This case examines the history of prominent Egyptian-based social enterprise SEKEM from its foundation in 1977 until the COP27 conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2022. Led by father and son team Ibrahim and Helmy Abouleish, SEKEM turned desert into farmland using biodynamic methods under the influence of Anthroposophy, which originated with Rudolf Steiner in the early twentieth century. As the firm made profits, the case explores how it invested in schools and other cultural institutions, and in 2012 opened the Heliopolis University for Sustainable Development. The final section discusses the role of agriculture in causing climate change and Helmy Abouleish's belief that biodynamic agriculture can offer a real solution to combating the climate crisis. The case enables a debate about how values-driven firms can add societal and ecological value, and about the appropriate boundaries between such firms and public policy.
This case examines the career of Vicky Tsai, the creator of San Francisco-based TATCHA, a Japanese-themed luxury beauty brand launched in 2009. It explores how Tsai developed the concept, assembled management, and successfully launched the brand, despite experiencing major obstacles because of stereotyped views based on her gender and Asian ethnicity. Originally advised that Asian beauty was too niche for the American market, Tsai struggled to raise capital, and felt that she needed to take on white males as co-founders in order to be taken seriously. She faced continuous funding constraints, even after the Tatcha brand debuted on the QVC channel and began to grow fast. In 2017 Tsai sought private equity funding to further grow the business, and found herself encouraged to leave the role of CEO in favor of professional management. Tsai sold the business to Unilever for an estimated $500 million in 2019 as this process was underway. In January 2021 Tsai was recalled as CEO as the business faltered. The case ends with her determination to build a business which would work for positive change in the beauty industry in its attitudes towards gender and ethnicity.
This note surveys the international governance of global business from the nineteenth century until the present day, emphasizing and explaining its fragmented nature. In the nineteenth century a core principle of international law was that the property of foreigners could not be taken without full compensation. The expropriation of foreign direct investment by the Soviet Union in 1917, shattered existing international property law, and there was no consensus on a replacement. After World War II an International Trade Organization was envisaged alongside the IMF and the World Bank as the third leg of the Bretton Woods agreement, but the U.S. Congress refused to ratify the ITO Treaty. Various attempts by the United Nations and other bodies to create codes of conduct for multinationals failed due to divergent beliefs and policies between the West and developing countries. After 1979 there was a general relaxation of national controls over multinationals, while international agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF experienced a loss of legitimacy. The note goes on to discuss multilateral and bilateral investment treaties, the impact of the global financial crisis on tightening financial regulations, international governance on the natural environment and human rights, and the impact of digitalization on global regulation.
This note reviews the evidence that the world is undergoing an era of de-globalization. It shows that available metrics show some support for this theory. However there is also evidence that what is happening might be better described as regionalization. The nature of globalization is also changing with digitalization and a de-linking of globalization and Americanization. The note continues by an examination of four factors which have slowed or else redefined global economic integration in recent years: terrorism, the global financial crisis of 2008/9, the growth of populism; and geopolitical rivalty between China and the United States. The note ends by outlining four alternative future scenarios. They are a return to globalization as known in the past; widespread national autarky as in the 1930s; intensified regionalization with each regional block anchored by a major economic power; and full-scale military conflict replicating the first half of the twentieth century.
This case examines the business career of Kuo-Ching Li, who was born in China in 1892, and built a successful minerals trading business called Wah Chang in the United States during the interwar years. He acquired a prominent role in tungsten, the strongest natural metal on earth, and during World War II he played a major role in securing supplies of the strategic mineral from China and Latin America for the United States war effort. The case is set against the background of the era of the Chinese Exclusion Acts between 1882 and 1943 which largely curtailed Chinese immigration to the United States and denied ethnic Chinese citizenship. It explores how Li was able to build his brokerage business in such a setting on the basis of contacts in both China and the United States. It ends with the Communist Revolution in China in 1949 which appeared to threaten his dual identity.
