[aspenmayer]

Oh wow! Even more info. I remember hearing about the Business Roundtable on a podcast when it was breaking, but haven’t heard much since.

Did it end up just being lip service, or are there lasting changes in industry or individual companies that we can point to which show prioritization of stakeholder value over simple shareholder value?

[colonelanguz]

That question is probably a bit over my head. My outlook is pretty grim and skeptical because of my experience with American capitalism so far. But the fact that people like Leo Strine and Marty Lipton are apparently meaningfully moving these ideas beyond the bounds of academia is definitely a good sign. (Slightly) more tangibly, 93% of investor respondents to a recent survey about corporate purpose indicated that it's important for a corporation to have a purpose, and 38% agreed that defining/managing stakeholder impact is an important reason to have a corporate purpose.[1] (This study was published on the HLS Blog after I wrote a more cynical reply to you yesterday and forgot to send it. Neat I guess.)

I read the Harvard Law corporate governance blog pretty regularly, and a staggering percentage of recent scholarship on there has been about corporate purpose, stakeholder capitalism, and ESG. ESG and stakeholder theory aren't exactly the same thing, but here's a good overview of how ESG might impact M&A and governance moving forward [2].

[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/06/19/making-corporate-... [2] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/02/20/the-coming-impact...