and confidence in democratic capitalism, which many citizens consider a cornerstone of our national ideology and identity? While the answer is not entirely clear, I argue in this essay that any effort aimed at restoring... View Details

Keywords: Government Administration; Economic Systems; Trust; United States

Read Now

November 9, 2019
Article

Effect of Revealing Authors' Conflicts of Interests in Peer Review: Randomized Controlled Trial

By: Leslie K. John, George Loewenstein, Andrew Marder and Michael Callaham

Objective: To assess the impact of disclosing authors’ conflict of interest declarations to peer reviewers at a medical journal.
Design: Randomised controlled trial.

Setting: The study was conducted within the manuscript review process at the... View Details

Keywords: Conflicts Of Interest; Peer Review; Randomized Controlled Trial; Scientific Publication; Conflict of Interests; Journals and Magazines; Science

Find at Harvard

Read Now

2012
Working Paper

Putting Integrity into Finance: A Purely Positive Approach

By: Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen

We summarize our new positive theory of integrity that has no normative content, and argue that there are large gains from putting integrity into finance—into both the theory and practice of finance. We define integrity as being whole and complete and unbroken. We... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Ethics; Theory; Practice; Change

SSRN

05 Sep 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, September 5, 2017

behavioral ethics. I explore why some decisions are much more easily resolved in the classroom than in practice and offer three ways to more effectively prepare students: integrating ethical decision-making... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2020
Case

The 1,000-Year Plan: Lee Kum Kee and Sustaining a Family Culture

By: Lauren Cohen, Dawn H. Lau and Billy Chan

The Lee family, whose Hong Kong-based Lee Kum Kee company has established itself as a legend within the Chinese and Asian sauce world, sets out to create a daring new vision of what family legacy means. With the family business having been established in 1888, and by... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Mission and Purpose; Values and Beliefs; Business and Community Relations; Organizational Structure; Strategic Planning

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

Keywords: Going Public; Business Model; Financial Reporting; Ethics; Corporate Governance; Stock Shares; Food and Beverage Industry

12 Sep 2023
Book

Successful, But Still Feel Empty? A Happiness Scholar and Oprah Have Advice for You

academia that’s not reaching the public,” says Brooks, who is Professor of Management Practice at HBS and of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. “My job isn’t to create more new... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

1997
Dictionary Entry

Incommensurable Values

By: Nien-he Hsieh

Values, such as liberty and equality, are sometimes said to be incommensurable in the sense that their value cannot be reduced to a common measure. The possibility of value incommensurability is thought to raise deep questions about practical reason and rational choice... View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Values and Beliefs

Read Now

06 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 6

mark-plans backfire, consumer preferences shift, or tried-and-true practices fail to work in a new context. So is innovation just a low-odds crapshoot? In The Architecture of Innovation, Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner-one... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2025
Case

Reimagining the Employee Experience at the LEGO Group

By: Amy Edmondson, Mark Mortensen and Elisabeth Powell

In 2024, the LEGO Group faced a decision about the future of LEGO’s Benefits Experience Strategy and the “Best of Both” remote/hybrid work policy. With over 28,500 employees spanning global hubs, retail stores, and manufacturing plants, LEGO leaders had to consider... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Employee Relationship Management; Values and Beliefs; Organizational Culture; Alignment; Compensation and Benefits; Europe

November 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

A Politician in a Leather Suit and the Paradox of Japanese Capitalism

By: Karthik Ramanna and Matthew Shaffer

Two lost decades later, capitalism in Japan embodies peculiar contradictions—preserving wealth and social stability in the face of declining economic power. Scant transparency in Japanese corporate practices plays an important role in this phenomenon. Sometimes... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Economic Systems; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Civil Society or Community; Japan; Tokyo

Research Summary

Renovating Democratic Capitalism

By: Malcolm S. Salter

This in-process work focuses on how best to address the declining public trust and confidence in democratic capitalism, which many citizens consider to be a cornerstone of our national ideology and identity? While the answer to this question is not entirely clear, I... View Details

December 2010 (Revised June 2018)
Case

The Pecora Hearings

By: David Moss, Cole Bolton and Eugene Kintgen

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Senate Banking Committee began a much-publicized investigation of the nation's financial sector. The hearings, which came to be known as the Pecora hearings after the Banking Committee's lead counsel Ferdinand Pecora,... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Fairness; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Institutions; Debt Securities; Stocks; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government Legislation; History; Financial Services Industry; United States