In balancing the risks of a pandemic, the climate crisis, social unrest, and global supply-chain issues, business leaders, policymakers, and investors around the world have been working on developing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies—making ESG an essential business priority...
Diversity on corporate boards is an urgent priority, emphasized by company leaders and public policy agendas. For example, in 2021 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule requiring most companies on the Nasdaq exchange to have at least two directors from underrepresented groups...
A recent European Corporate Governance Institute paper compared the ESG scores of companies invested in by 684 U.S. institutional investors that ...
There’s a new title in the C-suite: chief ESG officer. While top executives with “ESG” in their title are new and not yet widespread, this role is an opportunity that companies may consider as they face increasing pressure to address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues...
How boards can align executives’ incentives with the priorities of their employees, customers, and communities...
We have some optimistic news to kick off 2022: Climate change is at long last on the corporate-governance agenda, according to our research. When we surveyed 301 directors of companies headquartered in 43 countries, three-quarters of our respondents said they recognize climate as very important to their companies’ strategic success...
After nearly a year of review, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a proposal from Nasdaq to enhance diversity and inclusion in company board rooms. The U.S.-based stock exchange will now require all listed companies to disclose board-level diversity using a standard template...
When companies are surprised by activist shareholders it’s often because management and the board don’t have a good idea of what investors are thinking and what their hot-buttons issues are...
If your organization hasn’t yet realized that your people are your number one asset, you are behind your competitors...
The executive pay “clawback,” an idea that had its debut during the discussion around the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, has become an increasingly common provision in executive compensation packages...
Three years ago, PwC reported some good news from our 2018 Annual Corporate Directors Survey: The vast majority of public company directors said that they recognized the value of including more women and people of color in the boardroom...
In 2018, the clean tech darling Nikola posted a video of its new electric truck driving down a remote stretch of road, framed by dramatic music and a setting sun. The caption read: “Behold, the 1,000 HP, zero-emission Nikola One semi-truck in motion.”...
This issue of Harvard Business Review includes, as many prior issues did, an article decrying the perils of short-termism and supporting measures for insulating corporate leaders from the outside pressures that allegedly make them myopic...
While we have seen unparalleled innovation in the 21st century, we have also witnessed the damaging unintended consequences of unchecked technologies...
Critics charge that in today’s heavily traded capital markets, executives are increasingly incentivized to manage in tiny, short-term windows, with an eager eye on their stock-based compensation and a fearful one on activist hedge funds. In any case, something isn’t working: The number of...
Sometimes it takes something bad to instigate something good. A hard lesson — a scandal, a breach, a product failure — can make us look at a problem head-on and ask ourselves how to fix it...
New technologies have been disrupting business for decades, especially since the internet became widespread in the late 1990s. But a new wave of innovation, centered on artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and the internet of things, is now intensifying the pace and magnitude of disruption...
Since the onset of Covid-19, corporate boards have faced a string of difficult decisions. Take the question of dividend payments: Ordinarily, the decision would be a relatively straightforward matter of applying a stated dividend policy, following past practice, or choosing an amount based on shareholder expectations and the company’s earnings for the period...
Capitalism is in the midst of a once-in-a-generation reckoning as the general public and corporate executives alike question the old model of shareholder primacy and call for corporationsto identify a purpose that serves all stakeholders, not just investors...
With the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, followed by months of Black Lives Matter protests, through to the shooting of Jacob Blake on August 23, leaders in the United States and around the world have finally begun to recognize the racial inequities embedded deep in the systems in which we operate each day: neighborhoods, schools, stores, banks, courts...
Over the past decade, business leaders have had to face an uncomfortable truth: It’s become impossible to sit at the head of a company and not address the threat of cyber risk...
One factor that reinforces the racial status quo on boards is the way in which new directors are typically recruited. These systems are especially ...
After the financial crisis of the late 1990s, most Asian countries reformed their governance codes and regulations around management accountability and transparency...
Another director we interviewed said,“The new directors [on our board ] brought not just a diversity of opinions and perspectives, but a diversity of ...