Showing results 1 - 10 of 64
| George Serafeim
2021, Paper: "Companies are developing strategies to manage rising risks from climate change, such as setting targets for reductions in carbon emissions, investing resources to develop new products, and choosing suppliers that are better prepared for the transition to a low-carbon economy. In this context, investors are using a host of data to help them manage climate risks through portfolio construction. In this paper, we evaluate three broad…
| George Serafeim
2021, Paper: "Applying the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative’s employment impact methodology, on eight leading companies, we document wide variability in employment impacts as a percentage of salaries paid, ranging between 59 and 80 percent. We identify opportunities for improvement and discuss transition plans for companies to create more positive employment impact. We conclude with a call for disclosure of Equal Employment Opportunity…
| George Serafeim
2020, Paper: "We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor credit card providers within the consumer finance industry. We design a monetization methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact estimates on cardholder access to credit, affordability for merchants, financial health, and recyclability, among other factors. Our results indicate substantial differences in…
| George Serafeim
October 2020, Opinion: "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…
| George Serafeim
2020, Paper: "We develop a methodology that calculates the impact that organizations have on the environment through their water consumption relating to water stress risk. Using the methodology, we derive estimates for four companies that show how assumptions on the geographic location of the water withdrawal and use of different prices for water across geographies lead to variation in these estimates. We conclude with a framework guiding a user…
| George Serafeim
September 3, 2020, Paper: "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."
Non-HKS Harvard Author Website - George…
| George Serafeim
2020, Book Chapter: "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…
| George Serafeim
June 23, 2020, Paper, "The coronavirus pandemic caused a sharp market decline while raising heterogeneous responses across companies related to their employees, supply chain, and repurposing of operations to provide needed products and services. We study whether during the 2020 COVID-19 induced market crash, investors differentiated across companies based on their human capital, supply chain, and products and service response. Using data derived…
| George Serafeim
May 2020, Paper: "We investigate whether ESG ratings predict future ESG news and the associated market reactions. We find that the consensus rating predicts future news, but its predictive ability diminishes for firms with large disagreement between raters. Relation between news and market reaction is moderated by the consensus rating. In the presence of high disagreement between raters, the relation between news and market reactions weakens…
| George Serafeim
Corporate Environmental Impact: Measurement, Data and Information. George Serafeim, 2020, Paper, "As an organization’s environmental impact has become a more important societal consideration, thereby affecting industry and organizational competitiveness, interest in measuring and analyzing environmental impact has increased. We develop a methodology to derive monetized environmental impact estimates in a comparable way across companies by…