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- 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
- Case
Align Partners and SM Entertainment: Korean Shareholder Activism Meets K-Pop (A)
By: Charles CY Wang and Billy Chan
For years, institutional investors had experienced very limited success in influencing the management of listed companies through shareholder activist campaigns in Korea. The common practice of circular ownership and public resentment toward foreign shareholder... View Details
- February 2025
- Supplement
Align Partners and SM Entertainment: Korean Shareholder Activism Meets K-Pop (B)
By: Charles CY Wang and Billy Chan
For years, institutional investors had experienced very limited success in influencing the management of listed companies through shareholder activist campaigns in Korea. The common practice of circular ownership and public resentment toward foreign shareholder... 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
- 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
- Case
Cyber Oversight: SolarWinds Board of Directors
By: Lynn S. Paine
In 2020, just two years after its IPO, information technology company SolarWinds discovered that it was the victim of an attack on its information systems by Russian hackers. The incident, known as the Sunburst attack, was costly for the company, and certain... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Constitutional Fiction: John Miller & the Legitimacy of Family Constitutions
By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan
John Miller sat reviewing his family’s Constitution, grappling with how best to implement and enforce its provisions. Designed to prevent ambiguity in governance, the Family Constitution set out core values and guidelines to promote harmony and cohesion among family... View Details
Keywords: Conflict Resolution; Perspective Taking; Liabilities; Family Business; Family Ownership; Business Growth and Maturation; Alignment; Cooperation; Attitudes; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Conflict Management; Conflict of Interests; Power and Influence; Perception; Trust; Perspective; Motivation and Incentives; Happiness; Identity; Goals and Objectives; Legal Liability; Contracts; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Governance Controls; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Family and Family Relationships; Manufacturing Industry; Germany
- December 2024
- Supplement
Northvolt: Building Batteries to Fight Climate Change (B)
The (B) case explores Northvolt’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on November 21, 2024, highlighting the company’s
struggles to scale operations amid a global EV market slowdown and internal production challenges. While the (A) case detailed
Northvolt’s ambitious... View Details
Keywords: Batteries; Electric Vehicles; Climate Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Energy; Green Technology; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Investment; Technological Innovation; Risk Management; Failure; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Transportation; Green Technology Industry; Europe; Sweden
- December 2024
- Article
Proxy Advisory Firms and Corporate Shareholder Engagement
By: Aiyesha Dey, Austin Starkweather and Joshua White
We study how Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) affect firms’ engagement with shareholders. Our analyses exploit a quasi-natural experiment using say-on-pay voting outcomes near a threshold that triggers ISS to review engagement activities. Firms receiving ISS... View Details
- 2024
- Book
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
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? In this book, I address how we can rekindle the fading light of democratic capitalism as an... View Details
- October 2024 (Revised March 2025)
- Teaching Note
BWX Technologies
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Yuan Zou
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 124-071. 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
- September 2024
- Article
Activist Directors: Determinants and Consequences
By: Ian D. Gow, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin and Suraj Srinivasan
This paper examines determinants and consequences of hedge fund activism, focusing on activist directors, i.e., directors appointed in response to activist demands. Using a sample of 3,259 activism events from 2004 to 2016, we identify 1,623 activist directors.... View Details
- August 19, 2024
- Article
The Business Roundtable’s Stakeholder Pledge, Five Years Later
By: Lynn S. Paine
Five years ago, the Business Roundtable issued a statement pledging to “lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders.” In the past five years, stakeholderism has gained wider acceptance and helped many corporate leaders see the value of taking the interests... View Details
- July 2024 (Revised September 2024)
- Case
Shell’s Balancing Act: Resource Allocation and the Green Transition (Abridged)
By: David Collis and Haisley Wert
In mid-2023, amid pressure from climate change activists, shareholder activists, and confronting enormous uncertainty about the future demand for and price of fossil fuels, new Shell CEO Wael Sawan (Harvard MBA 2003) announced a change in strategy for the U.K. oil... View Details
- June 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Climate Governance at Linde plc (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Suraj Srinivasan, Emilie Billaud and Vincent Dessain
In July 2023, the Linde plc board of directors' sustainability committee convened in London to review the company's environmental performance, with a focus on decarbonization and clean energy. Linde was the world's largest industrial gas supplier, with a workforce of... View Details
Keywords: Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Compensation and Benefits; Innovation Strategy; Leading Change; Goals and Objectives; Business and Shareholder Relations; Chemical Industry; United States; Germany; Europe; North America; London
- June 2024
- Supplement
Climate Governance at Linde plc (B)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Suraj Srinivasan, Emilie Billaud and Vincent Dessain
In July 2023, the Linde plc board of directors' sustainability committee convened in London to review the company's environmental performance, with a focus on decarbonization and clean energy. Linde was the world's largest industrial gas supplier, with a workforce of... View Details
Keywords: Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Multinational Firms and Management; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Compensation and Benefits; Innovation Strategy; Leading Change; Goals and Objectives; Business and Shareholder Relations; Chemical Industry; Energy Industry; United States; Germany; Europe; North America; London
- May 2024 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Shell's Balancing Act: Resource Allocation and the Green Transition
By: David Collis and Haisley Wert
In mid-2023, amid pressure from climate change activists, shareholder activists, and confronting enormous uncertainty about the future demand for and price of fossil fuels, new Shell CEO Wael Sawan (Harvard MBA 2003) announced a change in strategy for the U.K. oil... View Details
Keywords: Portfolio Analysis; Climate; Oil; Oil And Gas; Oil Companies; Renewables; Petroleum; Investor Demand; Investors; Corporate Strategy; Resource Allocation; Climate Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Energy Industry; United Kingdom