Social Enterprise

Social Enterprise is a featured research topic and an initiative at Harvard Business School.

HBS pioneered the concept of “social enterprise” with the founding of its Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI) in 1993. Under the early leadership of James Austin on the importance of collaborative relationships to the success of nonprofits and Allen Grossman and V. Kasturi “Kash” Rangan on new directions in nonprofit strategy, we adopted a problem-focused approach toward understanding the challenges associated with driving sustained, high-impact social change. Current research focuses on leadership of socially mission-driven organizations; the role of business leaders and corporate citizenship in driving social change; business models that address poverty; management of high-performing K-12 public school districts; and financing models for the non-profit sector.

Featured Works

 

  1. Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2020

    Student Success at Georgia State University (A)

    Michael W. Toffel, Robin Mendelson and Julia Kelley

    Georgia State University had developed a reputation for driving student success by nearly doubling its graduation rate for students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. It did so while growing its student body and the proportion of Black/African American, low-income, and first-generation students—groups with historically lower postsecondary graduation rates compared to national averages. Georgia State’s Student Success team, led by Tim Renick and Allison Calhoun-Brown, used a data-based approach to deploy micro-grant programs to retain students, implemented predictive analytics to improve student advising, and optimized course sequencing to help students graduate before they exhausted their financial aid. In 2016, they faced a growing “summer melt” problem where nearly 20% of incoming students who committed to attend never actually enrolled at Georgia State—and many never enrolled at any college. At the same time, they wondered how to balance continuing to incrementally improve student success at Georgia State and scaling their efforts to help the many other universities facing similar problems who sought to learn from their experience.

    Keywords: Education; Higher Education; Learning; Curriculum and Courses; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Income; Race; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Operations; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Outcome or Result; Performance; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Evaluation; Performance Improvement; Planning; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Technology; Technology Platform; Education Industry; Atlanta;

    Citation:

    Toffel, Michael W., Robin Mendelson, and Julia Kelley. "Student Success at Georgia State University (A)." Harvard Business School Case 621-006, September 2020.  View Details
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  2. Article | Foundations and Trends® in Accounting | 2020

    Research on Corporate Sustainability: Review and Directions for Future Research

    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 represents promising opportunities for research. Compelling evidence now exists on the role of management control systems, investor pressure and mandated disclosure in improving corporate sustainability outcomes. Research has moved beyond weighing the importance of all sustainability issues equally, with recent studies drawing distinctions between the financial materiality of different sustainability issues. Collectively, this new line of inquiry suggests that improving performance on material sustainability metrics is related to improved financial performance, helping to resolve four decades of inconclusive evidence on the relation between sustainability and financial outcomes. Finally, we review research on how disclosure mediums, accounting standards, information monitors and intermediaries shape the communication of sustainability performance. We conclude with a call for research on how to measure performance in the 21st century when corporate purpose extends beyond shareholder value maximization.

    Keywords: sustainability; sustainability reporting; Sustainability Management; nonfinancial disclosure; nonfinancial information; nonfinancial performance; materiality; ESG; ESG (environmental, social, governance) performance; 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;

    Citation:

    Grewal, Jody, and George Serafeim. "Research on Corporate Sustainability: Review and Directions for Future Research." Foundations and Trends® in Accounting 14, no. 2 (2020): 73–127.  View Details
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  3. Article | Harvard Business Review | September–October 2020

    Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value

    George Serafeim

    Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create real value and impact from their ESG efforts? Too many companies have embraced a "box-ticking" culture and fail to see any value from their ESG efforts. I describe a five-pronged approach for companies to better manage and govern resources allocated to ESG issues.
    1) Think ESG as competitive advantage
    2) Create accountability for ESG throughout the organisation
    3) Identify a corporate purpose and build a culture around it
    4) Give ESG responsibilities to core business leaders
    5) Commit to transparency to ensure learning and continuous improvement

    Keywords: sustainability; Sustainability Management; ESG; ESG (environmental, social, governance) performance; ESG (environmental, social, governance) performance; ESG disclosure; ESG disclosure metrics; ESG ratings; ESG reporting; social impact; impact measurement; social innovation; purpose; corporate purpose; corporate social responsibility; Strategy; Social Enterprise; Society; Accounting; Investment; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Corporate Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Services Industry; Chemical Industry; Technology Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; North America; Europe; Japan; Australia;

    Citation:

    Serafeim, George. "Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value." Harvard Business Review 98, no. 5 (September–October 2020): 38–48.  View Details
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  4. Article | Harvard Business Review (website) | September 3, 2020

    How to Measure a Company's Real Impact

    Ronald Cohen and George Serafeim

    Impact transparency will reshape capitalism. By shifting the pursuit of profit away from negligently creating problems to purposefully creating valuable solutions for the world, it will redefine success, so that its measure is not just money, but the positive impact we make during our lives.

