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New research on social enterprise and other nonprofit organizations from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including management strategies, demonstrating effectiveness, and employee motivation.
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People Have an Irrational Need to Complete 'Sets' of Things

by Carmen Nobel

People are irrationally motivated to complete arbitrary sets of tasks, donations, or purchases—and organizations can take advantage of that, according to new research by Kate Barasz, Leslie John, Elizabeth Keenan, and Michael Norton. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Entrepreneurs and the Co-Creation of Ecotourism in Costa Rica

by Geoffrey Jones and Andrew Spadafora

Costa Rica has grown as a mecca for ecotourism from the late twentieth century. Although biologists and other students of ecosystems and biodiversity were vital at the start of the process, as were conservation NGOs and the national government, this paper argues that entrepreneurs were also pivotal. While showing the benefits of ecotourism, it is also shown that as the industry scaled, there were increasing challenges of greenwashing.

World Health Organization Lacks Leadership to Combat Pandemics

by John Quelch

When it comes to emergency preparedness for pandemics, the World Health Organization is falling short, argues John A. Quelch. A better solution: The World Bank. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

A Better World Through Brewing

Re: Forest L. Reinhardt

Since brewing is a marketing-driven business, finding ways to differentiate a beverage from its competition is crucial. Heineken’s chief marketing officer took a novel approach: take the complicated processes of production and distribution and make them interesting and important to the consumer. Professor Forest Reinhardt explains how a big, sophisticated company used small details, from trucking routes to the color of refrigerators, to put its commitment to the environment to work on its behalf. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Finding Excuses to Decline the Ask

by Christine Exley & Ragan Petrie

An online experiment by Christine L. Exley and Ragan Petrie involving 6,000 potential donors to animal-rescue charities finds a 22 percent drop in interest in donating when individuals know “the ask” is coming and have time to develop excuses for not contributing. Results imply that nonprofits have a variety of options for better adapting how they solicit funds.

Incentives for Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Reputations

by Christine L. Exley

This study documents how small monetary incentives discourage volunteering when they are public and thus introduce a “greedy” signal. The discouragement from this greedy signal, however, is less pronounced among volunteers with public reputations, or those who are likely known not to be too greedy.

A Microchip in Your Medicine

Re: Richard G. Hamermesh

Digitally-enabled prescription medication may sound futuristic. Thanks to Proteus, the future is now. The company has developed the technology to place microchips inside prescription pills, allowing doctors to retrieve real-time updates on everything from dosing, to vital signs, to the efficacy of different medications. However, regulating and marketing such ground-breaking technology is almost as complicated as the medical conditions it can help cure. Professor Richard Hamermesh unpacks the challenges of changing the world of medicine. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Wage Elasticities in Working and Volunteering: The Role of Reference Points in a Laboratory Study

by Christine Exley & Stephen Terry

Nonprofit organizations often rely on reference points—explicit or implicit targets and goals—to encourage more effort from volunteers. This study finds that effort does tend to cluster around reference levels, so this may be perceived as a very effective strategy. Yet reference levels can potentially backfire: in response to higher volunteer wages or productivity, volunteers may reduce their effort so as to meet the reference level.

What to Do When Your Organization Has Dueling Missions

by Carmen Nobel

It’s no easy feat to manage hybrid organizations, which combine the social mission of a nonprofit with the revenue model of a for-profit business. Julie Battilana and colleagues explain how hybrids can find success with a business model dubbed “spaces of negotiation.” Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Donors Are Turned Off by Overhead Costs. Here’s What Charities Can Do

by Carmen Nobel

Elizabeth A. Keenan and colleagues find that charitable donors are willing to stomach the idea of overhead costs—as long as they know someone else’s donation is covering them. A field study helped one organization nearly triple its solicited donations. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Do People Who Care About Others Cooperate More? Experimental Evidence from Relative Incentive Pay

by Dylan Minor, Pablo Hernandez & Dana Sisak

This paper explores how the degree to which individuals care about other workers affects their own performance when faced with relative performance pay.

