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Brooks and Tyler are first cousins who are running Erbe, a line of sustainably produced herb-infused vodkas. Brooks put up all his savings--$250,000--to get started, and just a month later Tyler quit a lucrative private equity job to join the new venture. The time has come to decide how to divide the remaining 90% stake in Erbe (the company's investors hold 10%). Brooks feels he's entitled to the lion's share; Tyler believes he should get half. With commentary from Courtney Reum, the founder of Veev Spirits (on which this case is based), and Jon Olinto, a cofounder of b.good, a chain of high-quality fast-food restaurants.

Over the past decade, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) had developed a unique set of benefits and cultural amenities for its employees, including a beautiful residential campus, known as the Living Quarters (LQ), and an award winning international school from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade that by 2012 enrolled over 2,000 students. These amenities allowed the company to attract and retain high-quality employees at modest pay; however, the company had recently experienced some financial difficulties, a shrinking number of new available living spaces, and questions about how relevant it was for a semiconductor firm to be operating a school. Thus, these benefits now presented significant dilemmas for the SMIC management team, including how the company can justify the costs of these benefits to investors in the face of the company's other financial challenges.

In its third year of existence and poised to double its workforce, Warby Parker attributed its success to an innovative approach in the eyewear industry and to the company culture that supported it. With a mission combining social and business goals, the company had articulated a stakeholder-centric model that benefited consumers through high-quality, fashionable, and affordable eyewear: the global community by donating, through sustainable channels, one pair of glasses per every pair sold; employees through a fun culture and inspiring work; and the environment, by becoming carbon neutral. The case covers the decisions that Warby Parker must make at the beginning of its third year of existence as a consequence of growth and in order to avoid losing momentum. Some of the challenges that Warby Parker faced were maintaining the company culture, finding adequate partners to preserve the quality of the "Buy a Pair, Give a Pair" program, and devising an integrated online and offline marketing strategy that fit the brand personality.

The note articulates the ways in which strong stakeholder-company relationships developed through corporate social responsibility initiatives and other types of social strategies deliver bottom line benefits. The analysis follows stakeholder logic models connecting the impact of CSR initiatives on a stakeholder group (employees, customers, investors, government, the community, and suppliers) and its effects on company revenues, costs and market value.

In 2011, the PNC Financial Services Group announced the addition of $250 million to the $100 million that it had pledged to its early childhood education program, Group Up Great, in 2003. The case serves as an update to the "PNC Financial: Grow Up Great (A)" case, which outlined the design and implementation of the program and presented key challenges. The (B) case will show some of the program's responses to challenges like the strategic integration to Grow Up Great into the bank's business; the introduction of the program to new markets following the bank's geographical expansion; and the measurement of the programs' social impact.

At the end of 2011, the founders of the China Greentech Initiative (CGTI) wanted to grow the company while respecting its unique hybrid business model that combined a collaborative open source community with more traditional strategic research services. The case follows CGTI from its initial goal of establishing a road map for the Chinese green technology market, to further catalyzing the sector through a combination of collaborative network building and customized advisory services. CGTI's hybrid business model and dual mission of profit and social value creation complicated the founders' decisions as they considered different expansion options, including new product and service offerings, and potentially expanding geographical coverage.

Zhang Yue, founder and chairman of Broad Group, had developed a series of innovative products aimed at solving China's environmental problems. Broad Group's products, services, and management were guided by values that prioritized morals, responsibility, environmental protection, and energy conservation over company growth and profit. Zhang's current focus was Broad Sustainable Building (BSB), a unique prefabricated building technology that was significantly more environmentally friendly than traditional building methods, as well as much less expensive. In order to obtain the capital and talent that BSB's development required, Zhang realized he may need to publicly list the company, despite publicly saying he never would do so. Would scaling the new businesses result in compromises to the mission and values that guided the company? If so, was the overall environmental impact from the new building technology worth the cost?

This article analyzes the closing gap between regulation and enforcement of environmental protection in China and explores its implications for doing business there. It identifies three major dimensions that characterize change in regulatory systems: priorities and incentives, bureaucratic alignment, and transparency and monitoring. Using these dimensions, it describes the mechanisms that characterized China's prior period where enforcement of environmental protection was decoupled from regulation. Regulation and enforcement are becoming re-aligned. This is due to a change in national development strategy, reorganization of the bureaucracy, and increasing monitoring from both the government and general public. To address these changes, firms need to embrace environmental innovation and integrate local and global standards. They should also be more transparent and compete on reputation.

In January 2005, China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO) announced it would join the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). At that time, COSCO initiated sustainability reporting practices in line with the UNGC, and over the next six years these efforts evolved into an information technology platform integrating all the company's sustainability processes and indicators. In fall 2011, the company's leadership considered the following strategic questions: To what extent should COSCO refer to international and domestic sustainability standards in the platform framework? How far should COSCO go in promoting the sustainability system as a stand-alone product? What were the next steps in sustainability reporting, and should COSCO try to attain even higher reporting standards in the future? Moreover, related issues facing the company included: What would be the value in reaching higher sustainability and reporting standards, and how would internal and external stakeholders react? What challenges lay ahead for the consistent implementation of higher standards across COSCO's subsidiaries?

