If you work for and eventually lead a company, understand that companies have multiple stakeholders including employees, customers, business partners and the communities within which they operate.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Companies are communities. There's a spirit of working together. Communities are not a place where a few people allow themselves to be singled out as solely responsible for success.
When you manage your company for long-term shareholders, and you manage the company for clients, two of the biggest stakeholders, you will make the right decisions.
Companies and leaders are role models - not just with the business community - but in the broader world.
What we want to do is call attention to the fact that when workers and business work together, when you create a stakeholder model of corporate governance, where you understand that you can do well by your workers, you can do well by your shareholders and you can do well by your customers, that's how we create a virtuous cycle.
If you're constantly making business decisions on behalf of your investors first, ultimately you're going to wear down your other stakeholders. It's going to be potentially hurtful for your employees and your customers and the community you do business with.
Corporate executives need to re-frame their responsibilities to include the interests of all the stakeholders in society at large; not just shareholders, but also employees, the citizens of our communities, and those who care about the environment.
Our company is built on people - those who work for us, and those we do business with.
Companies, to date, have often used the excuse that they are only beholden to their shareholders, but we need shareholders to think of themselves as stakeholders in the well being of society as well.
Your company is a product. Who are its customers? Your employees, who use it to do their jobs.
We're very much in the people business in that there are two important groups you have to work with: customers and employees.