Why Entrepreneurs Should Go Work for Government

by Michael Blanding

In a new Harvard Business School course on public entrepreneurship, Mitchell B. Weiss explores how fresh thinkers can work with—and within—the halls of government. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

HBS Cases: The Battle for San Francisco

by Michael Blanding

In San Francisco, tech companies are hoping to make the world a better place—but the fabric of the city is changing in the process. A new case by Clayton Rose explores this clash of cultures, and the role of business in promoting the right balance. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Why the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a Social Media Blockbuster

by John Deighton

Most companies should envy the financial and brand awareness brought about by the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. The campaign's key ingredient, says John Deighton, is that participants enhance their personal capital in performance of a good deed. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

The Unfulfilled Promise of Educational Technology

by Michael Blanding

With 50 million public school students in America, technology holds much potential to transform schools, says John Jong-Hyun Kim. So why isn't it happening? Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Research Symposium 2014

by Carmen Nobel

Harvard Business School professors presented their research to colleagues, with topics including speaking up at work, a manager's responsibility to capitalism, and a strategy to fix the health care system. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

The Role of the Corporation in Society: An Alternative View and Opportunities for Future Research

by George Serafeim

Neoclassical economics and several management theories assert that the corporation's sole objective is maximizing shareholder wealth. Despite these theoretical approaches, however, actual corporate conduct in some cases is inconsistent with shareholder value maximization as the sole objective of the corporation. In fact, corporations are now engaging in environmental and social causes with multiple stakeholders in mind and this is especially true for the world's largest corporations. Overall, the author presents an alternative view of the role of the corporation in society where the objective of the corporation is a function of its size. Specifically, the largest corporations are forced to balance different stakeholders' interests instead of simply maximizing shareholder wealth. The author attributes this change in the role of the corporation to the increasing concentration of economic activity and power in a few corporations which has resulted in 1) a few companies having a very large impact on society, 2) corporations and influential actors which are easier to locate, and 3) increasing separation of ownership and control. These events have led to what scholars Berle and Means (1932) predicted more than 80 years ago: both owners and "the control" accepting public interest as the objective of the corporation. Further research on the topics outlined in this paper may increase our understanding of corporate behavior and the role of these corporations in society. Key concepts include: The role of the corporation in society can be a function of the broader economic, social, and political context and as a result evolves over time. Corporations are not a homogeneous group as it is assumed by profit maximization theories. Not all corporations have the same role in society. Increasing corporate engagement on environmental and social goals has redefined the relation between business and society. It remains to be seen whether this trend will continue. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

The Surprising Link Between Language and Corporate Responsibility

by Michael Blanding

Research by Christopher Marquis shows that a company's degree of social responsibility is affected by a surprising factor—the language it uses to communicate. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Speaking of Corporate Social Responsibility

by Hao Liang, Christopher Marquis, Luc Renneboog & Sunny Li Sun

While many scholars have observed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a deeply cultural process, there are inconsistent findings on the specific cultural mechanisms by which culture affects CSR. This paper suggests that the way in which corporations use language is a strong predictor of their CSR and sustainability practices. It addresses two questions: 1) Why do CSR practices vary significantly across countries? And 2) How does the future-time orientation of companies' working languages affect their adoption of, compliance to, and engagement in corporate social responsibility programs? Building on the future-time criterion of scholars Dahl (2000) and Chen (2013), which separates languages into two broad categories-those languages that require future events to be grammatically marked when making predictions, and those that do not-the authors examine thousands of global companies across 59 countries from 1999 to 2011. The empirical results support the hypothesis that languages that grammatically separate the current tense from the future tense can significantly affect how corporations perceive future-oriented strategies, and so make corporate behavior less future-oriented. Overall, the authors introduce a new way to think about underlying variation in global CSR practices. As they show in this paper, it is crucial to examine language as an important underlying feature that shapes cultural values and the norms in a society. The study also builds on research into the ways in which perceptual category systems focus the attention, and subsequently, the behaviors, of corporate leaders. Key concepts include: Research in linguistics and economics has shown that one of the most important factors that shapes culture and creates variation across countries is spoken language. This study contributes to understanding international variation of CSR. Differences in cross-national commitment to CSR arise from characteristics of the languages spoken across the globe. 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.