This brochure introduces the Achieving Stakeholder Impact study, which asks how a company pivots from shareholder primacy to stakeholder impact. It sets out to identify winning stakeholder growth strategies, the leadership attitudes that make them work, and the role of brands and marketing.
Klaus Schwab, chairperson of the World Economic Forum, is quoted congratulating IRG on the study and calling it important to show that corporate multistakeholder responsibility is better understood and more widely promoted as the basic corporate leadership concept of the century.
Key findings
- The problem the study names is timing. Inflation and a global recession are testing the resolve of leaders who backed the 2019 Business Roundtable declaration.
- The pressure is specific and financial. CEOs seen as not entirely focused on the bottom line, and investments without an immediate financial return, are under intense scrutiny by the financial markets.
- The risk the brochure identifies is not that the argument gets lost but that the lessons do, with the multistakeholder growth baby thrown out with the bath water.
- The C-suite question is framed as how rather than whether: how to align the organization, balance short and long term, communicate internally and externally, measure success, lead the shift, and use marketing, HR, finance, strategy, and operations.
- The study is built on more than 300 vision interviews, a meta-analysis of publications, and AI analysis using the Hypertrend tool developed by Oxford FOMI.
Who was interviewed, and about what
The interviews reach beyond marketing. They cover CEOs, CFOs, CHROs, heads of investor relations, CMOs, and ESG experts.
The AI strand is used to identify key themes, topics, and emerging future trends rather than to replace the interviews.
Five focus areas structure the output: a definition of stakeholder impact, the initiatives with most impact, measuring and communicating impact, a growth leadership profile, and implications for each key role.
The advisory board
The advisory board is chaired by senior operators rather than researchers. It includes Halla Tomasdottir of the B Team, Angela Ahrendts, formerly of Burberry and Apple Retail, Colin Mayer of Oxford University, and Chris Burggraeve of AB InBev and NYU.
The marketing and people side includes Conny Braams of Unilever, Lorraine Twohill of Google, Javier Meza of Coca-Cola, Sue Allchurch of the UN Global Compact, and Jennifer Remling of WPP.
The rest of the board spans finance, operations, and geography: Hans Ploos van Amstel of Partners Group, Ian Lee of Adecco, Sylvia Mulinge of MTN Uganda, Ella Robertson McKay of One Young World, and Jingye Chen of ATRenew.
Applying the study inside a company
The brochure offers a corporate package priced at 22 thousand dollars, which reads the study findings through a single organization’s context and ambition to define its own stakeholder impact opportunity.
The package has four parts: IRG-led vision interviews with senior leadership, an internal benchmark run as a quantitative survey against overperformers, curated best practices for the industry and geography, and a tailored opportunity session that brings the inputs together.
Scope and limitations
The document is a draft brochure describing a study in progress. It sets out the approach and the focus areas rather than reporting results, and it still carries editorial placeholders.
Source
This page summarises ACHIEVING STAKEHOLDER IMPACT: Pivoting from shareholder primacy to stakeholder impact, by Institute for Real Growth (IRG), 2023-04-19.