“Corporate leaders everywhere are grappling with the challenges presented by the requirements of stakeholder responsibility. Most want to do the right thing, but the inherent fuzziness of these obligations, and the temptation to manipulate them for self-interested reasons, often lead to undesirable outcomes. This book presents a coherent framework which enables leaders to confront those challenges on the basis of clear principles that are designed for the 21st century economy.”
Lindsay Tanner, Former Federal Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Federal Government, Australia
“My hope is that the guidance in this book is heeded, so companies move from a narrow focus on profit to a more inclusive vision of long-term value creation for all stakeholders”.
(Shorter quote agreed for the cover by Ansie Ramalho, Chairperson: King Committee for Corporate Governance in South Africa)
“A timely book in a business world where many companies are re-examining their purpose, and considering how to relate to all their stakeholders, not just their shareholders.”
Barbara Ridpath,
Non-Executive Director in financial services companies, and Chair of the Church of England’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group
This work could not have come at a better time. It offers refreshing new perspectives on corporate capitalism that go far beyond established concerns with the current public mistrust in companies. In addition to shedding light on how stakeholder relationships influence and shape the way companies are run, the book reveals the myriad ways in which they shape how we understand and encounter the society and the world in which we live. The weakness in the relationships across these global networks is endemic. The suggested policy directions to promote mutual knowledge, alignment and fairness are indispensable.
Prof Arad Reisberg
Professor of Corporate Law and Finance, Head, Brunel Law School, U.K.
“In this bracing challenge to traditional corporate governance, Lee, Rushworth and Schluter demonstrate that relational stability across all stakeholders is essential to long-term corporate health. Lest their recommendations for transforming corporate enterprise seem unrealistic, they give vivid examples of companies already putting each into action. Highly recommended, even for those of us who defend shareholder-oriented governance.”
Professor David Skeel,
Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
“The thinking of company directors has moved on from being almost exclusively focussed on shareholders, to including the interests, expectations and concerns of all major stakeholders. This book takes us one step further in the journey by demonstrating that most corporate problems can be traced to weak human connectivity, internally or externally, and by offering practical steps corporate leaders can take to improve connectivity through mutual knowledge, alignment of interests, and raising the level of real as well as perceived fairness in their stakeholder relationships.”
Peter Taylor,
Chairman and CEO, TTP Group
“The authors of this book develop the concept of human connectivity to bring us to a new level of understanding of how and why it is so important. Development of clusters of new technology companies, science parks and innovation centres, has demonstrated conclusively the importance of human connectivity for the development and success of technological innovation and transfer; it is sometimes more important than the technology itself.”
Alan Barrell,
Professor of Entrepreneurship, Cambridge Learning Gateway
“All aspects of life involve relationships and that includes the business world. Sadly, this is often forgotten not only by those involved in business but also by those criticising businesses or seeking to reform business laws and practices. The result is an impasse. This book offers us a possible way forward, not merely by suggesting solutions to particular issues, but by inviting us to look at the problem in a different way. It deserves to be widely read and considered.”
Richard Godden, Partner, Linklaters LLP
“This book helpfully analyses some of the history and current thinking on the development of the stakeholder-inclusive approach and how that can be achieved, and contributes to the debate on the purpose of a company. It also explores how the instability of corporate operations can be traced to a lack of human connectivity in the networks surrounding companies and which (HOW THAT) can be addressed in terms of mutual knowledge, alignments of interest and perceived fairness.”
Professor Mervyn King SC
“Relational Thinking has the power to reshape the global economy. The global B Corp movement (on the demand side) and the Impact Investment movement (on the supply side) are putting relational thinking into action. This book is a timely call for all institutions systematically to apply this thinking so that we might accelerate the change – from a system of corporate capitalism that is destroying us, to a relational economic system that could restore and regenerate”.
James Perry,
Co-founder & board member of B Lab UK, part of the B Corporation movement
“Corporations are often viewed and experienced as faceless and soulless institutions. We tend to forget that these are actually social constructs, invented to more effectively and efficiently organise collective human endeavour and interaction. Corporations that do not recognise and nurture their human connections and interdependencies create structural instability, not only within themselves but for the capitalist economic system as a whole as is so well argued by the authors of this book. My hope is that the guidance in this book is heeded. Challenges such as climate change and inequality are clear indications that the current paradigm is not sustainable. Companies, especially global companies, have a responsibility to be responsive to these challenges and to shift from a singular focus on profit to corporate purpose which has a more inclusive vision of value creation.”
Ansie Ramalho, Chairperson: King Committee for Corporate Governance in South Africa
A fascinating book. For me the core sentence is ’not approaching the human being directly but rewire national society through strategic and structural reforms’.
This asks people to think very differently about “the fundamental role of relationships in helping individuals and societies to flourish”.
In other words, it is necessary to address not the relationships per se but the conditions in which they will thrive. – Professor Gillian Stamp MBE, Director, Bioss the Foundation.
