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- April 2025
- Case
Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters: Vickers Oils and Resolving Family Conflict over Generations
By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan
Will Vickers, a seventh-generation (G7) member of the Vickers Family, grappled with a pressing challenge: how to re-integrate family members into the firm to recover lost talent. His father, Peter Vickers, was the lone leader of the Vickers Oils – despite having... View Details
Keywords: Leadership; Family; Relationships; Shareholder; Conflict; Involvement; Family Office; Family Firms; Diversification; Family Business; Business Growth and Maturation; Experience and Expertise; Retention; Leadership Development; Business or Company Management; Management Succession; Organizational Structure; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Consumer Products Industry; United Kingdom
- April 2025
- Article
Corporate Ownership and ESG Performance
By: Belen Villalonga, Peter Tufano and Boya Wang
Using a sample of 3083 firms from 62 countries over 18 years, we analyze how the structure and identity of firms' material owners influence their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. We find that firms with founding families or other individual... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
The Changing Climate on Wall Street
By: Clayton S. Rose, Maxim Pike Harrell and Michael Norris
Increasing and conflicting regulatory requirements and political pressures regarding climate change tested the leaders of U.S. financial institutions, as they struggled to determine how best to comply while managing their business and its risks.
In October 2024,... View Details
Keywords: Change; Disruption; Competency and Skills; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Ethics; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Leadership; Management; Risk Management; Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Society; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Strategy; Adaptation; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Insurance Industry; United States; Europe
- March 2025
- Article
Limited Accountability and Awareness of Corporate Emissions Target Outcomes
By: Xiaoyan Jiang, Shawn Kim and Shirley Lu
Firms are increasingly announcing targets to reduce their carbon emissions, but it is unclear whether firms are held accountable for these targets. Here we examine emissions targets that ended in 2020 to investigate the final target outcomes, the transparency of target... View Details
- February 2025
- Article
Deep Responsibility, SDGs, and Asia: A Historical Perspective
By: Geoffrey Jones
Although it was only in 2015 the 17 SDGs were adopted by UN Member States, many of the underlying ideas can be found in the strategies of some businesses going back to the nineteenth century. Asia was the home of many of the most advanced concepts of business... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Impact Investing and Worker Outcomes
By: Josh Lerner, Markus Lithell and Gordon M. Phillips
Impact investors claim to distinguish themselves from traditional venture capital and growth
equity investors by also pursuing ESG objectives. Whether they successfully do so in practice
is unclear. We use confidential Census Bureau microdata to assess worker... View Details
- January–March 2025
- Article
Transitioning from Responsible and Reactive to Deeply Responsible and Proactive International Business
By: Geoffrey G. Jones, Teresa da Silva Lopes, Pavida Pananond, Rob van Tulder, Noemi Sinkovics and Rudolf R. Sinkovics
This article aims to explore the role of multinational enterprises in addressing grand societal challenges, emphasizing the need for integrating environmental and social aspects into business models. It offers an analysis of how principles and values can guide engaged... View Details
- January 24, 2025
- Article
Behaviorally Designed Training Leads to More Diverse Hiring
By: Cansin Arslan, Edward H. Chang, Siri Chilazi, Iris Bohnet and Oliver P. Hauser
Many organizations have shown interest in increasing the diversity of their workforces for various reasons. Collectively, they have spent millions of dollars and countless employee hours on diversity training. Yet, there is little empirical evidence that such training... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Crossing the Design-Use Divide: How Process Manipulation Shapes the Design and Use of AI
By: Rebecca Karp
Existing literature often separates research on the design of innovations from their implementation and use, neglecting the role of selection—how organizations choose which innovations to implement. Although scholars suggest scientific approaches for selecting novel... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
A Tiger in the Tank: Exxon Sues Investors
By: Clayton S. Rose, Sarah Sasso and James Weber
In June 2024, investors were trying to make sense of ExxonMobil’s (Exxon) lawsuit against two impact investors, Arjuna Capital (Arjuna) and Follow This, that had just been dismissed by the U.S. District Court of Northern Texas. Exxon’s suit challenged the rights of two... View Details
Keywords: Disruption; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Satisfaction; Decision Making; Demographics; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Employees; Recruitment; Retention; Leadership; Crisis Management; Risk Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Adaptation; Investment Activism; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Health Industry; Energy Industry; United States; Netherlands; Norway
