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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
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Changing Role of Business in Society
Business interaction with the U.S. government, historically based on securing industry or company special interests at the expense of the public good, has enabled and furthered government dysfunction. Gridlock within the American political system has precluded the...
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Keywords:
Politics;
Shared Value;
Social Progress Index;
Competitiveness;
Walmart;
BlackRock;
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
ESG;
Transparency;
Campaign Contributions;
Campaign Finance;
Lobbying;
Revolving Door;
Political Ideology;
Political Parties;
Political Partisanship;
Government And Business;
Government Innovation;
Elections;
Democracy;
Capitalism;
Stakeholder Capitalism;
Shareholder Engagement;
Competition;
Strategy;
Government and Politics;
Society;
Social Issues;
Human Needs;
Wealth and Poverty;
Business and Community Relations;
Business and Government Relations;
Corporate Accountability;
Financial Services Industry;
Banking Industry;
United States
- April 2021 (Revised July 2021)
- Case
Public Equities Impact Investing at BlackRock
By: Shawn A. Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi, Michael Norris and John Masko
In early 2021, BlackRock—the world’s largest asset manager with $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM)—sought to become a leader in promoting environmental and social sustainability. Over the previous ten years, CEO Larry Fink had written an annual open letter to...
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Keywords:
Impact Investing;
Renewable Energy;
Climate Change;
Environmental Sustainability;
Equity;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Financial Management;
Investment Funds;
Investment Return;
Mission and Purpose;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Financial Services Industry;
United States
- December 2020 (Revised September 2021)
- Case
PG&E and the First Climate Change Bankruptcy
By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott
In early 2020, the California-based utility PG&E filed a second amended plan of reorganization. PG&E had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of more than $30 billion of legal claims brought against it for its alleged role in causing California wildfires. The...
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- October 2020 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Divesting Harvard's Endowment
By: Daniel Green, Luis M. Viceira and Holly Fetter
By early 2020 Harvard University was facing growing pressure from students, faculty, and alumni to divest its $40 billion endowment of financial stakes in fossil fuel producers. Its previous policy of avoiding the issue was quickly becoming outdated—$21 trillion of...
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- September 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
Hot Wheels at Mattel: Reinventing the Wheel
By: Elie Ofek, Andres Terech and Nicole Tempest Keller
In 2017, Chris Down, Global Brand General Manager for Hot Wheels, and his team from the Advanced Play Group within Mattel, Inc., were considering which innovation path to pursue in order to "future proof" the Hot Wheels franchise going forward. Hot Wheels was the...
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- September 2020
- Case
Keeping It in the Family at the Hayden Saw Company
By: V.G. Narayanan and John Masko
In 2019, Board Chair and third-generation shareholder Helen Fullerton was preparing for a meeting to discuss Ohio-based Hayden Saw Company’s (Hayden) future as a family business. As the company entered its fifth decade, the Hayden family was dealing with three distinct...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Iterative Coordination and Innovation
By: Sourobh Ghosh and Andy Wu
Agile management practices from the software industry continue to transform the way organizations innovate across industries, yet they remain understudied in the organizations literature. We investigate the widespread Agile practice of iterative coordination: frequent...
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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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- November 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
The Weir Group: Reforming Executive Pay (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Federica Gabrieli
In February 2018, the Remuneration Committee together with the full Board of Directors of the Scotland-based engineering company The Weir Group had to decide whether to seek a shareholder vote at the upcoming Annual General Meeting in April on a proposal to reform the...
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Keywords:
General Management;
Board Of Directors;
Executive Committees;
Human Resource Management;
Compensation;
Pay For Performance;
Incentives;
Bonuses;
Incentive Programs;
Employee Stock Ownership Plans;
Performance Measurement;
Corporate Governance;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Human Resources;
Management;
Executive Compensation;
Change;
Performance Evaluation;
Employee Stock Ownership Plan;
Europe;
United Kingdom;
Scotland
- October 2018
- Case
The Proxy Fight at ADP
By: Robin Greenwood and E. Scott Mayfield
In July 2017, shares of Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) surged 12% following a report that the activist investor Bill Ackman had acquired a sizable stake in the company and planned to nominate his own slate of directors at the company’s annual meeting in...
