The World Economic Forum and Stakeholder Capitalism: A 50-Year Promise Still Waiting for Scale
Perhaps the world’s most prestigious business organization set out in 1971 to establish a fourth industrial revolution based on the principles of stakeholder capitalism. Since then, the WEF has demonstrated relatively little progress. Why? By Bruce Bolger
The WEF’s Core Strength Became Its Core Limitation
From Moral Code to Management System: The Missing “How”
Voluntary Reporting Wasn’t Enough—and the WEF Knew It
Why Davos Hasn’t Shifted the Center of Gravity
What the WEF Could Have Done Differently
The Real Critique: Davos Optimized for Influence, Membership, and Attendance, not Adoption
What Would Be on the Davos Agenda if the WEF Were Truly Serious About Stakeholder Capitalism?
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The marketing for the annual 2026 Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum from Jan. 19-23 does not mention stakeholder capitalism as a primary or explicit theme for this year’s event. The official Davos 2026 narrative centers on the theme “A Spirit of Dialogue” with an emphasis on geopolitical cooperation, investment in people, sustainability, and innovation.
When people hear the term “stakeholder capitalism,” those few who have heard of it often think it’s a recent rebranding—something born in the last decade, tangled up in ESG debates, culture-war labels, and corporate public relations. But the World Economic Forum itself has been explicit for a long time about a broader purpose for the corporation. The 1973 “Davos Manifesto” opened with a sentence that remains striking in its clarity: professional management should serve clients, shareholders, workers and employees, and society, and “harmonize the different interests of the stakeholders.”
That’s not a fringe sentiment. It’s a foundational claim about what management is for. And yet, more than 55 years after the Forum’s founding in Switzerland as a not-for-profit in 1971 —and decades after Davos became the world’s most visible annual gathering of political and business elites—stakeholder capitalism is still widely treated as an emerging, even vanguard idea rather than the default operating system of modern enterprise with a clear definition or implementation process.
So what happened? How can an organization with that much convening power, that much brand recognition, and that many world leaders in the room have made so little visible difference in the day-to-day reality of capitalism for workers, customers, communities, and even many long-term shareholders? A constructive critique starts by acknowledging a hard truth: the WEF is exceptionally influential at agenda-setting and convening business and world leaders, but far less influential at execution when it comes to its founding principles.
Its core lesson is that it’s difficult to consistently convene leaders to a worldwide event if one is uncomfortably challenging them to explain why they are so consistently failing to uphold the principles of the organization.
The WEF’s Core Strength Became Its Core Limitation .jpg)
The WEF is a platform. Its genius is in convening—curating who gets in the room, elevating concepts, and shaping narratives about what “serious” leaders should care about. That strength created enormous cultural influence: phrases like “stakeholder capitalism,” “public-private cooperation,” and “multi-stakeholder collaboration” gained global usage in part because Davos served as a megaphone.
But convening is not the same as governing. The WEF is not a regulator, not a standard-setter with enforcement authority, and not a capital allocator. Its membership model depends on continued participation by the very institutions whose incentives are often misaligned with stakeholder outcomes. In other words: it can popularize ideals, but it struggles to impose benefits for adopting them or costs for ignoring them.
That design matters because stakeholder capitalism isn’t mainly a philosophical issue. It is an incentive and operating system issue. If an organization’s purpose, goals, objectives and values, measurement systems, compensation plans, disclosure practices, procurement rules, and board priorities are optimized for short-term financial performance, “serve all stakeholders” becomes an aspiration that loses in every budgeting meeting to the next quarter’s priorities.
In the manufacturing domain, total quality management standards and practices eventually succeeded because defects in products and processes were visible, measurable, costly, and directly linked to financial outcomes; managers could see scrap rates, warranty claims, rework costs, and customer losses, and act accordingly. By contrast, the quality of human systems—engagement, trust, capability, alignment, and experience—has been treated as intangible, subjective, and secondary, despite overwhelming evidence that these factors drive productivity, innovation, and customer loyalty. Unlike manufacturing defects, people-related failures often surface slowly, diffusely, and outside traditional accounting systems, making them easier to rationalize or defer. As a result, organizations learned how to engineer quality into machines and processes, but not into the management of human capital—leaving stakeholder capitalism without the operational discipline that made quality a mainstream business practice rather than a moral aspiration.