    Keywords: Impact; impact investing; impact measurement; impact investment; impact investment funds; accountability; accounting information; Corporate performance; sustainability; social impact; Capitalism; Accounting; Corporate Accountability; Performance; Measurement and Metrics; Social Enterprise; Society;

    Citation:

    Cohen, Ronald, and George Serafeim. "How to Measure a Company's Real Impact." Harvard Business Review (website) (September 3, 2020).  View Details
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  5. Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2020

    Gerald Chertavian

    Leslie Perlow and Matthew Preble

    Gerald Chertavian (HBS 1992) finds himself at a personal crossroads. It is 1999--the height of the dot com-bubble--and Chertavian and his business partners have just sold their Internet-based business for $83 million. His share of the sale’s proceeds means that he has met his goal of securing his young family’s financial well-being. Now, at age 35, he debates what to do next with his life. As a young man entering Harvard Business School, he made himself a promise: once he secured his family’s finances, he would found the non-profit organization that he first envisioned while volunteering with disadvantaged youth in New York City. He wanted to create an organization that trained young adults in the skills needed to start building successful careers, and to connect them with employers who could provide real-world job opportunities. Was now the time to launch this organization? Or, should Chertavian take one of the several attractive job offers that had come his way following the high-profile sale of his company, make even more money, and then launch his organization at some later date in the future from an even stronger financial position?

    Keywords: Social Enterprise; Personal Development and Career; Decision Choices and Conditions;

    Citation:

    Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Gerald Chertavian." Harvard Business School Case 421-030, August 2020.  View Details
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  6. Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2020

    Sangu Delle

    Leslie Perlow and Matthew Preble

    By 2020, Sangu Delle (MBA 2016) has already made significant progress towards his life-long goal of solving Africa’s myriad and diverse challenges. At 33 years old, he is the founder and chairman of the for-profit Golden Palm Investments Corporation, CEO of Africa Health Holdings Limited, author of a book on entrepreneurship in Africa, founder of a nonprofit (Cleanacwa) that brings improved fresh water infrastructure to African towns and villages, and serves in numerous other volunteer and trustee roles. He believes that he needs to work at scale and across national borders in order to solve the problems that he has identified, but he cannot help but wonder: are his efforts simply too big and too broad? Would it make more sense for him to focus on just one (or a few) industries, causes, or geographies, and perhaps grow from there? Could he reasonably expect to have meaningful impact by going for scale right away?

    Keywords: Impact; impact investing; mental health; social capitalism; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Health Care and Treatment; Personal Development and Career; Health Industry; Africa;

    Citation:

    Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Sangu Delle." Harvard Business School Case 421-031, August 2020.  View Details
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  7. Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2020

    Just Arrived: Integrating Refugees in Sweden

    Brian Trelstad, Emilie Billaud and Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej

    In April 2020, Lisa Tengberg, Harvard Business School MBA Candidate, submitted a paper on Just Arrived, an online platform which matched newly-arrived immigrants with employers in Sweden. The case describes the European refugee crisis and different approaches in Sweden, Italy and Germany to integrate newcomers on the job market. By comparing three organizations with different business models, it posits whether social entrepreneurs can develop systemic solutions. Which business model (for-profit, non-profit) and organizational structure was appropriate to the direct scale of the solution? How would they scale directly or indirectly to deliver (and measure) systems change?

    Keywords: Immigration; Employment; Integration; Business Model; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Employment Industry; Sweden; Italy; Germany;

    Citation:

    Trelstad, Brian, Emilie Billaud, and Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej. "Just Arrived: Integrating Refugees in Sweden." Harvard Business School Case 321-040, August 2020.  View Details
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  8. Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2020

    PayPal: The Next Chapter

    Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb

    Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring that low-income consumers and small businesses can efficiently and inexpensively manage their money. The company fully lives into this purpose, sending employees out into communities to experience firsthand the indignities and high fees imposed on the unbanked, dramatically lowering the cost of international remittances, enabling small businesses to access working capital without credit checks, and facilitating cross-border purchases for small merchants. The company takes the welfare of each stakeholder group seriously: achieving racial and gender pay equity, raising hourly worker pay and benefits to ensure a living wage, and building a diverse and inclusive culture; working closely with regulators and law enforcement to unearth signs of sex trafficking and terrorism; aggressively removing hate-group transactions; providing $4 billion in credit to hundreds of thousands of small businesses that would never have qualified for bank loans, especially those owned by women and people of color. Together these actions have built a high degree of trust that creates a competitive moat in the otherwise commodity business of online payments. During the pandemic, the company was able to get stimulus funds to individuals and small businesses far faster and less expensively than banks or the SBA, and committed $500 million to investments in black-owned businesses. In the 5 years since its IPO, despite intense competition from major banks and credit card companies, Google, Apple, and countless VC-backed fintech players, the company has more than doubled its users, increased profits and boosted the stock price 500%.

    Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Finance; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Social Entrepreneurship; Competitive Advantage; Financial Services Industry;

    Citation:

    Porter, Michael, Mark Kramer, and Annelena Lobb. "PayPal: The Next Chapter." Harvard Business School Case 721-378, August 2020.  View Details
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  9. Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2020

    This Old House of Worship: St. Anthony Shrine (A)

    Ryan Raffaelli

    This multimedia case asks students to consider how leaders of non-profit organizations manage difficult financial, operational, and cultural turnarounds. Since its founding in 1947, St. Anthony Shrine had been a central partner in serving the Downtown Boston community. But in 2002, a steep decline in church attendance seesawed with a growing need to serve the poor and marginalized in the community. The group of Roman Catholic Franciscan Friars, who lived at and managed the Shrine, responded by making a strategic shift from a traditional ministry model to a social service model. However, the decision to focus on social services led to costly programming. After years of accumulated operational inefficiencies, financial missteps, and personnel problems, the friars faced a crisis that required drastic change. In 2013, Father Tom Conway, a Franciscan priest who held Ph.D. in accounting, was appointed the Shrine's new Executive Director. Upon arrival, Fr. Tom confronted a culture of fear that negatively affected the morale of the staff and friars. He also realized that the Shrine’s depleted finances and operational inefficiencies would require bold action to ensure its doors would remain open. The case examines Fr. Tom’s efforts to turn around the finances and operations at the Shrine while also bolstering low employee morale. The case is designed to help students explore how leaders manage a successful turnaround effort. This multimedia case requires minimal pre-class student preparation. In class, instructors show a sequence of video clips, followed by a series of discussions that unfold during the session.

    Keywords: Leadership and Change Management; turnarounds; non-profit management; Leadership; Change Management; Nonprofit Organizations; Management; Religion; Mission and Purpose; Transformation; Organizational Culture; United States;

    Citation:

    Raffaelli, Ryan. "This Old House of Worship: St. Anthony Shrine (A)." Harvard Business School Multimedia/Video Case 421-701, August 2020.  View Details
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  10. Article | ILR Review | August 2020

    Improving Working Conditions in Global Supply Chains: The Role of Institutional Environments and Monitoring Program Design

    Jodi L. Short, Michael W. Toffel and Andrea R. Hugill

    Activism seeking to improve labor conditions in global supply chains has led many transnational corporations to adopt codes of conduct and monitor suppliers for compliance. Drawing on thousands of audits conducted by a major social auditor, we identify structural contingencies in the institutional environment and program design under which codes and monitoring are more likely to be associated with improvements in conditions. At the institutional level, suppliers improve more when they face greater risk that NGOs and the press will expose harmful working conditions and when their buyers have experienced negative publicity for supply chain labor abuses. At the program design level, suppliers improve more on average when audits are pre-announced, when auditors are highly trained, and especially when both are true. However, extended analysis reveals nuances to these findings, demonstrating that improvement varies across violation types. For instance, we find that pre-announced audits were followed by greater improvement in OSH practices but not child labor practices. These findings can inform strategies for improving supply chain working conditions.

    Keywords: Monitoring; supplier relationship; sustainability; Sustainability Management; Sustainable Operations; sustainable supply chains; NGO; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Governance Compliance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Global Range; Working Conditions;

    Citation:

    Short, Jodi L., Michael W. Toffel, and Andrea R. Hugill. "Improving Working Conditions in Global Supply Chains: The Role of Institutional Environments and Monitoring Program Design." ILR Review 73, no. 4 (August 2020): 873–912.  View Details
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See Also

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Initiatives & Projects

  • Social Enterprise

    The Social Enterprise Initiative at HBS applies innovative business practices and managerial disciplines to drive sustained, high-impact social change.

  • Business & Environment

    The Business and Environment Initiative seeks to deepen business leaders' understanding of today’s environmental challenges and to assist them in developing effective solutions.

  • Health Care

    The Health Care Initiative serves as a gateway for health care research, educational programs, and collaboration across all sectors of the health care industry.

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Faculty

HBS Working Knowledge

Pic
re R. Christina Wing
After 50 years at the helm of Cummings Properties, billionaire and philanthropist Bill Cummings is contemplating retirement. Christina R. Wing and Cummings discuss what's next for both the family bus
Experts from Harvard Business School's Social Enterprise Initiative offer advice to nonprofits struggling to survive the coronavirus pandemic.
Pic
re N. Reshmaan Hussam
Almost 1 million Rohingya refugees are sinking deeper into despair while sitting idle in a camp they can’t easily leave. But the opportunity to work might provide a resource more scarce than cash: ho

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Harvard Business Publishing

Article
by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Case
by Leslie Perlow and Matthew Preble
Press Book
by M. E. Porter

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