- January 2025 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Mercado Libre: The Best Is Yet to Come
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Fernando Fragueiro, Carla Larangeira and Mariana Cal
In 2024, Marcos Galperín, CEO and co-founder of Mercado Libre, reflected on its 25-year rise as Latin America’s largest marketplace, fintech leader, and most valuable public company. With operations spanning 18 countries and a robust ecosystem combining e-commerce,... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Multinational Firms and Management; Recruitment; Compensation and Benefits; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Leadership Style; Business or Company Management; Management Practices and Processes; Management Succession; E-commerce; Emerging Markets; Distribution; Logistics; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Business Strategy; Competition; Growth and Development Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry; Retail Industry; Latin America; Mexico; Brazil; Argentina
- January 2025
- Article
Communication Within Firms: Evidence from CEO Turnovers
By: Stephen Michael Impink, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun
This paper uses novel, firm-level communication measures derived from communications metadata several months before and after a CEO transition for 102 firms to study whether and how this organizational event is reflected in employees’ communication flows. We find that... View Details
- December 12, 2024
- Article
6 Lessons from Companies That Shut Down Their Business in Russia
By: Kalle Heikkinen, William R. Kerr, Mika Malin, Panu Routila and Joel Ryynänen
Increasingly, companies are being pressured to decouple from regions that customers, employees, politicians, advocacy groups, and even leaders deem politically fraught. This can pose a dilemma for executives, as research both shows that fast decision-making is vital,... View Details
- November–December 2024
- Article
How to Avoid the Agility Trap
By: Jianwen Liao and Feng Zhu
Agility is all the rage in strategy circles these days. According to conventional wisdom, organizations should rapidly react to technological advances, new market dynamics, and shifting consumer preferences. But in practice this is nearly impossible to pull off,... View Details
- October 2024
- Supplement
Hakluyt: from Corporate Intelligence to Trusted Advisors (B)
By: Joseph B. Fuller and Lena Duchene
This case is a continuation of an earlier study chronicling Hakluyt & Company (Hakluyt)’s transformation from an obscure boutique to a global corporate advisory firm with an outsized reputation. In August 2024, the firm faced a pivotal moment as managing partner Varun... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Talent and Talent Management; Capital Structure; Cash Flow; Corporate Finance; Equity; Stock Shares; Corporate Governance; Business History; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Leadership Style; Growth Management; Management Succession; Management Teams; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Networks; Partners and Partnerships; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Consulting Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; England; London
- October 2024
- Module Note
Purpose of the Firm
By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau
Purpose of the Firm (PoF) is a short module designed to explore how, and under what circumstances, business leaders can harness the power of capitalism and markets to “make a difference in the world”—that is, to address a significant societal problem as a commercial... View Details
- October 2024
- Case
Parexel: Scaling Up and Industry Dynamics
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ben Creo
Through the lens of biopharmaceutical contract research organization (CRO) PAREXEL, this case traces the evolution of the firm as it reinvents itself in response to the transformation of the CRO sector from a small, secondary cluster of firms into a major player with... View Details
- Fall 2024
- Article
The Case for Climate Alliances
Business leaders are under pressure to address the climate crisis, but they can’t do so alone. Climate alliances can help leaders and firms be more ambitious, responsible, and effective in driving the systems change necessary to save the planet. View Details
- September 20, 2024
- Article
It’s Time to Unbundle ESG
By: Aaron K. Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel
ESG is at an inflection point. It has come to represent a broad and inchoate aspiration for what business should be doing beyond maximizing shareholder value. With ESG advocates on the defensive, business leaders need a new roadmap to determine which factors to... View Details
Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; ESG Reporting; ESG Disclosure; Sustainability; Climate; Climate Finance; Climate Risk; Social Accounting; Investment; Governance; Safety; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Services Industry
- 2024
- Working Paper
Determinants of Top-Down Sabotage
By: Hashim Zaman and Karim R. Lakhani
We investigate the conditions that motivate managers to impede the growth of talented subordinates due to fears of future competition for their own positions. Our research expands on existing tournament and contest theory literature that considers peer-to-peer sabotage... View Details