Economics of Mutuality Is Out to Change Capitalism
This EEA YouTube Show and ESM feature article continue the series on movers and shakers in stakeholder management as part of our Enterprise Engagement Alliance YouTube Channel and Meaningful Meetings series. Click here to subscribe to the ESM weekly e-newsletter.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Economics of Mutuality Foundation is out to change the world. Were it not founded by Mars Inc., one of the world’s most successful privately held companies, that would sound quixotic. Based on the management principles of Mars, the name and concept emerged in 2007 as part of an internal think tank within the company that is now an independent non-profit foundation with corporate advisory and investment arms.
To discuss EOM, Jay Jakub joined Bruce Bolger, Enterprise Engagement Alliance founder, for a half-hour YouTube show on the organization’s purpose, goals, and objectives.
Click here to watch or listen to the show.
As Jakub, EOM Executive Director explains it, the mission is to transform business for the common good in ways that are good for business and that scale. Make mutual value creation (for people, communities, planet, and shareholders) the engine of profitable growth—not a trade-off or cost center, he urges. Re-center organizations on purpose, not the firm and its profit. Treat purpose as an actionable problem to solve for others (an external need), then design the ecosystem of stakeholders around that purpose (what he describes as a 'Copernican' shift from profit-centric to purpose-centric).
These are among the essential principles of economics of mutuality as explained by Jakub on the show.
Before taking up his role at the foundation, he was Senior Director of External Affairs at Mars, where he played a key leadership role under the Mars chief economist in helping to develop, refine, and test the Economics of Mutuality. He is co‐author of Completing Capitalism: Heal Business to Heal the World, which introduces EOM to business leaders, investors, and scholars. He is a contributing co-author of Putting Purpose Into Practice: The Economics of Mutuality, a practical how to resource published by Oxford University Press used in teach the EOM approach to mutual value creation.
Here are some of the show’s highlights.
The State of Stakeholder Capitalism
• Post-2008 openness to the concept rose; COVID triggered short-term retrenchment.
• ESG (environmental, social, governance) backlash reflected fatigue with virtue signaling and compliance that doesn’t create value.
• The path forward is pragmatic value creation with proof—not moral suasion.
• Scorecard: Jakub pegs progress around the “fifth inning” in US baseball terms, with nine being the last inning of the transition. A big obstacle, he says, are poor communication and fragmentation among like-minded groups.
Key Takeaways for Leaders
• Start with a deliverable purpose; map the ecosystem; fix stakeholder frictions with targeted interventions; measure all four capitals (individuals, communities, planet, and shareholders); scale what moves revenue, margin, and resilience.
• Treat solving social problems as a profit center (“do more good at a profit”) rather than “doing less bad at a cost."
EOM Goals and Objectives
• Scale a practical, measurable operating model that manages four capitals—financial, social (trust/community capacity), human (well-being, capability), and natural—to drive top- and bottom-line results.
• Replace box-checking with management. Move from lagging, compliance-style metrics to leading indicators that steer decisions and value creation.
• Prove, then propagate. Generate repeatable case studies and investment-grade results that spread across business units, companies, and industries.
Core Activities in Education
• Provide executive education through longstanding Oxford University Saïd Business School partnership and executive programs; expanding to more universities.
• The curriculum helps leaders “unlearn” shareholder-primacy reflexes and learn to measure, manage, and mobilize non-financial capitals.
Co-create strategically positioned EoM Centers of Excellence at leading management schools to help scale the approach by contextualizing for local/regional conditions, creating new mutual value curricula, training the trainers (professors).
Advisory / Implementation
• Through Mutual Value Labs (a foundation-owned consultancy), help organizations understand and implement EOM principles, and capture results in case studies that can be shared.
• Start with a business unit, demonstrate value, then scale to additional projects.
• Embed purpose as deliverable strategy; map stakeholder problems; deploy targeted, often low-cost interventions; measure mutual value and financial uplift.
Investment / Market Proof
• EOM began acquiring and combining operating companies (e.g., two healthcare/IT firms) to prove performance under a mutual-value model. Other plans are under way to scale this concept through mixed private equity and venture funds.
Business Versus Platforms (Addressing issues)
• First platform: Loneliness (client-driven priority), with Asahi as an early partner to study how business can help address loneliness.
• Collaborations with leading academics (e.g., Pamela Qualter, University of Manchester), plus free reports, webinars, and a London symposia.
• Pipeline platforms: address aging demographics, financial exclusion, deforestation—each built to help solve societal problems at a profit.
Operating Principles and Metrics (the “management system”)
• Purpose as a guiding light: use it to illuminate stakeholder pain points, then fix them to improve ecosystem performance.
• Four-capital measurement: quantify social/human/natural capital impacts and connect them to revenue, margin, resilience.
• Talent flywheel: support higher well-being and purpose-fit to attract and retain top performers and to enhance productivity gains.
• Natural-capital efficiency: manage inputs as leading indicators (vs. only reporting footprints) to lower costs and risks while creating value.
Field-Building and Alignment
• Co-founding the Global Alliance for Conscious Business Education to unify theory (academia) and practice (EOM’s data/methods), open “centers of excellence,” and amplify a common voice across brands and geographies.
Enterprise Engagement Alliance Services
Celebrating our 15th year, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance helps organizations enhance performance through:1. Information and marketing opportunities on stakeholder management and total rewards:
- ESM Weekly on stakeholder management since 2009. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- RRN Weekly on total rewards since 1996. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- EEA YouTube channel on enterprise engagement, human capital, and total rewards since 2020
Management Academy to enhance future equity value for your organization.3. Books on implementation: Enterprise Engagement for CEOs and Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap.
4. Advisory services and research: Strategic guidance, learning and certification on stakeholder management, measurement, metrics, and corporate sustainability reporting.
5. Permission-based targeted business development to identify and build relationships with the people most likely to buy.
Contact: Bruce Bolger at TheICEE.org; 914-591-7600, ext. 230.
