Publications

18 Aug 2022
News

11 Summer Sustainability Reads

07 May 2013
HBS Conference

Change and Sustainability Conference

26 Nov 2012
News

The future of integrated sustainability reporting

January 2025
Case

Negotiating a Legacy at Sustainable Harvest (A)

By: Jillian Jordan, Julian Zlatev, Alicia Dadlani and Martha Hostetter

The specialty coffee importer Sustainable Harvest was the first certified B Corp in the coffee industry due to its investments in building coffee farmers’ capacity and livelihood. But in 2022, after coffee prices plummeted and the company’s bank declined to extend its... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Mergers and Acquisitions; Trust; Ethics; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Volatility; Futures and Commodity Futures; Social Enterprise; Valuation; Business Model; Credit; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Europe

Educators

2013
Chapter

Market Imperfections and Sustainable Competitive Advantage

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Dennis Yao

This chapter reviews the main theories in strategic management that seek to explain persistent differences in profitability across companies. We argue that these differences are ultimately explained by market imperfections. Studying differences in financial performance... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Management; Market Imperfections; Five Forces Framework; Competitive Advantage; Profit

TeachingInterests

Strategy: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage

By: Andy Wu

In the fight for market leadership, your company must be able to build a winning strategy—and execute it seamlessly across multiple business lines. This program prepares you to identify and exploit sources of competitive advantage and implement game-changing... View Details

Program

Strategy: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage

Summary In the fight for market leadership and the continuous drive toward improved returns, your company needs to devise an effective strategy—and execute it flawlessly. This program prepares you to tackle or lead that challenge in all its aspects, from deciding in... View Details

1999
Chapter

Building and Sustaining Success

By: Pankaj Ghemawat and Gary P. Pisano

Keywords: Success

November 2011
Teaching Note

InterfaceRAISE: Sustainability Consulting (TN)

By: Robert G. Eccles and Michael W. Toffel

Keywords: Consulting Industry

April 2006
Background Note

Designing Sustainable Service Models

By: Frances X. Frei

Taught as the second module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations. Addresses the challenge of designing service models that effectively incorporate a customer operating role, as well as how to align operations to deliver value to both the... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Customers; Design; Managerial Roles; Consumer Behavior; Service Operations; Power and Influence; Value

Educators

19 Aug 2014
Talk

Sustainability in the Boardroom

By: Lynn S. Paine

February 2010
Case

Burt's Bees: Balancing Growth and Sustainability (Multimedia)

By: Christopher Marquis

The case examines sustainability initiatives at Burt's Bees, with video segments that detail the company's history, leadership, and implementation of ambitious 2020 sustainability goals. The company traces its roots to 1984, when Roxanne Quinby and Burt Schavitz teamed... View Details

Keywords: Balance and Stability; Leadership; Problems and Challenges; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Organizational Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Mergers and Acquisitions; Social Enterprise; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Ethics

Educators

24 Jun 2022
News

A Masterclass in Sustaining High Performance

2013
Book

Flourishing: A Frank Conversation About Sustainability

By: John Ehrenfeld and Andrew J. Hoffman

Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability invites you into a conversation between a teacher, John R. Ehrenfeld, and his former student now professor, Andrew J. Hoffman, as they discuss how to create a sustainable world. Unlike virtually all other... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Culture; Behavior; Society

2021
Article

The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative in Europe

By: Mark Roe, Holger Spamann, Jesse M. Fried and Charles C.Y. Wang

In July 2020, the European Commission published the “Study on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate governance” by EY. The Report purports to find evidence of debilitating short-termism in EU corporate governance and recommends many changes to support sustainable... View Details

Keywords: Short-termism; Hedge Funds; Shareholder Activism; Securities Regulation; Agency Costs; Political Economy; Payouts; Repurchases; Corporate Governance; Investment Funds; Investment Activism; Research and Development; Investment; European Union

SSRN

13 Jan 2012
News

The Dollar Payoff from CSR and Sustainability

2014
Working Paper

Making the Business Case for Environmental Sustainability

By: Rebecca Henderson

Can a business case be made for acting sustainably? This is a difficult question to answer precisely, largely because there is no generally accepted definition of the term "sustainability". Is it acting sustainably to protect the human rights of the firm's workforce?... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Decision Making; Environmental Sustainability

Read Now

24 Jun 2019
News

The formula for telling sustainability stories that stick

2010
Book

One Report: Integrated Reporting for a Sustainable Strategy

By: Robert G. Eccles and Michael Krzus

"One Report" refers to an emerging trend in business taking place throughout the world where companies are going beyond separate reports for financial and nonfinancial (e.g., corporate social responsibility or sustainability) results and integrating both into a single... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Reports; Strategy