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COP27: What Can Business Leaders Do to Fight Climate Change Now?

by Lynn Schenk and Danielle Kost

The US government plans to spend $370 billion to cut greenhouse gases and expand renewable energy—its biggest investment yet. In the wake of COP27, we asked Harvard Business School faculty members how executives could seize this moment.

The Moral Enterprise: How Two Companies Profit with Purpose

by Avery Forman

Despite polarized attitudes, Rebecca Henderson argues that it's the perfect time for companies to reset their moral compass. In an essay from the book A Political Economy of Justice, she explores the social efforts of Cadbury and Unilever.

COVID-19’s Hard Lessons Might Prepare Business for Climate Change

by Danielle Kost

We asked experts from the HBS Business and Environment Initiative how the coronavirus crisis might change the way companies think about sustainability. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Fighting Climate Change Requires a New Capitalism

by Danielle Kost

Tackling one of the biggest crises of our time—climate change—requires leaders to embrace a new vision of business, argues Rebecca Henderson. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

6 Traits That Set Top Business Leaders Apart

by Danielle Kost

What do the best leaders do differently? Harvard Business School faculty members highlight the leadership skills and qualities that separate good from great. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Torched Planet: The Business Case to Reinvent Almost Everything

by Rebecca Henderson

With climate change scorching the planet, business leaders have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the world—and make money in the process, says Rebecca Henderson. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Should a Pension Fund Try to Change the World?

Re: Rebecca M. Henderson & George Serafeim

Can inclusivity, sustainability, and better governance boost economies? Rebecca Henderson and George Serafeim discuss the impact investing efforts of GPIF, Japan’s government pension fund. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

First Look at New Research and Ideas, October 10, 2017

Sean Silverthorne

Measuring sales the right way ... Does crime desensitize victims? ... Innovation in a 100-year-old medical devices giant .

Why German Business Supports, Trains and Hires Syrian Refugees

Re: Rebecca M. Henderson

Germany has been taking in more than a million Syrian refugees each year, and involves the business community in making them productive workers. Has it worked out as hoped? In this podcast, Rebecca Henderson discusses her case study on Germany's experience. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

The 10 Most Popular 'Cold Call' Podcasts

Re: Multiple Faculty

As the year comes to a close, we revisit the Cold Call podcasts that attracted the most listeners in 2016. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Walmart: Changing the World for Better or Worse?

Re: Rebecca M. Henderson

Can big companies fix big problems? Are they responsible for doing so? As the third-largest employer in the world, any move Wal-mart makes reverberates around the globe. Yet despite its many successes and innovations, particularly in terms of sustainability, the company often faces criticism for its business practices. Professor Rebecca Henderson discusses what she calls the paradigmatic case: how Wal-mart takes huge risks, makes great strides, and demonstrates how companies are one of the few instruments humanity has for changing the world at scale, for better or for worse. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

3 Ways Firms Can Profit From Environmental Investments

by Carmen Nobel

Rebecca Henderson lays out three ways for firms to profit from investing in environmental sustainability: forestalling risk, increasing operational efficiency, and selling to the environmental niche. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Making the Numbers? ‘Short Termism’ & the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disaster

by Hazhir Rahmandad, Nelson P. Repenning & Rebecca Henderson

Steady and reliable earnings bring many advantages to the firms that deliver them. Share prices rise, capital costs decline, and bonuses become both bigger and more likely. Such firms grow faster and attract more talented people to manage that growth. Despite these benefits, however, scholars and practitioners have long been critical of the short-term focus that often characterizes western managers. In this paper the authors develop and describe a model suggesting that the solution to this seeming paradox lies in the fact that earnings management, above a given threshold, is relatively harmless, but below this threshold it can be disastrous. The results have important implications for understanding managerial incentives and the internal processes that create sustained advantage. Key concepts include: The model in this paper reconciles the tension in management scholarship between those who have shown that a focus on "managing earnings" is associated with better performance in the capital markets and those who have suggested it may be dangerously short sighted. Balancing attention to both short and long term investments may be a critical source of competitive advantage. A key source of above average performance might be the differential ability of firms to create relational contracts that incorporate subjective evaluations of capability. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

The Business of Climate Change

Re: Multiple Faculty

What is the role of business and its leaders in creating positive climate change? In the middle of Climate Week, Six Harvard Business School faculty provide different perspectives. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Tackling Climate Change Will Cost Less Than We Think

by Rebecca Henderson

Yes, addressing climate change will be expensive, but not nearly as much as the costs of delaying action, argues Rebecca Henderson. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Calderón: Economic Arguments Needed to Fight Climate Change

by Carmen Nobel

Former President of Mexico Felipe Calderón says the United States Congress and Chinese coal plants are the biggest obstacles to fixing climate change. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Management Practices, Relational Contracts, and the Decline of General Motors

by Susan Helper & Rebecca Henderson

What led to General Motors' decline? Long regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, its share of the US market fell from 62.6 to 19.8 percent between 1980 and 2009, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. The authors argue that the conventional explanations for GM's decline are seriously incomplete. They discuss a number of causes for the firm's difficulties, and make the case that one of the reasons that GM began to struggle was because rival Toyota's practices were rooted in the widespread deployment of effective relational contracts--agreements based on subjective measures of performance that could neither be fully specified beforehand nor verified after the fact and that were thus enforced by the shadow of the future. GM's history, organizational structure, and managerial practices made it very difficult to maintain these kinds of agreements either within the firm or between the firm and its suppliers. The authors also argue that at least two aspects of GM's experience seem common to a wide range of firms. First, past success often led to extended periods of denial: Indeed a pattern of denial following extended success appears to be a worldwide phenomenon. Second, many large American manufacturers had difficulty adopting the bundle of practices pioneered by firms like Toyota. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of this history for efforts to revive American manufacturing. Key concepts include: Public support for economic growth has usually focused on the diffusion of technology-based insights. Learning more about when (and what type of) relational contracts are likely to be valuable may be just as important. For General Motors, the historical success of the firm led its senior managers to deny and/or misperceive the nature of the threat presented by Japanese competition for much of the 1970s and 1980s. GM faced difficulties in the 1990s once the firm had made the decision to adopt Toyota's managerial practices. It took time for GM to understand exactly what Toyota was doing. Then problems in building new relational contracts greatly slowed GM's efforts to respond effectively, either through innovation or by imitating Toyota's efforts. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Private Sector, Public Good

by Dina Gerdeman

What role, if any, does business have in creating social good? A new seminar series at Harvard Business School tackles this complex question. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Teaching Climate Change to Skeptics

by Carmen Nobel

The Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School aims to shift the debate about climate change from a political discussion to a practical conversation about risk and reward. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

A Manager’s Moral Obligation to Preserve Capitalism

by Michael Blanding

Harvard Business School's Rebecca M. Henderson and Karthik Ramanna argue that company managers have a moral obligation to preserve capitalism. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.