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- September–October 2022
- Article
The Essential Link Between ESG Targets and Financial Performance
By: Mark R. Kramer and Marc W. Pfitzer
Despite heightened attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, surprisingly few companies are making meaningful progress in delivering on their commitments. Most firms are not integrating ESG factors into internal strategy and operational decisions...
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- 2022
- Article
Which Corporate ESG News Does the Market React To?
By: George Serafeim and Aaron Yoon
Using a dataset that classifies firm-level ESG news as positive and negative, we examine how stock prices react to different types of ESG news. We analyze 111,020 firm-day observations for 3,126 companies and find that prices react only to issues identified as...
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- July 2021
- Article
Material Sustainability Information and Stock Price Informativeness
By: Jody Grewal, Clarissa Hauptmann and George Serafeim
As part of the SEC’s revision of Regulation S-K, many investors proposed the mandatory disclosure of sustainability information in the form of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data. However, progress is contingent on collecting evidence regarding which...
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Keywords:
Voluntary Disclosure;
Accounting Standards;
Sustainability;
Nonfinancial Information;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Stock Price Informativeness;
Synchronicity;
Environmental Sustainability;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Accountability;
Stocks;
Price;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Accounting;
Standards
- January 2021
- Supplement
Aster DM Healthcare: Budget Exercise
By: V.G. Narayanan and Amy Klopfenstein
In April 2020, Alisha Moopen, Deputy Managing Director of Aster DM Healthcare, a network of clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies in the Middle East and India, must create her company’s budget for the 2021 fiscal year in light of the onset of Covid-19. The pandemic had...
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Keywords:
Decision Making;
Decisions;
Forecasting and Prediction;
Judgments;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Cost vs Benefits;
Finance;
Borrowing and Debt;
Financial Institutions;
Banks and Banking;
Financial Condition;
Financial Liquidity;
Accounting;
Budgets and Budgeting;
Management;
Crisis Management;
Health Pandemics;
Health Industry;
Asia;
India;
United Arab Emirates;
Dubai
- 2020
- Article
Research on Corporate Sustainability: Review and Directions for Future Research
By: Jody Grewal and George Serafeim
We review the literature on corporate sustainability and provide directions for future research. Our review focuses on three actions: measuring, managing and communicating corporate sustainability performance. Measurement is the least developed of the three and...
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Keywords:
Sustainability;
Sustainability Reporting;
Sustainability Management;
Nonfinancial Disclosure;
Nonfinancial Information;
Nonfinancial Performance;
Materiality;
ESG;
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
ESG Disclosure;
ESG Disclosure Metrics;
ESG Ratings;
ESG Reporting;
Inequality;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Accounting;
Finance;
Management;
Strategy;
Environmental Sustainability;
Climate Change;
Diversity;
Equality and Inequality;
Corporate Disclosure;
Measurement and Metrics;
Corporate Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact
- 2021
- Working Paper
Corporate Environmental Impact: Measurement, Data and Information
By: David Freiberg, DG Park, George Serafeim and T. Robert Zochowski
As an organization’s environmental impact has become a central societal consideration, thereby affecting industry and organizational competitiveness, interest in measuring and analyzing environmental impact has increased. We develop a methodology to derive comparable...
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Keywords:
Environment;
Impact;
Measurement;
Environmental Ratings;
Corporate Valuation;
Financial Materiality;
Sustainability;
Environmental Impact;
Environmental Strategy;
Impact-Weighted Accounts;
IWAI;
Environmental Sustainability;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Measurement and Metrics;
Valuation
- 2020
- Working Paper
How ESG Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors
By: George Serafeim
Management and disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have received substantial interest over the last decade. In this paper, we outline a framework of how ESG issues become financially material, affecting corporate profitability and valuation....
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Keywords:
Materiality;
ESG;
Pharmaceutical Companies;
Business Ethics;
Sustainability;
Environment;
Disclosure;
Disclosure And Access;
Regulation;
Social Impact;
Environmental Sustainability;
Social Issues;
Corporate Governance;
Ethics;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Accountability;
Resource Allocation;
Finance;
Accounting;
Valuation
- 2019
- White Paper
Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy
By: George Serafeim, T. Robert Zochowski and Jennifer Downing
Reimagining capitalism is an imperative. We need to create a more inclusive and sustainable form of capitalism that works for every person and the planet. Massive environmental damage, growing income and wealth disparity, stress, and depression within developed...
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- December 2018 (Revised August 2022)
- Teaching Note
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Siko Sikochi and Paul Healy
In early 2014, Corporate Learning, one of three business units at Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), was in the process of revamping its flagship product, Harvard Manage-Mentor (HMM) from version 11.0 (HMM11) to version 12.0 (HMM12). The revamped software would be...
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- 2018
- Article
What Can Managers Privately Disclose to Investors?
By: Eugene F. Soltes
Regulators have long been aware that differential access to information can undermine the efficiency and fairness of financial markets. In an effort to place investors on equal footing, the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2000 created Regulation Fair Disclosure...