This case describes the career of Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931), a serial entrepreneur who is widely known as the "father of Japanese capitalism" and as a pioneer of socially responsible investment. Born in feudal Edo Japan, following the Meiji Restoration in 1868 Shibusawa transitioned to working for the government in the new Ministry of Finance. He played a central role in the creation of Dai'Ichi Bank, a national bank and Japan's first joint stock company, in 1873. He subsequently became a prolific venture capitalist, being involved in founding nearly 500 companies and 600 public organizations over the course of his lifetime. The companies he founded, such as Oji Paper, Tokio Marine Insurance Company, and the Osaka Spinning Company were central to the modernization of the Japanese economy. He was also active in forming business associations, including the Tokyo Bankers Association, and supported many social enterprises in education. In 1901 he was associated with the founding of the Japanese Women's University, the first private university for women. Shibusawa was a student of Confucianism and developed the concept of gappon shugi, which has been variously translated as ethical or stakeholder capitalism. While traditional Confucianism in Japan had regarded commerce as lacking virtue, Shibusawa argued that creating wealth was a virtuous activity. He believed that ethical principles had to be central to the pursuit of wealth, and that business must serve all stakeholders, so that the country as a whole could flourish.
This case traces the business career and philanthropic activities of George Soros. The Hungarian-born Soros made a fortune as a hedge fund investor after establishing Quantum Fund on the tax haven island of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles in 1973 where he was largely free from regulation. He earned a notorious reputation as the "man who broke the Bank of England" in 1992 and for his role in the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. Soros also became one of the most generous donors to civil society projects around the world through his Open Society Foundations. His philanthropy promoted free speech, critical thinking, the rule of law, and education as a means of liberation Soros played an important role in building civil society in post-Communist central and eastern Europe. From the 1990s he also became involved in politics in Western democracies such as the United States and Britain by funding opponents of right-wing populists. These endeavors resulted in Soros becoming the subject of conspiracy theories, and condemnation by many of the world's populist leaders. The case provides a vehicle to examine the positive and negative dimensions of the philanthropic initiatives of business leaders, to explore the origins of right wing populism especially through the lens of the transition economy of Hungary, and to debate the contested relationship between capitalism and democracy.
This case describes the business career of Calouste Gulbenkian, a skilled intermediary who was able to secure 5 per cent of a vast oil concession covering much of the Middle East that was signed in 1928. Gulbenkian was an ethnic Armenian born in the Ottoman Empire, which was a large multi-ethnic empire covering large swathes of the Middle East and eastern Europe. Gulbenkian's career is set against the steady erosion of the Empire's sovereignty by Western powers, and mounting ethnic tensions. These trends reached their climax in the modernizing Young Turk Revolution of 1908, the Ottoman entry to World War 1 on the side of Germany, the massacres of millions of Armenians and other ethnic groups, and the creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Against this background, Gulbenkian distanced himself from the family merchant business, became a financier in London, and formed a close relationship with Henri Deterding, the leader of the power Royal Dutch Shell oil group. After the Young Turk Revolution, he also worked for the new government, forming a company to exploit the oil resources of the Empire with him and Royal Dutch Shell among the shareholders, and securing a vast oil concession. These arrangements were disrupted by the war, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, and the entry into the region of the United States government and oil companies. However, Gulbenkian survived numerous attempts to dislodge him and his shareholding was confirmed in the Red Line Agreement of 1928. The case provides an opportunity to explore the role of intermediaries in global business and more specifically, to show how the control of Middle Eastern oil ended up for a half a century in the hands of a small number of oligopolistic Western oil companies with no ownership by local stakeholders.
This case contains excerpts from prominent business leaders and others expressing their views on the responsibilities, if any, of business leaders to other stakeholders in society. It begins with an excerpt from Andrew Carnegie, the nineteenth century steel magnate, in which he argues that although making wealth through business was valid and desirable, the business leader should see himself as a trustee who should distribute this wealth to society. It then tracks debates concerning business responsibility over the decades. It includes excerpts from Theodore Levitt's warning of the "Dangers of Social Responsibility" (1958) and Jensen and Meckling's (1976) "Theory of the Firm," which argued that a firm was merely a nexus of relationships among individuals and could have no responsibility. The case ends with excerpts from Warren Buffet, Dominic Barton, Judy Wicks and Larry Fink, each offering a different perspective on the responsibility of business leaders.
This case examines the role of Cisco led by John Chambers in facilitating web filtering in China. It begins with tracing the origins of Cisco as a pioneer of networking equipment. John Chambers, who had worked as a sales manager at IBM and Wang Laboratories, joined Cisco in 1991 and became CEO in 1995. The company expanded rapidly thereafter, acquiring many firms and growing globally, including in China, where it virtually created the internet. The case explores how the firm facilitated surveillance and monitoring of the internet in the Golden Shield project launched in 2000, and in 2004 served as a key participant in the CN2 upgrade which greatly enhanced official capability to filter content online. The case ends in 2007 with Chambers announcing further capital expenditure in China, but facing growing criticism in the US Congress and elsewhere for its human rights record. At the same time Cisco faced a power domestic competitor, Huawei, which had grown rapidly investment in innovation even as Cisco had focused on share buy-backs after experiencing a sharp fall in its share price following the end of the dot.com bubble. The case provides a vehicle for exploring the ethical and human rights responsibilities of corporations in the technology sector, and the impact of the internet on democracy.
