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Ethics
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- April–June 2022
- Other Article
Commentary on 'Causal Decision Making and Causal Effect Estimation Are Not the Same... and Why It Matters'
There has been a substantial discussion in various methodological and applied literatures around causal inference; especially in the use of machine learning and statistical models to understand heterogeneity in treatment effects and to make optimal decision... View Details
- 2022
- Book
Decision Leadership: Empowering Others to Make Better Choices
By: Don A. Moore and Max H. Bazerman
When we think of leaders, we often imagine lone, inspirational figures lauded for their behaviors, attributes, and personal decisions, and leadership books often reinforce that view. However, this approach ignores a leader’s mission to empower others. Applying decades... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Firms, Morality, and the Search for a Better World
Book Abstract: 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... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
DaVita Responds to COVID
By: Susanna Gallani and David Lane
Early in August 2021, DaVita CEO Javier Rodriguez was assessing the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on his firm, which provided life-sustaining kidney dialysis to roughly 240,000 people. Effective infection control practices and information sharing had ensured... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Change Management; Communication; Talent and Talent Management; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Corporate Accountability; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Human Resources; Employee Relationship Management; Retention; Wages; Working Conditions; Leadership Style; Crisis Management; Organizational Culture; Health Industry; United States
- 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
- March 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Clara Wu Tsai and Brooklyn Loan Innovation
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
- Article
Eliminating Unintended Bias in Personalized Policies Using Bias-Eliminating Adapted Trees (BEAT)
By: Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli
An inherent risk of algorithmic personalization is disproportionate targeting of individuals from certain groups (or demographic characteristics such as gender or race), even when the decision maker does not intend to discriminate based on those “protected”... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Amazon, Expedia, and Antitrust: Meeting Legal and Ethical Responsibilities to Customers
By: Robert J. Dolan
- 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
- February 2022
- Technical Note
Ethical Analysis: Fairness
By: Nien-hê Hsieh
Concerns about fairness can arise across a wide range of contexts. They include the treatment of others, how much things cost, how much workers are paid, the outcome of a decision, and how we assign benefits and burdens across individuals. What counts as fair in a... View Details
- February 2022
- Case
NFX Capital and Moov Technologies
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Nicole Tempest Keller
In July 2019, James Currier, a general partner at San Francisco-based NFX Ventures, was considering a seed stage investment of $1.5 million in Moov Technologies, a B2B marketplace for used industrial equipment. NFX was a venture capital firm focused on seed-stage... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Key Success Factors in Environmental Entrepreneurship: The Case of Wilderness Safaris
By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Woods and Herman B. Leonard
This chapter analyzes the entrepreneurial conception and evolution of the Wilderness Safaris (WS) ecotourism enterprise operating in eight African countries. It illuminates a series of factors that contribute to positive environmental impact as well as financial... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
P.T. Barnum: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun
This case describes the life of P.T. Barnum, widely considered to the be the father of modern advertising and marketing. Barnum showed his genius for business early, selling lottery tickets and confections from his father’s store. He went on to found a famous museum of... View Details
- January 2022 (Revised October 2023)
- Case
OneTen: One Million Careers for Black Talent (A)
By: Boris Groysberg, V. Kasturi Rangan, Annelena Lobb and Kerry Herman
The OneTen case study examines the nonprofit organization’s origin story. Its founding team includes a roster of corporate superstars—Ken Chenault (former CEO of American Express), Ken Frazier (former CEO of Merck), Charles Phillips (chair of Infor), Ginni Rometty... View Details
- 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)
- January 2022 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Steem Versus Hive: Testing Blockchain Governance
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
This case examines a pivotal governance conflict that occurred in 2020 when Justin Sun, founder of the TRON blockchain, acquired Steemit Inc., the company behind a popular social media platform operating on the Steem blockchain. Steem, launched in 2016 by Daniel... View Details
- January 2022
- Technical Note
Ethical Analysis: Well-Being and Rights
By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Christopher Diak
This note introduces students to two central concepts for ethical analysis: well-being and rights. It illustrates ways in which they figure in managerial decisions and challenges that arise, including how to frame trade-offs across individual well-being and... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
A Compass for Decision Making
By: Lynn S. Paine
Book Abstract: The second edition of Responsible Leadership offers orienting knowledge on how to lead in a world of contested values—a world where leadership work extends beyond leaders and direct reports to a whole range of stakeholders inside and outside an... View Details
- 2022
- Book
Leadership to Last: How Great Leaders Leave Legacies Behind
By: Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna
Society tends to glorify the get-rich-quick entrepreneur who builds a company, takes it public and then (maybe) contributes to charity.
In Leadership to Last, Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna discuss the interviews they and other Harvard faculty have undertaken... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Luxury Tourism and Environmentalism
By: Geoffrey Jones
This chapter examines the evolution of luxury tourism and its environmental impact. Whilst mass tourism is widely seen as environmentally damaging, the impact of luxury tourism is nuanced. During the first stage of the growth in the nineteenth century, the numbers of... View Details