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• Article | Daedalus | Fall 2020

  Climate in the Boardroom: Struggling to Reconcile Business as Usual & the End of the World as We Know It

  Rebecca Henderson

  How does one witness to businesspeople about climate change? Climate change is a problem for the collective and the long term, whereas business often requires a ruthless focus on the individual and the quarter. Climate change is an ethical catastrophe whose solution almost certainly requires a profoundly moral response, but talk of morality in the boardroom is often regarded with profound suspicion. Reconciling these tensions has forced me to navigate between worlds in an ongoing attempt to persuade businesspeople that solving climate change is both an economic and a moral necessity, and that the purpose of business is not only to make money but also to support the institutions that will enable us to build a sustainable world. This has not always been easy.

  Keywords: sustainable business; Climate Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability;

  Citation:

  Henderson, Rebecca. "Climate in the Boardroom: Struggling to Reconcile Business as Usual & the End of the World as We Know It." Special Issue on Witnessing Climate Change. Daedalus 149, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 118–124.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2015 (Revised August 2020)

  Putting the Guiding Principles into Action: Human Rights at Barrick Gold (A)

  Rebecca Henderson and Nien-he Hsieh

  In 2010, Human Rights Watch, a well-regarded international NGO, approached Barrick Gold asserting that members of the company’s security force at the Porgera Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea had on multiple occasions raped women who were trespassing onto the mine’s waste dumps in search of gold. Subsequent investigations identified significant evidence to support the allegations, and the revelations led to broad ranging change at both Porgera and at Barrick more generally. Drawing heavily on the United Nation’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (GPs), Barrick not only moved to make efforts to provide restitution to the women involved, but also designed and rolled out a comprehensive set of policies designed to embed the protection of human rights into the entire company. Barrick also played a central role in leading the development of an auditing and verification framework for the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (the VPs), a set of commitments embraced by most of the world’s largest extractive companies. The case provides students with an opportunity to analyze the challenges that arise from operating in environments with weak state institutions; to examine the challenges of implementing voluntary frameworks, such as the GPs or VPs, and their potential as alternatives to state institutions; to learn about the field of business and human rights; and to develop an analytic framework for evaluating the responsibilities of business leaders to society, especially from the perspective of human rights.

  Keywords: human rights; business and society; Rights; Policy; Leading Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations;

  Citation:

  Henderson, Rebecca, and Nien-he Hsieh. "Putting the Guiding Principles into Action: Human Rights at Barrick Gold (A)." Harvard Business School Case 315-108, March 2015. (Revised August 2020.)  View Details

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• Article | AEA Papers and Proceedings | May 2020

  Tackling Climate Change Requires Organizational Purpose

  Rebecca Henderson and George Serafeim

  Unchecked climate change presents a profound threat to economic growth and political stability but despite widespread public concern about the issue, global emissions of greenhouse gases have not declined. Indeed current “business as usual” predictions imply that average global temperatures will rise by more than 4⁰C by 2100, with potentially catastrophic results. In this paper, we argue that while putting in place an effective regime for pricing GHG emissions is more essential than ever, it is unlikely to be sufficient. It is in this context that we hypothesize that increasing the fraction of commercial firms who are “authentically purpose-driven” might have a very significant effect on the problem of climate change.

  Keywords: corporate purpose; purpose; sustainability; environment; Climate Change; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Leadership;

  Citation:

  Henderson, Rebecca, and George Serafeim. "Tackling Climate Change Requires Organizational Purpose." AEA Papers and Proceedings 110 (May 2020): 177–180.  View Details

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