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    • COVID-19 Business Impact Center
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      Cold Call
      A podcast featuring faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
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      • 05 Jan 2021
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Using Behavioral Science to Improve Well-Being for Social Workers

      For child and family social workers, coping with the hardships of children and parents is part of the job. But that can cause a lot of stress. Is it possible for financially constrained organizations to improve social workers’ well-being using non-cash rewards, recognition, and other strategies from behavioral science? Assistant Professor Ashley Whillans describes the experience of Chief Executive Michael Sanders’ at the UK’s What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, as he led a research program aimed at improving the morale of social workers in her case, “The What Works Centre: Using Behavioral Science to Improve Social Worker Well-being.”  Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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      Corporate GovernanceRemove Corporate Governance →

      Page 1 of 25 Results →
      • 30 Nov 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Short-Termism, Shareholder Payouts, and Investment in the EU

      by Jesse M. Fried and Charles C.Y. Wang

      Shareholder-driven “short-termism,” as evidenced by increasing payouts to shareholders, is said to impede long-term investment in EU public firms. But a deep dive into the data reveals a different story.

      • 13 Nov 2020
      • Working Paper Summaries

      The European Commission’s Sustainable Corporate Governance Report: A Critique

      by Mark Roe, Holger Spamann, Jesse Fried, and Charles Wang

      The European Commission commissioned a report on sustainable corporate governance that purports to find serious problems of corporate short-termism. The report is wholly flawed: it conflates time horizon problems with externality problems, mismeasures investment and its financing, and proposes ineffective, possibly harmful reforms.

      • 13 Nov 2019
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Shareholder Activism and Firms’ Voluntary Disclosure of Climate Change Risks

      by Caroline Flammer, Michael W. Toffel, and Kala Viswanathan

      Shareholder resolutions typically fail, and often by a wide margin. So why do active investors bother? It turns out that resolutions nonetheless can influence corporate transparency. Specifically, after being targeted with shareholder resolutions on environmental topics, this research shows that companies are more likely to publicly disclose their climate change risks—and that such disclosure increases these companies’ valuation.

      • 02 Oct 2019
      • What Do You Think?

      What Grade Would You Give Walmart CEO Doug McMillon?

      by James Heskett

      SUMMING UP: James Heskett's readers gave Walmart high marks for its response to gun violence but suggested the company could have been even more proactive. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 20 Aug 2019
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Should a Pension Fund Try to Change the World?

      Re: Rebecca M. HendersonRe: 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; Comment(s) posted.

      • 03 Jan 2019
      • Research & Ideas

      Everyone Knows Innovation is Essential to Business Success—Except Board Directors

      by Michael Blanding

      In a recent survey of 5,000 board members, innovation was not ranked high on their list of priorities. What are they not seeing? ask Boris Groysberg and Yo-Jud Cheng. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 01 Nov 2017
      • What Do You Think?

      What Are the Real Lessons of the Wells Fargo Case?

      by James Heskett

      SUMMING UP James Heskett's readers identify key failures in Wells Fargo's culture and leadership. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 31 Oct 2017
      • Op-Ed

      Op-Ed: In Tackling #MeToo, Don’t Ignore Micro-Insults That Harm Women’s Careers

      by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

      The #MeToo movement is giving women power to speak out against sexual harassment, but Rosabeth Moss Kanter worries about less visible, but still harmful, "micro-insults" that undermine careers of women. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 14 Sep 2017
      • Op-Ed

      Op-Ed: Google Engineer Deserved to be Fired by the CEO

      by Bill George

      Was Google CEO Sundar Pichai right to fire engineer James Damore after his condemnation of the company's diversity initiatives? Of course, answers Bill George; treating colleagues as gender stereotypes rather than as individuals poisons the workplace. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 06 Sep 2017
      • What Do You Think?

      Summing Up: What Are the Limits of CEO Activism?

      by James Heskett

      Do CEOs have a responsibility to speak out when they encounter social injustice? James Heskett's readers offer a variety of viewpoints. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 07 Aug 2017
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior in Japan

      by Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew D. Shaffer, and Charles C.Y. Wang

      By exploiting the unique features of Japan’s JPX-Nikkei 400 index, this paper examines how membership in a stock index serves as a source of prestige that can motivate managers and influence corporate governance norms. Findings are important for understanding non-pecuniary mechanisms to induce meaningful changes in corporate behavior.

