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• Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2019 (Revised March 2019)

  Should a Pension Fund Try to Change the World? Inside GPIF's Embrace of ESG

  Rebecca Henderson, George Serafeim, Josh Lerner and Naoko Jinjo

  Citation:

  Henderson, Rebecca, George Serafeim, Josh Lerner, and Naoko Jinjo. "Should a Pension Fund Try to Change the World? Inside GPIF's Embrace of ESG." Harvard Business School Case 319-067, January 2019. (Revised March 2019.)  View Details

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• Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | October 2016 (Revised February 2019)

  Turnaround at Norsk Gjenvinning (A) and (B)

  George Serafeim and David Freiberg

  Citation:

  Serafeim, George, and David Freiberg. "Turnaround at Norsk Gjenvinning (A) and (B)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 117-037, October 2016. (Revised February 2019.)  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

  Corporate Sustainability: A Strategy?

  Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

  We explore the extent of adopting sustainability practices over time and the implications for firm performance. We find that for almost all industries, sustainability practices converge within an industry over time, implying that they spread as common practices. We also find that the extent of convergence across industries is associated with the adoption of sustainability by the industry’s market leaders and the relative importance of environmental and social issues compared to governance issues. Further, we distinguish between a set of sustainability practices on which companies converge within an industry, which we term “common practices,” and a set on which they do not, which we term “strategic.” We subsequently explore performance implications and find that the adoption of strategic sustainability practices is significantly and positively associated with both return on capital and expectations of future performance as reflected in price to book valuation multiples, whereas the adoption of common sustainability practices is reliably correlated only with expectations of future performance. Overall, we provide evidence about the role of sustainability as a long-term corporate strategy and as a common practice.

  Keywords: sustainability; Corporate performance; industry analysis; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Performance; Corporate Strategy;

  Citation:

  Ioannou, Ioannis, and George Serafeim. "Corporate Sustainability: A Strategy?" Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-065, January 2019.  View Details

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