Case describes the career of the iconic French fashion designer Coco Chanel who created a transformational business during the first half of the twentieth century. The case describes how she leveraged relationships to build her fashion business and legendary luxury brand based on understated elegance. Chanel famous little black dress was accompanied by many other innovations including the use of jersey as material and her development of the Chanel No. 5 perfume. The case pays close attention to the importance of Chanel's networks among artists and European high society. It explores how she embraced the Anti-Semitism widely found in that society at that time period. During World War 2 Chanel lived in the Ritz hotel in Paris in occupied France in a relationship with a high-ranking German intelligence officer. She herself became an intelligence operative for Nazi Germany. The case ends with Chanel in Switzerland in 1945 after she had left France after the Liberation by Allied forces. This case can be used to explore multiple issues including creating and building an iconic fashion brand; female entrepreneurship; and ethical responsibility of business.
This case examines the career of Raj Kapoor, the legendary Bollywood filmmaker of the postwar decades. It explores how Kapoor built RK studios after 1948 by releasing a series of movies that combined romance with social messages focused on the fate of the common man in a world of social injustice. The case discusses how women were depicted in Kapoor's films and enables a discussion of the role of cinema in propagating gender stereotypes and contributing to the challenges faced by women in rural India today. The case also explores the huge success of Kapoor's films in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the Communist world. During the postwar decades there were two global worlds. In the Western world, Hollywood provided a stream of cinematic entertainment. In the Communist world, Bollywood provided the same service. They each provided alternative visions of the world.
This case examines the entrepreneurial career of Helena Rubinstein before 1938. Rubinstein is widely considered the single most important female entrepreneur in the United States in the 20th century. She was born in Poland but immigrated to Australia where she started a cosmetics company. She subsequently moved first to Europe, and then to the United States during World War I, where she engaged with relentless competition in the upscale cosmetics market with her rival Elizabeth Arden. The case examines how Rubinstein created a luxury brand and enables a discussion of the impact of such brands on women. Rubinstein articulated the view that cosmetics were liberating for women, but some of her strategies, such as wearing white coats in many advertisements designed to signal that she was scientifically qualified, can be used to support a more critical view of the beauty industry.
This case examines the career of the Russian business oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky was one of a small group of business tycoons that became fabulously rich after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, as the new Russian government, advised by prominent Harvard economists, privatized state assets. The case provides an opportunity to explore how this happened, and what its impact was both at the time and for the subsequent development of capitalism in Russia. Berevosky's business empire suffered a major reversal after the appointment of Russian President of Vladimir Putin in 2000. Berevosky's opposition to Putin's plans to restore the authority of the Russian state led to his exile in Britain, where he reinvented himself as an opponent of authoritarianism.
This case examines the recent emergence of Chinese business philanthropy through the case of the SOHO China Foundation established by the wife and husband real estate moguls Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi. It begins by describing the early careers of Zhang and Pan, and how they came together to create a highly successful real estate company active in Beijing and Shanghai. The case puts their creation of the SOHO China Foundation in the context of the wider emergence of business philanthropy in China, especially after the Sichuan Earthquake in 2008, and under the heavy influence of the government and the growth of inequality. Zhang and Pan deviated from the norm by limiting their domestic philanthropy while endowing $100 million to create financial aid for Chinese students to obtain undergraduate education at top universities in the United States. A $15 million gift to Harvard and a $10 million gift to Yale was part of this initiative. Their two sons attended those universities shortly afterwards. The gift to rich American universities received considerable criticism in China, as did the couple's failed attempt to sell SOHO China to Blackstone in 2021. The case ends with the implications for Zhang and Pan's philanthropy of the changing political situation after 2016, including the anti-corruption campaign, multiple new restrictions on the real estate sector, and President Xi's pursuit of common prosperity which encouraged the wealthy businesses and people to give back to society. The case can be taught in courses concerning business and philanthropy, and more generally on the real estate sector in modern China.