Flourish Rebel

Supporting Global Flourishing Awareness and Action

Flourishing Regions / Zones

The Power of Integrated Stakeholder, Multi Capital Types and New Value Model Perspectives

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Applying these new perspectives to Vision, Decision Making and Action for flourishing and improved well-being.

For me the combination of integrated stakeholder view, capital types, and how they integrate with value creation and destruction provides a huge opportunity to broaden our thinking and actions on flourishing and ultimately improved well-being for all.

Integrated Stakeholder View

Integrated stakeholder view means no matter what our context (individual, team, enterprise, community…) our decisions and actions take into account understanding, participation, and impact of all stakeholders that can potentially be touch by our activities. The current stakeholder list I use is:

  • ourselves / individuals
  • groups / families / teams
  • clients
  • employees
  • suppliers and partners
  • owners and investors
  • community / towns / city
  • region
  • province / state
  • country
  • world / society
  • planet

The literature identifies the primary message of integrated stakeholder as a move away from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism. I hate adding the word capitalism to anything, so go with integrated stakeholder view.

Capital Types

For all of history we have only really cared about financial capital and built/manufactured capital, although we constantly make use of human, social and natural capital. Over the last 20-30 years we have dappled with understanding the contribution and impacts on other types of capital, including human, social/relational, and of course natural capital. We have not effectively valued and managed human, social and natural capital. That is all starting to change.

I have been involved with many individuals and groups developing the ideas of capital types and how to effectively use, value (get them on the balance sheet), and manage them. Most of the work on capital types has identified a set of five capital types. Some have introduced a few more but those additions can in most cases be integrated in the main five capital types. As an example intellectual capital is identified as an additional capital type. However, it could easily be grouped in with the primary five.

There has been many names associated with this capital type perspective. Multi-capitalism (There’s that “capitalism” word again!) is the currently trending term for this broader capital type view. The multi-capitalism concept is built on the backs of many researchers and practitioners of the past. I was first introduced to the five capital types by the work of Mark Anielski in what he called Genuine Wealth. As I mentioned the most recent terminology is Multi-capitalism coined by Martin Thomas and Mark McElroy. Other than the name the credit for the concepts behind it goes to many others. However, Martin Thomas and Mark McElroy have made significant contribution to the idea of MultiCapital Scorecard. More on that in another post.

Any decisions and actions need to consider the impacts on all capital types:

  • Financial / Economic Capital
  • Built / Constructed / Manufactured Capital
  • Human Capital
  • Social / Relational Capital
  • Natural Capital (Nature, Renewable/Non-renewal Resources, the Planet)

Value Perspective

For some reason value has primarily been associated with profit. Without getting into a lot of details now, the meaning of value has recently changed considerable. We are moving from an economic view to a social, environmental and economic view of value. We need to be celebrating and strengthening this new view of value. The world is going to be radically different when this new view of value understood and applied to everything we do.

Value needs to assess more from a positive and negative impact on capital types and how this contributes to flourishing and ultimately improved well-being for whatever the context (individual, group, enterprise, community… and the planet).

Applying to Vision, Decision-making and Action.

A new mindset to business and life needs to be developed that takes integrated stakeholder, multi-capitalism, and the broader view of value in guiding visioning, decision-making and action. Its actually quite simple to bring about. Always include all stakeholders, capital and value views in what we do. Understand value is co-created and co-destroyed, value and valuation is based on all capital types and the impact that any decision or action has on those capital types, and capital types can be impacted differently for each stakeholder involved directly or indirectly in the decision and actions.

More to come on this later.

Bill, The Flourish Rebel

Flourishing Enterprise Institute

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A global network of nodes doing the required research to build the science and practices behind a flourishing enterprise.

As a flourish rebel I am participating with the newly created Flourish Enterprise Institute. The newly formed initiative brings together multi-disciplinary expertise to build a research/science-based foundation for flourishing enterprises.

Getting to Flourishing Enterprise Measurement and Reporting

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Integrated Thinking , Multi Capitalism, Value Redefinition, Enterprise – Integrated Stakeholder View , Context-Based, Impact Focused.

Many measurement and reporting standards and frameworks (ESG reporting, <IR> Integrated Reporting, GRI, SASB, CDSB, TFCD, r3.0, Future-Fit…) exist today. Many of these have their origin in the environmental sustainability area but have broadened to include social, economic, and environmental (triple bottom line) considerations. Almost all of the measurement and reporting frameworks have been focused more on reporting, than on measurement and they are most often used as a tool for business reputation and brand management instead of truly understanding the impact of an enterprise’s activities on its society, environment and economy. Many frameworks exist solely to provide guidance to more socially and environmentally oriented investors to support investment decisions.

We have been, and will continue to innovate in measurement and reporting standards, frameworks, methods, and tool development. As we innovate, divergence has occurred with a plethora of useful concepts, approaches, standards and frameworks. Tooling to support measurement and reporting standards and frameworks have not kept pace with standards and framework development. Existing and new innovations in standards, frameworks and tools have been created by a large variety of organizations and initiatives, all with good intentions. Many of these innovations look very promising to support measurement and reporting for flourishing enterprises. There is still more innovation to come, however, there is a sense of optimism that the pieces are coming together. Perhaps we are getting nearer to the start of convergence in the innovation process around the creation of real measurement and reporting solutions for flourishing enterprises.

As a flourish rebel, I have assessed and looked in detail at most of the measurement and reporting standards, frameworks and tools. For flourishing enterprises, I am aligning to the idea of integrative thinking from Integrated Reporting, to Future-Fit as a large part of the guidance for what a flourishing enterprise should be striving to become and what needs to be focused on. Their first release of the Future-Fit Calculator is also a good starting point to support reporting and some measurement. Also looking to how models and blueprints from r3.0 can be integrated with Future-Fit. r3.0 provides a lot of additional guidance for how companies can start down the path to becoming a flourishing enterprises. Many of their current and new blueprints will provide or will provide valuable insight for new measurement and reporting standards, frameworks and tools.

Many other relatively new concepts are important to flourishing enterprise measurement and reporting. Most of these concepts have actually been in existence for years, but are now more evolved and are being more appreciated as to how they can all come together to support new directions in measurement and reporting for flourishing enterprises. These include multi-capitalism, value system re-definition and value co-creation, enterprise – integrated stakeholder view (whole of system) , allocations and thresholds perspective, context-based, impact focused and others. Many existing standards and framework development initiatives have had some of these or have recently initiated integration of these into there approaches. Hence the sense of optimism.

In summary what initiatives and ideas that currently excite me in measurement and reporting for flourishing enterprises are:

  • Integrated Thinking as described by <IR> Integrated Reporting and others
  • Future-Fit concepts, benchmark and method guide documents, and the new calculator
  • r3.0 Blueprints
  • Multi-capitalism and the MultiCapital Scorecard
  • Integrated Enterprise Stakeholder View – customers/clients, employees, suppliers/partners, community, investors and the planet.
  • A new redefined value system with a much broader perspective of value and value creation.
  • A much better understanding of impact especially as to value within a integrated stakeholder perspective.
  • Allocations and Thresholds perspective
  • Context-based

I will be exploring all of the areas identified in this post in more detail in subsequent posts.

Bill, The Flourish Rebel