IRG and the Future of Marketing Initiative at Oxford’s Said Business School announced a study focused on what it takes to win in the shift from shareholder to stakeholder growth. They describe it as the first CXO study of its kind.
The Achieving Multistakeholder Impact study set out to identify winning strategies, how impact is best measured and communicated, the leadership attitudes and habits that go with it, and the role of brands and marketing. It ran from February to October 2023.
Key findings
- The stated motivation is defensive. The concern expressed is that in the current economic climate the lessons of multistakeholder growth risk being discarded along with the approach itself.
- The Oxford view is that conditions have changed since the US Business Roundtable committed to creating value for all stakeholders, and that inflation and recession are testing the resolve of leaders who backed the 2019 declaration.
- The method combines vision interviews with global chief executives, finance chiefs, human resources chiefs and marketing chiefs, a meta-analysis of multistakeholder growth initiatives, and an artificial intelligence hypertrend analysis.
- The advisory board of twelve is built to represent every stakeholder, and includes leaders from Burberry and Apple, the UN Global Compact, Unilever, Oxford, Coca-Cola, MTN, Partners Group, WPP, One Young World, the B Team, and Google.
- The study promised outputs meant to be used rather than read: fact-based insights and frameworks, practical tools, and case studies.
What the study set out to answer
The subtitle states the question directly: what it takes to win in the shift from shareholder to stakeholder impact. The four things the study aimed to identify are winning strategies, measurement and communication of impact, the leadership attitudes and habits required, and the role of brands and marketing.
Supporting it was a global coalition of business, leadership and marketing partners, together with an advisory board representing all the critical stakeholders.
Why now
The Oxford professor of marketing frames the timing around pressure on a commitment already made. Inflation and a global recession, he argues, are testing the resolve of any leader who supported the 2019 Business Roundtable declaration on creating value for all stakeholders.
IRG’s founder puts it in stronger terms. His worry is that the useful lessons will be lost when the approach falls out of favor, and the study is presented as the way to capture and share them before that happens.
How it was run and who backed it
The approach is described as combining the academic rigor of Oxford’s initiative with the practical experience of IRG participants. Three strands feed it: vision interviews across four C-suite roles, a meta-analysis of published multistakeholder growth initiatives, and a hypertrend analysis used to identify themes, topics, and emerging future trends.
The confirmed partners reach across search, media research, sustainability, academia, and industry bodies. They include Spencer Stuart, WARC, the Yale Sustainable Leadership Forum, CKGSB, the UK Marketing Society, the ANA CMO Growth Council, the LinkedIn B2B Institute, and Morning Consult.
The two institutions
IRG describes itself as dedicated to helping organizations shift from shareholder to stakeholder growth, a focus it names Humanized Growth, and as working by connecting leaders to peers, experts, and best practices. It states that it is not-for-profit and independent, and lists the companies and schools that support it.
Its published record is set out as a book in 2010 and two Harvard Business Review articles, Marketing 2020 in 2014 and Insights 2020 in 2017, with the program curriculum built on the 2019 Growth Study.
The Oxford initiative describes itself as bringing academics and senior executives together on marketing, advertising, communications, media and technology problems, and exists to infuse marketing practice with evidence-based solutions. Its stated conviction is that no academic or practitioner should approach these issues alone.
Scope and limitations
This is the announcement, issued at the start of the study. It describes what the work intended to deliver over the following nine months and carries no findings.
Source
This page summarises Institute for Real Growth and Oxford Saïd FOMI Launch First Global CXO Study on Multistakeholder Impact, by Institute for Real Growth (IRG), Oxford’s Future of Marketing Initiative (FOMI), February 6, 2023.