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- September 2018 (Revised May 2021)
- Teaching Plan
Eastern Bank: Innovating Through Eastern Labs
By: Karen Mills, Dennis Campbell and Aaron Mukerjee
Eastern Bank is a 200-year-old New England mutual bank with a community focus. Eastern specializes in small business lending, having made strategic investments to become the top SBA lender in New England in the midst of the Great Recession, when other banks were...
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Keywords:
Banks;
Fintech;
Innovation;
Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship;
Innovation And Strategy;
Technological Change;
Technology And Innovation Management;
Entrepreneurial Management;
Intrapreneurship;
Banks and Banking;
Innovation and Invention;
Entrepreneurship;
Innovation Strategy;
Technological Innovation;
Information Technology;
Management
- March 2018 (Revised March 2018)
- Teaching Note
OpenInvest
By: Boris Vallee and Caitlin Reimers Brumme
Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolio to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapon manufacturers stocks or overweighting LGBTQ...
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- February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
OpenInvest
By: Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller
Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting...
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- October 2017 (Revised April 2019)
- Case
Eastern Bank: Innovating Through Eastern Labs
By: Karen Mills, Dennis Campbell and Aaron Mukerjee
Eastern Bank is a 200-year-old New England mutual bank with a community focus. Eastern specializes in small business lending, having made strategic investments to become the top SBA lender in New England in the midst of the Great Recession, when other banks were...
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- December 2016
- Article
Deal Process Design in Management Buyouts
Management buyouts (MBOs) are an economically and legally significant class of transaction: not only do they account for more than $10 billion in deal volume per year, on average, but they also play an important role in defining the relationship between inside and...
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- Article
ESG Integration in Investment Management: Myths and Realities
By: Sakis Kotsantonis, Christopher Pinney and George Serafeim
The authors’ aim in this article is to set the record straight on the financial performance of sustainable investing while also correcting a number of other widespread misconceptions about this rapidly growing set of principles and methods.
Myth Number 1:...
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- January 2016 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
The Allergan Board Under Fire (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Suraj Srinivasan, John C. Coates and David Lane
In 2014, the Allergan Inc. board of directors received a surprise takeover offer from Valeant Pharmaceuticals in alliance with hedge fund activist Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management. In the unprecedented arrangement between an acquirer and a hedge fund...
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Keywords:
Allergan, Inc.;
Valeant;
Ackman;
Pershing Square;
Tender Offer;
Activist Investors;
Business Models;
R＆D;
Board Of Directors;
Securities Litigation;
Acquisition Strategy;
Takeover Defenses;
Hedge Funds;
Shareholder Rights;
Proxy Contest;
Shareholder Special Meetings;
Legal Issues In Contested Takeovers;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Mergers and Acquisitions;
Corporate Governance;
Management Teams;
Business and Shareholder Relations;
Pharmaceutical Industry
- January 2016 (Revised January 2019)
- Supplement
The Allergan Board Under Fire (B)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Suraj Srinivasan, John C. Coates and David Lane
In 2014, the Allergan Inc. board of directors received a surprise takeover offer from Valeant Pharmaceuticals in alliance with hedge fund activist Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management. In the unprecedented arrangement between an acquirer and a hedge fund...
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Keywords:
Allergan, Inc.;
Valeant;
Ackman;
Pershing Square;
Tender Offer;
Activist Investors;
Business Models;
R＆D;
Board Of Directors;
Securities Litigation;
Acquisition Strategy;
Takeover Defenses;
Hedge Funds;
Shareholder Rights;
Proxy Contest;
Shareholder Special Meetings;
Legal Issues In Contested Takeovers;
Corporate Governance;
Investment Activism;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Business Model;
Business and Shareholder Relations;
Valuation;
Pharmaceutical Industry
- Article
Professionalism, Fiduciary Duty, and Health-Related Business Leadership
Expanding fiduciary duty to leaders of health-related businesses can help leaders meet the challenges of caring for not only the corporation and shareholders but also the patients and medical professionals. How should leaders of health-related businesses weigh the...
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