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- October 2018
- Case
Safecast: Bootstrapping Human Capital to Big Data
By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton
On March 11, 2011 at 2:46pm, a 9.1-on-the-Richter-scale, six-minute long earthquake unleashed a tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku region of Japan, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power facility and releasing sufficient radioactive material into the air and ocean...
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Keywords:
Citizen Science;
Creative Commons;
Open Data;
Open Architecture;
Volunteer-based Organization;
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility;
311;
Nuclear;
Radiation;
Crowdsourcing;
Bgeigie;
Geiger Counters;
Kickstarter;
Sustainability;
Sustainable Business And Innovation;
Design;
Energy Generation;
Social Entrepreneurship;
Human Capital;
Innovation and Invention;
Crisis Management;
Organizational Structure;
Organizational Design;
Information Technology;
Business Model;
Energy Industry;
Technology Industry;
Japan;
North and Central America;
Europe
- 2018
- Working Paper
Alleviating Time Poverty among the Working Poor: A Pre-Registered Longitudinal Field Experiment
By: Ashley V. Whillans and Colin West
Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we will conduct a longitudinal field experiment in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of working mothers, a...
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Keywords:
Time;
Money;
Subjective Well-being;
Administrative Costs;
Friction;
Poverty;
Welfare;
Perception
- August 2018 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Paul Healy and Siko Sikochi
In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company’s CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP’s three business units, would be...
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- July 2018 (Revised July 2018)
- Teaching Note
Argentina Power—Don’t Cry for Me Argentina
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree
Teaching Note for HBS No. 218-041. This case concerns a complex potential energy infrastructure investment in Argentina by a global conglomerate shortly after Mauricio Macri (“Macri”) became President of Argentina in 2015. The central issues are (i) why was a country...
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- May 2018 (Revised October 2018)
- Case
Argentina Power—Don't Cry for Me Argentina
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree
In 2016, Bruce Wayne, Managing Director of Energy Finance Corporation (“EFC”), was refining the Investment/Credit Committee materials for the development of up to 10 power generating plants in Argentina. As a subsidiary of the much larger International Conglomerate...
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Keywords:
Cross Border;
Energy Markets;
Infrastructure Finance;
Infrastructure Development;
Business Subsidiaries;
Business Cycles;
Macroeconomics;
Energy Generation;
International Finance;
Project Finance;
Government and Politics;
Demand and Consumers;
Infrastructure;
Financial Services Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Argentina;
Latin America
- 2018
- Introduction
Introduction: History and Political Economy
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona
This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis, and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end...
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- 2018
- Book
New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy
By: Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert
This volume offers a snapshot of the resurgent historiography of political economy in the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis and suggests fruitful new agendas for research on the political-economic nexus as it has developed in the Western world since the end...
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- October 2017 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
JetBlue: Relevant Sustainability Leadership (A)
By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg
In 2017, JetBlue, the airline founded on the mission to “bring humanity back to air travel,” was considering becoming one of the first companies to report its sustainability performance according to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards. SASB...
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Keywords:
Sustainability;
Metrics;
Leadership And Change Management;
Airlines;
Innovation;
Purpose;
ESG;
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Sustainability Reporting;
Change Management;
Leadership;
Financial Reporting;
Environmental Sustainability;
Mission and Purpose;
Reports;
Competitive Strategy;
Measurement and Metrics;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Air Transportation Industry;
United States
- September 2017
- Case
Blackstone's Julia Kahr at the Summit
By: Paul A. Gompers, John D. Dionne and Amram Migdal
In 2009, Blackstone, the New York-based alternative asset and financial services firm, committed to invest up to $750 million into Summit Materials, a new company in the aggregates sector (i.e., construction materials, such as crushed stone, sand, gravel, cement,...
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Keywords:
Roll Up;
Private Equity Roll Up;
Aggregates;
Aggregates Materials;
Construction Materials;
Business Ventures;
Acquisition;
Leveraged Buyouts;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Engineering;
Construction;
Finance;
Capital;
Equity;
Private Equity;
Financial Instruments;
Investment;
Housing;
Management;
Goals and Objectives;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Growth Management;
Personal Development and Career;
Management Teams;
Planning;
Problems and Challenges;
Value;
Valuation;
Value Creation;
Financial Services Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
United States
- August 2017
- Article
Should Governments Invest More in Nudging?
By: Shlomo Benartzi, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, Cass R. Sunstein, Richard H. Thaler, Maya Shankar, Will Tucker-Ray, William J. Congdon and Steven Galing
Governments are increasingly adopting behavioral science techniques for changing individual behavior in pursuit of policy objectives. The types of “nudge” interventions that governments are now adopting alter people’s decisions without coercion or significant changes...
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Keywords:
Nudge;
Nudge Unit;
Choice Architecture;
Behavioral Science;
Behavioral Economics;
Savings;
Pension Plan;
Education;
College Enrollment;
Energy;
Electricity Usage;
Preventive Health;
Influenza Vaccination;
Flu Shot;
Open Materials;
Behavior;
Governance;
Economics;
Policy;
Power and Influence