      • 31 May 2017
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Stock Price Synchronicity and Material Sustainability Information

      by Jody Grewal, Clarissa Hauptmann, and George Serafeim

      This paper seeks to understand and provide evidence on the characteristics of emerging accounting standards for sustainability information. Given that a large number of institutional investors seek sustainability data and have committed to using it, it is increasingly important to develop a robust accounting infrastructure for the reporting of such information.

      • 09 May 2017
      • What Do You Think?

      Should Management Be Primarily Responsible to Shareholders?

      by James Heskett

      SUMMING UP Opinions among James Heskett's readers are divided over a critical corporate governance question: Should management put the shorter-term interests of shareholders over the longer-term needs of the company? Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 02 Nov 2016
      • Working Paper Summaries

      The Structure of Board Committees

      by Kevin D. Chen and Andy Wu

      Despite the central role of boards in corporate governance, there has been relatively little understanding of their internal organization, specifically the structure of board committees. Using a dataset of over 6,000 firms, the authors find that committee activity, especially the number of committees, has been stable over time. Most of the familiar non-required board committees are rarely used. The majority of directors sit on multiple committees. The benefits and costs of a committee depend on its type. Overall, committees need to be more integrated into our understanding of corporate governance.

      • 01 Aug 2016
      • Research & Ideas

      Retail Execs Underplay Current Performance to Investors--but Why?

      by Dina Gerdeman

      In quarterly earnings calls with investors and analysts, some retail managers may underplay how their companies are actually performing, according to recent research by Kenneth Froot and colleagues. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 22 Jul 2016
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Who Pays for White-Collar Crime?

      by Paul Healy and George Serafeim

      Punishments of white-collar crime are systematically related to perpetrator, transaction, and company characteristics. This variation is consistent with executives determining appropriate punishments by an economic analysis of costs and benefits. Even so, senior male executives receive lighter punishments than female peers, for example. These and other variations suggest that not all decisions about punishment are taken with shareholders’ interests in mind: The self-interest of host company executives is also an important consideration.

      • 17 Nov 2015
      • Lessons from the Classroom

      How Activist Investors Became Respectable

      by Joseph Fuller

      Once reviled as villains operating on the fringes of the market, activist investors like Carl Icahn are now powerful forces at work in the mainstream of business, says Professor Joseph Fuller. And their influence is only growing. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 03 Jul 2013
      • What Do You Think?

      What Are the Limits of Transparency?

      by James Heskett

      Summing Up: What's the proper balance in an organization between transparency and opaqueness? Many of Jim Heskett's readers would err on the side of management forthrightness. Closed for comment; 22 Comment(s) posted.

      • 17 May 2011
      • Working Paper Summaries

      The Consequences of Mandatory Corporate Sustainability Reporting

      by Ioannis Ioannou & George Serafeim

      The number of firms reporting sustainability information has grown significantly in the past decade, both due to voluntary actions and to mandates from several national governments and stock exchange authorities. In this paper, London Business School's Ioannis Ioannou and Harvard Business School's George Serafeim investigate whether mandatory sustainability reporting has any effect on a company's tendency to engage in socially responsible management practices. Key concepts include: The researchers show that mandatory sustainability reporting effectively promotes socially responsible managerial practices. Overall, supervision of managers by boards of directors improves, bribery and corruption decreases, and credibility of managers in society increases. In companies where sustainability reporting is a requirement, employee training becomes a higher priority, and corporate boards supervise management more effectively. These positive results are more pronounced in countries that have stronger law enforcement, countries where assurance of sustainability data is more frequent, and countries that are generally more developed. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

      • 11 May 2011
      • Research & Ideas

      Building a Better Board

      by Carmen Nobel

      While corporate board members take their jobs more seriously than ever, they are not necessarily as helpful or effective as they could be, says HBS senior lecturer Stephen Kaufman. He recently sat down with HBS Working Knowledge to discuss what he considers to be the biggest practical issues facing boards today. Key concepts include: Board directors may not give an honest assessment of the company because they fear reprisal from the CEO or the other board members. In accurately evaluating a CEO's performance, board members must get feedback from other employees at the company, who possess insight into day-to-day operations that the directors do not. Closed for comment; 11 Comment(s) posted.

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