A far cry

Did things change after the seminal moment in 2019 when the Business Roundtable, a club for CEOs of the largest US companies, said they were all about “stakeholders”?

According to Harvard Business School prof Lynn S. Paine, the answer is: “hardly”. It’s now about five years on after that moment which observers thought would change the business world; after household name corporate leaders were saying profit and shareholder returns were secondary to their “stakeholders”.

Paine concludes that stakeholderism has “gained wider acceptance” and CEOs see the “value of taking the interests of their stakeholders seriously when planning, developing strategy, making decisions, assessing risks, allocating resources and so on.”

But, she says: “This is a far cry from replacing shareholder capitalism as the central organising principle for US companies.”

She adds that stakeholder “analysis” will be an “essential tool” for boards and manager. This, she adds, is “important progress.”

Tech happy

On the subject of stakeholders everywhere, Board Agenda has learned where the happiest employees work: technology.

According to The Digital PR Agency, tech workers tallied a 76% “happiness” score and are rated “ecstatic”.

“Technology stands out as one of the best industries for remote and flexible work, needing just a desk, a computer and good internet connection,” says Digital.

Which Board Agenda finds somewhat counter intuitive because when we rate the top frustrations of working from home, technology, or fixing you’re laptop and software, is up there at the top, just behind having to pay for our own breaktime Digestives. Far from ecstatic.

Joined-up thinking

A moment to reflect on the role of business leaders mulling their response to the recent far-right, anti-immigration riots in the UK.

Rachael Saunders, deputy director of the Institute of Business Ethics, offers a list of things corporate leaders can do to help. These including prioritising the safety of the people most affected and finding ways to “unify and bring together your colleagues”.

There are other things to be done but one thing Saunders’ advice suggests is that business cannot consider itself outside society. And we couldn’t agree more.