A common purpose binds together all members of an enterprise, inspiring them to go beyond simply satisfying their contractual requirements and instead to actively create value through the pursuit of excellence and innovation. Doing so grows the pie for both stakeholders and shareholders, thus enabling companies to serve wider society at the same time as remaining commercial and profitable.

The Task Force’s Interim Report gathered significant evidence that companies who deliver value to their material stakeholders also generate superior long-term returns to investors. The more policy can nurture purposeful companies, the more we can build a better and more sustainable economy.

We have a strong track record using rigorous research and evidence, combined with multi-disciplinary practitioner experience, to assist with the design and adoption of practical policy proposals that help effect change. We work collaboratively with Task Force members, policymakers and other bodies, providing challenge to ensure innovations that are practical. Our work has been influential with many of the regulators, including the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the investor community.

For example we advocated to ensure purpose was placed at the heart of the 2018 Corporate Governance Code, and that practical changes were adopted to encourage executive pay reform. Our paper ‘Thoughts for Change’ substantially influenced the shape of the FRC’s call for submissions for the revised 2020 Stewardship Code, and many of the ideas were adopted in the final Code itself. Our pioneering work on reforming the structure of executive pay through replacing Long-Term Incentive Plans (LTIPs) with deferred stock has seen us lead the debate on this topic in the business and investment community alike, helping to drive change.

We recognise The Purposeful Company is not the only organisation in the ecosystem pressing for a reset in business priorities – but it is the central one (see the diagram below). We seek to work collaboratively across these groups where our authority on evidence and insight on policy is often complementary.