New Resource Bank was founded in San Francisco in 2006 with a mission focused on environmental sustainability. The case illustrates the opportunities and challenges of banking on values and the challenges of organizations defining a social and environmental commitment. The case also highlights the tension and potential synergies between social mission and shareholder value in the context of the crisis of 2008, the taken-for-granted expectations and norms arising from a commercial bank charter, and the distinct perspectives of bank regulators, founders, investors, and other stakeholders of the newly founded bank.

Details Dannon's decision to initiate a cause marketing program focused on breast cancer to directly compete with Yoplait.

Salesforce.com recently implemented an innovative social enterprise business model whereby the Salesforce.com Foundation funds its operations and grant budget by selling discounted salesforce.com software licenses to nonprofits and education clients. The case recounts the development and initial stages of this project and the tradeoffs inherent in mixing social and business goals. Furthermore, as background the case also provides detail on Salesforce's 1-1-1 business model, whereby the company contributes one percent of product, one percent of equity, and one percent of employee hours back to the communities it serves.

The mission of the Global Business School Network (GBSN) is to strengthen business education for the developing world. The organization was transitioning out of its startup phase and wants to shift its focus from capacity building activities driven by the organization to empowering the network to carry out GBSN's mission. The case asks, what is the best way to accomplish this objective?

In the fall of 2010, Sarah Endline, CEO and Founder of sweetriot, an organic chocolate company, was deciding the best way to grow her organic chocolate company, while keeping her chocolate physically and conceptually on the shelf. She wanted to grow the offerings and profits of her company, while maintaining its social mission and unique flair. The case tracks the origins of sweetriot from Sarah's formative early career experiences, to the company's launch and beyond as Sarah prepares future products, establishes production channels, and seeks future funding. Sarah was not content to just be a small New York City candy company. Her goal was for sweetriot to be the number one natural chocolate company in the world and to thus be a vehicle to drive change globally. How can she meet that objective while also keeping the company true to its social roots?

The founders of B Lab are on a mission to create a new sector of the economy, and are specifically focused on a three objectives: 1) building a community of Certified B Corporations (B=Benefit) that legally expand their corporate responsibilities to include consideration of diverse stakeholder interests, 2) advancing the public policies necessary to create a new corporate form called a Benefit Corporation, and 3) creating an investment rating system to help drive institutional investment to the emerging asset class of "impact investments." The case considers the challenges associated with achieving each one of these objectives, let alone all three at the same time. Is B Lab's tripartite strategy its secret sauce or its albatross?

Describes the addition of environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance indicators to the Bloomberg terminal. The initiative grew out of Bloomberg's broader sustainability initiatives and is an example of how committed employees can create positive social change within organizations. Issues highlighted in the case for discussion include: How can committed employees implement an innovative sustainability initiative within a large corporation? How can ESG data be more strategic for both Bloomberg and investors? And finally: How should the ESG data industry be structured, and what impact does ESG data have on the future institutionalization of sustainability?

Public Architecture is a non-profit architecture company dedicated to creating social and professional change through design for the public good. Public has focused on three strategies to create change: 1) promoting the design community's commitment to pro bono work, 2) inspiring action through creating design with a social mission, and 3) disseminating knowledge created by socially relevant design throughout the profession. As a central actor and change agent in the profession, Public Architecture created The 1% Program, a national network of architecture and design firms that have publicly pledged to donate 1% of their billable hours to the public good. However, the organization has been struggling to keep both The 1% Program and its own design initiatives integrated and reinforcing each other in creating social and professional change. Should Public split into two organizations? Would keeping the diverse elements within Public Architecture together force the entire organization to the least common denominator or would it provide them with a flexible platform for creating social change? These questions have important implications for Public's growth strategy, their funding, and resource allocation decisions.

Mekong Capital, a private equity firm specializing in investing in Vietnam, had grown dramatically since its inception in 2002 and faced numerous organizational issues in 2007. There was a shortage of qualified middle managers, an overall lack of leadership, and a culture of making excuses for performance shortfalls. These issues not only plagued Mekong, but also the portfolio companies that they took positions in. The case recounts how the founder and managing partner of Mekong undertook a process to profoundly change the culture, leadership, and accountability within the company to try to transform it so that its people would align and come together as a team, holding themselves responsible to deliver results and committed to the long-term future.

In early 2010, cleantech investment pioneer Tsing Capital was planning for the China Environment Fund IV and considering how to maintain its commitment to social and environmental practices. Tsing Capital embraced its philosophy of "Doing Well by Doing Good" and developed a proprietary system to manage social & environmental functions throughout the investment process. Some of the specific questions examined in the case are: with a more diversified investor base, how could the firm balance the different expectations of investors and continue to achieve "Doing Well by Doing Good"? Despite the increasing importance of social & environmental practices, they also had a cost for the firm and its portfolio companies. How could the firm most effectively motivate its portfolio companies to actively integrate social & environmental practices with their strategies?

In October 2009, State Grid, the largest utility company in the world, and a pioneer and leader in CSR practices in China, was planning its 2009 CSR Report and long-term CSR implementation. Some of the specific challenges faced at the time include: How could the company balance the different stakeholder expectations and respond to their concerns in a clear and concise way? To what extent should the company reference international standards in its CSR reporting? How could it change the mindsets of 1.5 million employees across diverse geographies to help them abide by CSR principles and management policies on a daily basis? Finally, how could State Grid improve its stakeholder management to establish mutual trust with stakeholders so that they would see State Grid as a responsible company?