Accounting and Management

- RECENT PUBLICATION: Working Paper
  Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019
  Pathways to Materiality: How Sustainability Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors
  Jean Rogers and George Serafeim
  As sustainability issues, also labelled environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, become financially material, companies, investors, and regulators are designing strategies and policies to improve sustainability disclosure and performance. In this paper, we outline a framework of how sustainability issues become financially material arguing that materiality is not a “state of being” but a “process of becoming.” Our framework could assist companies and investors to make resource allocation decisions based on expectations about future materiality, social entrepreneurs and NGOs to develop their theories of social change, and policy makers to design disclosure regulations. Moreover, our framework generates predictions about the conditions under which sustainability issues become financial material that could be empirically tested in the future.
  Keywords: materiality; ESG; Pharmaceutical Companies; ethics; Business ethics; sustainability; environment; finance; accounting; disclosure; disclosure and access; regulation; social impact; valuation; corporate governance; corporate accountability;
  
  Citation:
  Rogers, Jean, and George Serafeim. "Pathways to Materiality: How Sustainability Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-056, November 2019. View Details
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- RECENT PUBLICATION: Case
  Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2019
  Celebrity Fashions Limited (A)
  V.G. Narayanan, Tanvi Deshpande and Shreya Ramachandran
  In May 2017 in Chennai, India, the chairman of Celebrity Fashions doubted whether the company could last until the end of the year. Venkatesh Rajagopal had found that the company, a readymade garment manufacturing and exporter he founded in 1989, was hitting hard times financially. It had been dealing with declining revenues for the past five years, and its losses had tripled between 2014-16. A slowdown in factory plant processes in 2006 and the value of the rupee against the dollar, as well as wage arrears, contributed to the financial problem. Rajagopal’s son, Vidyuth, had recently joined the company after moving roles both within Celebrity and its sister company, Indian Terrain, and at organizations elsewhere. In 2017, as joint managing director, he was convinced he would be able to turn the company around. Vidyuth, along with the independent director Venky appointed, identified the problems. There were communication gaps on the factory floor, and this caused lags in the shipments of garments and pushed up costs of production. The financial problems had confused some employees, and others were not aware of it at all. The leadership team was not communicating effectively. Would Celebrity be able to cut operational costs, and would Vidyuth be able to get the buy-in from his team to transform the company, and protect his family business?
  
  Citation:
  Narayanan, V.G., Tanvi Deshpande, and Shreya Ramachandran. "Celebrity Fashions Limited (A)." Harvard Business School Case 120-053, November 2019. View Details
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- RECENT PUBLICATION: Working Paper
  Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019
  The Effect of Systems of Management Controls on Misreporting
  Aishwarrya Deore, Susanna Gallani and Ranjani Krishnan
  Organizations use systems of controls to encourage goal congruent employee behavior. Some control instruments within the system (e.g., cultural controls) guide employees and align their behavioral choices with organizational values, while other instruments (e.g., budgetary controls) facilitate resource allocation in the presence of asymmetric information. We explore how a system of controls comprising of cultural controls (i.e., mission statements) and budgetary controls influence budgetary misreporting. Experimental results indicate that a mission statement that emphasizes integrity results in lower misreporting when combined with budgetary controls that assume self-interested managers relative to its combination with budgetary controls that assume honest managers. Mission statements that emphasize financial performance do not reduce misreporting when combined with either type of budgetary controls. Organizational stewardship partially mediates the effect of systems of controls on misreporting. Our study contributes to the literature on systems of controls by providing evidence that certain combinations of control instruments are more effective than others in achieving important organizational objectives such as reducing budgetary misreporting.
  Keywords: directing controls; misreporting; mission statements; participative budgeting; stewardship theory; systems of management controls; Management Systems; Governance Controls; Mission and Purpose; Financial Reporting;
  
  Citation:
  Deore, Aishwarrya, Susanna Gallani, and Ranjani Krishnan. "The Effect of Systems of Management Controls on Misreporting." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-053, October 2019. View Details
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The Accounting & Management unit at Harvard Business School strives to be the worldwide leader in research, course development, and teaching on top managements' use of performance measurement systems to:

Communicate with external investors to ensure that their firms' securities are fairly priced and that they are able to access capital,
Measure and evaluate their firms' economic performance,
Improve resource allocation and strategy implementation within their firms, and
Build accountability for performance through effective external and internal governance.

Unit research, course development, and teaching fall into two broad areas: Financial Reporting and Analysis and Management Accounting. Our research helps scholars and educators understand current best practices for the design and use of performance measurement systems that help managers to build more effective, value-creating organizations. Our teaching materials enable us to bring the results of this research into the classroom, and to practice.

In The News

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Cold Call, 05 NOV 2019
U.S. Business Schools Realize ESG is no Fad but Part of Long-Term Trend

Re: Vikram Gandhi and George Serafeim

Financial Times, 20 OCT 2019
Companies’ Non-GAAP Adjustments to Net Income Have Soared

Re: Charles Wang

Wall Street Journal,
18 OCT 2019

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