The JUST Report: Five Years On, BRT’s Restatement Matters More Than Ever
Monday marked the 5th anniversary of the Business Roundtable’s landmark restatement of the purpose of a corporation. As I wrote on LinkedIn, much has changed since then. The stakeholder model has become the framework by which many companies compete and win today, not because they think differently about purpose – though most do – but because it provides the best path to financial and market success.
Crucially, the stakeholder model is also how the American people think about corporate purpose. JUST’s own polling, as well as that of others, makes this clear. Understanding this is important because it offers clues in a quest currently underway on both sides of the aisle: that for a new economic vision for the nation (this week’s NYT Op-Ed by James Pogue about Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is the latest reflection on the issue). Call it a secular shift, one that is fundamentally cross-partisan in nature, that seeks to understand why so many Americans feel cut adrift by our system of free market capitalism and how the problem can be tackled.
While disagreements over political solutions to this question undoubtedly exist, it strikes me that from a business perspective, the answers may be hiding in plain sight. Hardened by a cycle of embrace and backlash that continues to evolve, the stakeholder approach – in which the overarching goal is doing right by workers, communities, customers, suppliers, the planet and, yes, shareholders too – offers a clear blueprint for action which benefits everyone.
Be well,
Martin
Quote of the Week
This week, in partnership with Dayforce, we released a new toolkit for companies ready to implement effective paid leave policies to better support their employees, while improving talent recruitment, retention, productivity, and morale.
Our Guide for Corporate Leaders on Paid Leave Policies, offers an overview of paid leave policies across Russell 1000 companies, including industry insights and concrete examples of leading policies and best practices from some of America’s biggest companies, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, S&P Global, Ford, and many more.
JUST in the News
This week, in partnership with Dayforce, we released A Guide for Corporate Leaders on Paid Leave Policies for companies ready to implement effective paid leave policies to better support their employees, while improving talent recruitment, retention, productivity, and morale.
This comprehensive resource offers an overview of paid leave policies across Russell 1000 companies, including industry insights and concrete examples of leading policies and best practices from some of America’s biggest companies, including HPE, S&P Global, Ford, and many more.
JUST AI
As issues of generative AI violating copyright grow, Andreeson Horowitz is putting $80 million into a startup, Story, which aims to create a blockchain method for tracking what copyrighted material was fed into and utilized by AI. Fortune has the story.
Must Reads
The Wall Street Journal had people write-in their feelings on the debate over DEI, and it turns out proponents AND opponents actually share many similar views. Meanwhile, Morning Consult takes a look at how regular Americans feel about recent DEI rollbacks, like what happened this week at Harley-Davidson.
Meanwhile, Inc spoke to several CEOs who continue to have Chief Diversity Officers on how they’re positively impacting their companies.
Worries abound over Meta discontinuing a tool used to fight disinformation right before an election. NPR has the story.
NPR takes a deep dive into the non-profit hospital system, showing that as CEO pay and profit margins go up, it’s not necessarily resulting in more “charity care” for patients that can’t afford to pay.
Harvard Business School reveals that while anti-ESG proposals surged in 2024, they earned less support from shareholders. At the same time, Robert Eccles breaks down three ways corporate leaders can manage the conflicting pressures in the ESG political wars.
Chart of the Week
This chart comes from our Guide for Corporate Leaders on Paid Leave Policies, and highlights the PTO policies across industries in the Russell 1000. Read more about this data, as well as best-in-class policies, here.
