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- Working Paper
ESG: Hyperboles and Reality
By: George Serafeim
ESG has rapidly become a household name leading to both confusion about what it means and creating unrealistic expectations about its effects. In this paper, I draw on more than a decade of research to dispel several myths about ESG and provide answers to important...
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- Article
Accounting for Climate Change
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna
Corporations are facing growing pressure—from investors, advocacy groups, politicians, and even business leaders themselves—to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their operations and their supply and distribution chains. About 90% of the companies in the S&P...
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- November 2021
- Article
Corporate Strategy and the Theory of the Firm in the Digital Age
By: Markus Menz, Sven Kunisch, Julian Birkinshaw, David J. Collis, Nicolai J. Foss, Robert E. Hoskisson and John Prescott
The purpose of this article is to reinvigorate research in the intersection of corporate strategy and the theory of the firm in light of the rapid advancement of digital technologies. Using the theory of the firm as an interpretive lens, we focus our analysis on the...
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- October 2021
- Case
Esquel Group: Turning Crises into Transformation
By: William C. Kirby, Adina Wong, Noah B. Truwit and John McHugh
Focuses on the experience of China's largest shirt manufacturer in managing various aspects of government relations in China. Identifies a wide variety of social initiatives it has undertaken.
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- October 19, 2021
- Article
The Facebook Trap
By: Andy Wu
Facebook has a clear mission: Connect everyone in the world. Clarity is good, but in Facebook’s case, it has also put the company in a bind because the mission—and the company’s vision for creating value through network effects—has also become the source of its biggest...
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- October 2021
- Case
Financial Reporting at Mattel
By: Aiyesha Dey, Trung Nguyen, Marshal Herrmann and Julia Kelley
In September 2020, Diana Ferguson was nearing her first Audit Committee meeting as the newly appointed Audit Committee chair of Mattel, Inc. Mattel was just recovering from an accounting scandal which had revealed the company’s poor internal controls and weak board...
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Keywords:
Accounting;
Accounting Audits;
Financial Reporting;
Financial Statements;
Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Governance;
Governance Compliance;
Governance Controls;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Lawsuits and Litigation;
Business and Shareholder Relations;
Consumer Products Industry;
Entertainment and Recreation Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
California
- October 2021
- Case
The Opioid Settlement and Controversy Over CEO Pay at AmerisourceBergen
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni
In 2020, AmerisourceBergen Corporation, a Fortune 50 company in the drug distribution industry, agreed to settle thousands of lawsuits filed nationwide against the company for its opioid distribution practices that critics alleged had contributed to the nationwide...
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Keywords:
Opioids;
Drug;
Investors;
Shareholder Activism;
Investment Activism;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Governance;
Governance Compliance;
Governance Controls;
Executive Compensation;
Risk Management;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Business and Shareholder Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Distribution Industry;
Health Industry;
Pharmaceutical Industry;
United States;
West Virginia;
Tennessee;
Ohio;
Pennsylvania
- October 2021
- Article
Board Design and Governance Failures at Peer Firms
By: Shelby Gai, J. Yo-Jud Cheng and Andy Wu
Our study introduces board committees as a crucial determinant of board actions. We examine how directors who structurally link different board committees—referred to as multi-committee directors (MCDs)—explain why some board actions are merely symbolic while others...
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- October 2021
- Article
Directors' Perceptions of Board Effectiveness and Internal Operations
By: J. Yo-Jud Cheng, Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Rajesh Vijayaraghavan
We contribute to the growing literature on the effectiveness of corporate boards by examining the effect of two insights that have been largely unexplored in prior studies that use public data. First, since boards’ responsibilities are wide-ranging, more holistic...
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- October 2021
- Article
Shareholder Activism and Firms' Voluntary Disclosure of Climate Change Risks
By: Caroline Flammer, Michael W. Toffel and Kala Viswanathan
This paper examines whether—in the absence of mandated disclosure requirements—shareholder activism can elicit greater disclosure of firms’ exposure to climate change risks. We find that environmental shareholder activism increases the voluntary disclosure of climate...