From Moral Code to Management System: The Missing “How” .jpg)
Look at what the 1973 manifesto actually implies: serve customers with value, investors with appropriate returns, employees with continuity and “humanization of the workplace,” and society with responsible stewardship (including paying appropriate taxes and not offsetting costs on to society in the form of unlivable wages, poor quality, and pollution). That is not abstract. It’s a practical charter.
And yet, for decades the stakeholder conversation has remained stuck at the level of purpose statements, speeches, and values—without widespread adoption of a repeatable implementation discipline, such as in the world of total quality management. Even in today’s debate, there is still “no agreement yet on the definition,” and there is a shortage of people trained in implementation. The result: stakeholder capitalism is constantly re-litigated as an ideology instead of operationalized as a management system.
Voluntary Reporting Wasn’t Enough—and the WEF Knew It
To its credit, the WEF eventually leaned into measurement. At Davos 2020, the Forum reported that 120 large companies supported efforts to develop common, comparable non-financial metrics. This evolved into the Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics: 21 “core” and 34 “expanded” metrics across People, Planet, Prosperity, and Principles of Governance, published in 2020 after consultation with companies, investors, and others. This was a serious move: it attempted to translate stakeholder capitalism into something boards could track and investors could compare. About 150 companies have reportedly incorporated these standards into their corporate reporting, but there is little sign the WEF has done anything to seriously promote the disclosures or any analysis of what they contain.
As such, the initiative illustrates the WEF’s recurring pattern: a strong framework paired with weak follow-through mechanisms. The metrics were voluntary. And voluntary adoption—especially when it increases transparency, raises expectations, or creates legal risk—tends to spread slowly and unevenly. Even favorable coverage has pointed out the same tension: useful standards, but no regulatory mandate and no integration into binding financial reporting rules.
Why Davos Hasn’t Shifted the Center of Gravity
If stakeholder capitalism is still vanguard, it’s not because leaders haven’t heard the language. It’s because the center of gravity of capitalism sits elsewhere:
1. Capital market incentives still reward short-horizon performance in many contexts and fail to mention the financial and related impact of value creation or destruction through people.
2. Executive compensation often tracks short-term stock price and financial targets more tightly than longer-term stakeholder outcomes. The cost of pollution or other efforts to push off costs on to society often remain hidden for years until later shareholders must pay the litigation or mitigation costs.
3. Boards frequently lack shared competence in human capital measurement, customer lifetime value, supply chain workforce practices, and other stakeholder drivers.
4. Disclosure has historically been inconsistent, non-comparable, and easy to spin.
5. Political polarization has turned even basic ideas about responsible enterprise into identity contests.
The WEF could spotlight each of these issues, but spotlighting doesn’t automatically rewire them. And doing so in a sufficiently aggressive manner to challenge entrenched practices is no way to get organizations to sign up for another year of membership or participation at Davos.
What the WEF Could Have Done Differently
A constructive critique is not “the WEF failed" or that stakeholder capitalism is virtue signaling. It’s: the WEF treated stakeholder capitalism as an agenda—when, as a founding organizational principle, it needed to be treated as an implementation campaign with impact.
Here are concrete moves the WEF could have made (and still can make) to accelerate real progress:
1) Make membership mean something measurable. Instead of treating stakeholder capitalism as a theme, the WEF could have required member organizations (or at least top-tier participants) to publish a minimal set of standardized stakeholder metrics annually—with clear definitions, third-party assurance options, and board sign-off. Not “pledges.” Not “initiatives.” A baseline scoreboard.
