Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

Accounting for Organizational Employment Impact

by David Freiberg, Katie Panella, George Serafeim and T. Robert Zochowski

Abstract

Organizations create significant positive and negative impacts through their employment practices. This paper builds on the substantial body of research regarding job quality and impact measurement to present a framework for monetized analysis of employment impact. We identify and propose a framework for measuring the four most salient dimensions of impact for employees, including wage quality, career advancement, opportunity, and health and wellbeing, as well as two principle impacts, diversity and employment location, for the broader labor community. The framework and methodology for calculating employment impact-weighted accounting figures is applied to several large corporations, resulting in positive impacts that range between 25 and 249% of their EBITDA suggesting significant heterogeneity in employment practices across organizations. These results demonstrate the feasibility of calculating employment impact in monetary terms, and provide a foundation for future application across additional geographies and contexts.

Keywords: employment; Impact-Weighted Accounts; IWAI; Employment Impact;

Language: English Format: Print 88 pages SSRN Read Now

Citation:

Freiberg, David, Katie Panella, George Serafeim, and T. Robert Zochowski. "Accounting for Organizational Employment Impact." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-050, October 2020.

About the Author

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George Serafeim
Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration
Accounting and Management

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