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Keywords:
Transparency;
Reporting;
Shareholder Engagement;
Shareholder Activism;
Climate Change;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Environmental Management;
Investment Activism;
Corporate Disclosure;
Communication Strategy;
Information Publishing;
Measurement and Metrics;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Problems and Challenges;
United States
- September 2021
- Case
Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance
By: David G. Fubini, Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni
The two vignettes within “Vignettes on Professional Service Firm Governance” (HBS No. 122-024) present various issues relating to governance in professional service firms (“PSFs”). In the first, the Managing Director of a U.S. consulting firm contemplates whether to...
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Keywords:
Consulting Firms;
Professional Services;
Board Of Directors;
Professional Service;
Global Firm;
Executive Leadership;
Globalized Firms and Management;
Private Equity;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Global Strategy;
Corporate Governance;
Governance Controls;
Leadership Development;
Leading Change;
Emerging Markets;
Strategic Planning;
Partners and Partnerships;
Service Industry;
United States;
India
- 22 Sep 2021
- Keynote Speech
Getting Serious About Sustainability: Corporate Governance for a New Era
By: Lynn S. Paine
- September 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Dream: Impact Through Real Estate
By: Michael Chu and John Masko
The Canadian city of Toronto had one of the largest housing affordability problems of any city in the developed world. One company trying to address this problem was Dream, one of the largest real estate groups in Canada. In 2021, Dream had just launched a new system...
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Keywords:
Impact Investing;
Real Estate Development;
Renewable Energy;
Energy Conservation;
Income;
Values and Beliefs;
Borrowing and Debt;
Equity;
Private Equity;
Public Equity;
Financing and Loans;
City;
Government Legislation;
Immigration;
Housing;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Mission and Purpose;
Property;
Business and Government Relations;
Civil Society or Community;
Human Needs;
Sustainable Cities;
Environmental Sustainability;
Social Enterprise;
Real Estate Industry;
Canada;
Toronto
- 2021
- Working Paper
Simplifying Business Group Structures: Value and Governance Implications for Korean Chaebols
By: Akash Chattopadhyay, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin and Charles C.Y. Wang
We examine Korean business groups' transitions from circular-shareholding to (relatively simple) pyramidal-shareholding structures during 2011-2018. The transition did not impact chaebol families' degrees of control or incentive conflicts in firms belonging to...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Employee Ownership and Wealth Inequality: A Path to Reducing Wealth Concentration
By: Thomas Dudley and Ethan Rouen
This paper examines the impact of an economy-wide shift to broad-based employee ownership on wealth concentration in the United States. Relying on government data, we show that if all private firms became 30% employee-owned, the wealth distribution would be profoundly...
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- 2021
- Article
How Top Managers Use the Entrepreneurial Gap to Drive Strategic Change
By: Robert L. Simons and Antonio Davila
Prior research provides strong evidence for the association between business strategy and the design and use of management control systems. We complement this research by examining the role of management control systems in situations of strategic change. We report the...
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- 2017
- Working Paper
Does Financial Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers?
By: Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and Georgios Serafeim
We explore how an organization’s financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory we hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct and they had left the organization...
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- August 2021
- Case
Danone S.A.: Becoming a Mission-Driven Company (A)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Emilie Billaud
Emmanuel Faber became CEO of Danone SA, the French food and beverage company, in 2014. Right from the start, he ran the company with a dual commitment to both profit and purpose (i.e., ESG objectives). In fact, in 2018, he said, “It’s time to make sustainable business...
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- August 2021
- Supplement
Danone S.A.: Becoming a Mission-Driven Company (B)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Emilie Billaud
Describes the events that took place in the first six months after Danone became France’s first “entreprise à mission” (mission-driven company).
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- August 2021
- Supplement
Danone S.A.: Becoming a Mission-Driven Company (C)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Emilie Billaud
Describes the events that took place in the first year after Danone became France’s first “entreprise à mission” (mission-driven company).
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