2) Create an “operating system” playbook, not just principles. The Davos Manifesto is a code of ethics. What’s missing at scale is a practical management system: governance templates, KPI libraries, example incentive designs, procurement standards, and stakeholder-engagement processes that can be adopted by companies without reinventing the wheel. WEF founder Klaus Schwab’s book, Stakeholder Capitalism, written with Peter Vanham, Editorial Director for Fortune magazine, does not emphasize practical implementation and reporting, but largely remains at the level of vision, systems critique, and high-level frameworks. In the stakeholder field, the challenge is often not belief—it’s know-how and internal capability.
3) Tie Davos visibility to demonstrated progress. Davos is prestige. The WEF could have used that prestige more assertively: keynote slots, flagship panels, and high-profile participation could be conditioned on transparent reporting and credible progress against stakeholder goals (especially “People” outcomes that are often the least rigorously measured). If leaders want the stage, the stage can demand receipts.
4) Build coalitions that move from dialogue to shared commitments. Multi-stakeholder collaboration is the WEF’s brand. But too often, collaboration stays in the realm of conversation. Over 55 years, the WEF could have built durable sector-by-sector compacts—where competitors agree on minimum labor standards in supply chains, shared disclosure norms, or common customer fairness principles—reducing the fear that “doing the right thing” is competitively punishable.
5) Partner more directly with standard setters and regulators—earlier. The Forum’s metrics work is valuable, but it would have had more impact if it were explicitly designed from the start as a bridge into voluntary but meaningful reporting regimes. The world is moving toward stronger disclosure requirements in some jurisdictions (notably the European Union), and the WEF could have positioned stakeholder capitalism as a compliance-ready management system rather than an optional moral upgrade.
The Real Critique: Davos Optimized for Influence, Membership, and Attendance, not Adoption
The WEF helped keep the idea of stakeholder capitalism alive—and in recent years, it has helped push measurement forward. But it has not consistently converted influence into adoption at the rate its own founding ideals would suggest. The Forum became the place where leaders talk about the future, without becoming the place where leaders are held toa shared standard of progress. If that were the case, it likely would have experienced much lower membership and Davos attendance numbers.
Stakeholder capitalism didn’t need another manifesto. It needed an implementation movement—complete with training, measurement, comparative transparency, and consequences for non-performance.
If the next 50 years are going to look different than the last 50, the WEF’s opportunity is straightforward: keep convening—but convene around a scoreboard, a playbook, and a level of accountability worthy of the influence Davos claims to represent.
What Would Be on the Davos Agenda if the WEF Were Truly Serious About Stakeholder Capitalism?
- Definition: What is stakeholder capitalism in practice—not as ESG, CSR, or purpose rhetoric, but as a distinct operating model that changes daily management decisions?
- Materiality: What does it mean to harmonize interests? Which stakeholders matter, who decides, and how are competing stakeholder claims prioritized and revisited over time?
- Economic case: What is the credible, evidence-based link between stakeholder investment and long-term financial performance, resilience, productivity, and innovation—and over what time horizons?
- Governance: What are boards and executives explicitly accountable for when it comes to stakeholder outcomes, and how should compensation and oversight change?
- Implementation: What are the concrete management practices—the equivalent of process controls and continuous improvement—that operationalize stakeholder capitalism in people, customers, and supply chains?
- Measurement: What small, standardized set of stakeholder metrics should every large organization report annually, and how are those metrics integrated into core financial reporting?
- Tradeoffs: How should leaders manage inevitable conflicts between stakeholder interests, and what level of short-term financial underperformance is acceptable in pursuit of long-term value?
- System alignment: How must capital markets, disclosure rules, and investor expectations evolve based on the increasing research demonstrating a direct connection between stakeholder engagement, financial results, and future equity value creation.
- Accountability: What minimum expectations should apply to WEF members themselves—and what happens when stakeholder commitments are not met?
Until these questions are confronted with the same rigor applied to quality, safety, and financial integrity, stakeholder capitalism will remain an inspiring idea rather than a mainstream management discipline.
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Contact: Bruce Bolger at TheICEE.org; 914-591-7600, ext. 230.
