Should Businesses Take a Stand on Societal Issues?

Ferran Adrià, chef at legendary Barcelona-based restaurant elBulli, was facing two related decisions. First, he and his team must continue to develop new and different dishes for elBulli to guarantee a continuous stream of innovation, the cornerstone of the restaurant's success. But they also need to focus on growing the restaurant’s business. Can the team balance both objectives?

In 2020, Amazon built a shelter for women and families experiencing houselessness on its campus in Seattle, Washington. The shelter was operated in partnership with a nonprofit organization known as Mary’s Place and was designed to address what had become an urgent problem for Seattle and many other wealthy American cities, where communities were being displaced by a lack of affordable housing. Amazon’s partnership with Mary’s Place was an experiment in addressing this problem at its core, using some of the firm’s own resources to fund living space for unhoused families. But critics argued that Amazon’s apparent charity was misplaced because the company and other tech giants were actually making the problem worse. Instead, they argued, government and nonprofits should solve these societal issues. Harvard Business School professors Debora Spar and Paul Healy explore the role business plays in causing and addressing the larger problem of unhoused communities in American cities in the case, “Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary’s Place.”

Özyeğin Social Investments was founded by Hüsnü Özyeğin, one of Turkey's most successful entrepreneurs, with a focus on education, health, gender equality, rural development, and disaster relief in Turkey. Harvard Business School senior lecturer Christina Wing and Murat Özyeğin (MBA 2003) discuss how the company is a model for making a significant impact across multiple sectors of society through giving and how that legacy can be sustained in the future.

In the spring of 2021, Raymond Jefferson (MBA 2000) applied for a job in President Joseph Biden’s administration. Ten years earlier, false allegations had been used to force him to resign from his prior U.S. government position as assistant secretary of labor for veterans’ employment and training in the U.S. Department of Labor. Jefferson filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government to clear his name and used his entire life savings to pursue the case for eight years. Why, after such a traumatic and humiliating experience, would Jefferson want to work in government again?

Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei and Paul English, one of the most imaginative and successful innovators of his generation, discuss how to tell the difference between a good idea and a bad one, the importance of iteration, and taking a systematic (but fast) approach to developing new ideas.

Harvard University aims to be fossil-fuel neutral by 2026 and totally free of fossil fuels by 2050. As part of this goal, the university is trying to decarbonize its supply chain and considers replacing cement with a low-carbon substitute called Pozzotive®, made with post-consumer recycled glass. Harvard Business School professor emeritus Robert Kaplan and assistant professor Shirley Lu discuss the flow of emissions along the supply chain of Harvard University’s construction projects, the different methods of measuring carbon emissions, including the E-liability approach, and the opportunity to leverage blockchain technology to facilitate the flow of comparable and reliable emissions information.

In 2015, Apple debuted the iPhone 6S, which employed a default encryption system preventing both Apple and government authorities from accessing data stored on the device. But since then, global governments have questioned whether Apple’s desire to protect customer privacy interferes with public health and safety. Harvard Business School senior lecturer Henry McGee and professor Nien-hê Hsieh discuss how Apple CEO Tim Cook manages this tension.

Ethanol had already transformed Brazil, where flex-fuel vehicles dominated the streets. Raízen, a bioenergy company headquartered in São Paulo, sought to prove that second-generation ethanol (E2G) could do the same for the world – especially in hard to decarbonize sectors, such as aviation and shipping. E2G is made from a byproduct of sugarcane that doesn’t compete with food production, Paula Kovarsky, Raízen’s chief strategy and sustainability officer, was confident the company could become a global green energy champion. But she faced a complex challenge: how to expand the market for second-generation ethanol and other sugar-cane waste biofuels, in order to ensure Raízen’s long-term growth.

In December of 2020, SolarWinds learned that they had fallen victim to a widespread malware supply chain attack. This attack granted hackers access to thousands of it customers’ data, including military and government agencies across the globe. General Counsel Jason Bliss needed to orchestrate the company’s response without knowing how many of its 300,000 customers had been affected, or how severely. What’s more, the existing CEO was scheduled to step down and incoming CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna had yet to come on board. In this episode of Cold Call, Professor Frank Nagle discusses SolarWinds’ response to this unprecedented supply chain attack and the case, “SolarWinds Confronts SUNBURST.”

Should businesses take a stand for or against particular societal issues? And how should leaders determine when and how to engage on these sensitive matters? Harvard Business School senior lecturer Hubert Joly, who led the electronics retailer Best Buy for almost a decade, discusses examples of corporate leaders who had to determine whether and how to engage with humanitarian crises, geopolitical conflict, racial justice, climate change, and more in the case, “Deciding When to Engage on Societal Issues.”