Harbus Foundation, The

James E. Austin; Linda  Carrigan

Case | HBS Case Collection | August 1998 (Revised October 2002)

Harbus Foundation, The

Abstract

Describes the challenges faced by a group of HBS students as they create a foundation. Given surplus funds generated by the student-run newspaper, The Harbus leadership decides to find a meaningful use for the excess cash. Profiles both the entrepreneurial process used to establish the foundation and the challenges involved in deciding to whom to award grants. The group of protagonists face several decisions: 1) a controversial funding decision, 2) review and assessment of the foundation's strategy and process for grant solicitation and evaluation, and 3) the role of a student investment club in managing the foundation's portfolio.

Keywords: Business Startups; Decision Choices and Conditions; Asset Management; Financial Institutions; Investment Portfolio; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Problems and Challenges; Social Enterprise; Valuation; Financial Services Industry;

Format: Print

26 pages

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Citation:

Austin, James E., and Linda Carrigan. "Harbus Foundation, The." Harvard Business School Case 399-031, August 1998. (Revised October 2002.)

The case traces the evolution of the Tata group, one of the largest and highly respected Indian business houses, from its 19th century founding and early growth in diverse industries, to its response to changes in government regulation in independent India, up to its 1991 leadership transition from longtime chairman J.R.D. Tata to his successor, Ratan Tata. The case first describes how Tata group founder Jamsetji Tata and his sons entered into the steel, hotel, hydroelectric, cement, air travel, and insurance industries (among others). It then explores how the evolving role of government in business in post-Independence India impacted the Tata group. The case also outlines the acceleration in the Tata group’s growth during the 1980s, following government liberalization. In addition to discussing how the group’s leadership navigated through the external pressures of policy and economics, the case also examines how they managed internal pressures – reduced synergy between the diverse and legally-independent companies under Tata’s umbrella, and, at times, reluctant adjustments in company culture that corresponded to Tata’s generational leadership transitions. The case invites comparison between J.R.D. Tata’s compassionate management style and his successor Ratan Tata’s no-nonsense, analytical approach. The case closes by outlining some of the challenges facing the Tata group amidst the changing political and regulatory environment of the 1990s.

Article | Social Enterprise Journal | 2019

Reflections on 25 Years of Building Social Enterprise Education

James E. Austin and V. Kasturi Rangan

Purpose—This paper aims to reflect on 25 years of the Social Enterprise Initiative at the Harvard Business School, examining the processes and thinking involved at key stages of this pioneering Initiative’s implementation and institutionalization.
Design/methodology/approach—The authors adopt an auto-ethnographical approach, reflexively considering the impact of our actions at key stages.
Findings – Reflecting on the experiences, the authors offer their thoughts on the challenges involved in establishing an educational program. They consider that there were give stages in the development of the program, which ensured its longevity, institutionalization and success: giving birth; starting an experiment; gaining acceptability; being embraced and achieving irreversibility.
Findings—Reflecting on the experiences, the authors offer their thoughts on the challenges involved in establishing an educational program. They consider that there were give stages in the development of the program, which ensured its longevity, institutionalization and success: giving birth, starting an experiment, gaining acceptability, being embraced and achieving irreversibility.
Practical implications—The multiple challenges faced, as well as the successes that the authors had over the years, are set out. Awareness of the challenges that the authors faced will support educators to be prepared to overcome the same or similar challenges to implementing and embedding a social enterprise program.
Originality/value—This is the first time that the authors’ reflections on the history of the Social Enterprise Initiative have been brought together. As well as distinctive in their own right, the authors consider that the lessons learned from the work over such a long period could provide valuable insights to those who wish to integrate social enterprise teaching into their settings.

Keywords: Social Enterprise Initiative; Harvard Business School; Social Enterprise; Education; Programs;

Citation:

Austin, James E., and V. Kasturi Rangan. "Reflections on 25 Years of Building Social Enterprise Education." Social Enterprise Journal 15, no. 1 (2019): 2–21. View Details

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