Stakeholder capitalism: the sustainability of corporate value

As companies pursue long-term success, there’s a growing focus surrounding the relationships that they foster across a range of stakeholders. What does this dynamic mean for the future of investing and indicators of company performance that go beyond traditional financial metrics? BlackRock’s systematic experts discuss how they use a data-driven approach to identify characteristics that seek to benefit both shareholders and stakeholders in pursuit of durable investment opportunities.

Capital at risk. The value of investments and the income from them can fall as well as rise and are not guaranteed. Investors may not get back the amount originally invested.

The business of business is (more than) business

For decades, the topic of capitalism has sparked discussion over what’s at the core of long-term value creation for companies and societies. In an increasingly interconnected world, there’s greater demand to understand how companies foster relationships across employees, customers, and communities alongside asset owners. Larry Fink emphasized the power of this dynamic in his 2022 Letter to CEOs, explaining, “a company must create value for and be valued by its full range of stakeholders in order to deliver long-term value for its shareholders.”¹

This evolution in how we think about market economies has sparked interest in sustainable investing as a way to incorporate positive stakeholder impact across businesses. Investor flows and company commitments have followed, with sustainable assets exceeding $4 trillion globally² and firms increasingly acknowledging the importance of social and environmental factors to their business. It’s also elevated our analytical approach as systematic investors – providing new data and powerful insight into which firms are poised to outperform as the economy evolves.

Over a decade ago, we began exploring the role of sustainability as not just an ethics-based allocation decision but an additional lens to understand investment opportunities and economic behavior. We found a link between sustainability and profitability, providing a clearer view of company characteristics and opportunities alongside traditional financial metrics. Sustainability has since become ingrained in our investment approach for its ability to achieve better potential outcomes for both shareholders and stakeholders – solving for what we call the double bottom line.

The intersection of sustainability and tangibility

Sustainable insights have the potential to help uncover indicators of company success that drive durable value creation. The challenge investors face is ensuring those insights are validated and tied to material results. Common sustainability metrics and standards often lack substantiated evidence of business impact or fail to demonstrate a link with key stakeholder groups and social issues. As a result, investors may not be effectively capturing the intended benefits.

In our view, harnessing the potential of sustainability requires a data-driven approach with robust analytical capabilities and validated insights. Our research seeks to reveal tangible indicators of performance and societal improvements across a spectrum of internal and external stakeholders.

Internal stakeholder example: employee sentiment
While intangible assets remain difficult to measure, human capital is typically the most important asset of any organization. Employees play an instrumental role in impacting business results. They drive new innovations, set the pace of productivity, and act as brand ambassadors to the public and to potential employees. In our view, employee perspectives provide an inside view of a company’s potential to succeed and outperform relative to peers.

Our systematic capabilities allow us to extract insight from granular employee views at scale. Collecting alternative data from public networking and employee review sites, we apply natural language processing techniques to gauge sentiment and satisfaction. Machine learning capabilities help us capture greater detail, associating key words with broad themes such as innovation, teamwork, and respect. Shown below, our research reveals a strong connection between employee sentiment and excess return potential driven by productivity enhancements.

The impact of employee sentiment on firm performance
Returns of companies with the highest and lowest employee sentiment

In Larry Fink’s 2022 Letter to CEOs, he discusses how workers are demanding more from their employers – a feature of capitalism that’s fostering competition and pushing companies to be better.³ Companies who prioritize relationships with their employees are working towards a more engaged and satisfied workforce (stakeholder outcome) with improved potential to outperform (shareholder outcome).

External stakeholder example: consumer financial protection
The financial well-being of consumers is at the center of a thriving economic system. Companies committed to building mutually beneficial customer relationships may stand to benefit from better business results.

Our research on consumer financial protection has shown a connection between real-time consumer feedback and the strength of financial companies. We collect data showing geographically tagged consumer complaints on financial products through online public-facing data portals from the US Government.⁴ Our research has shown higher levels of complaints are tied to worse debt-to-income levels across counties⁵ and higher non-performing loans for financial institutions controlling for total deposits.⁶ Banks that receive more complaints and negative feedback may not be fostering consumer well-being (stakeholder outcome) and are more likely to experience negative financial results (shareholder outcome).

Long-term value via the double bottom line

Within Systematic Active Equity, we leverage these sustainability insights alongside numerous other indicators of company success. As companies strive to create long-term value, they’re tasked with considering the scope of their impact across a broader range of stakeholders. How does the sentiment of employees dictate productivity and innovation? How does the financial health of consumers impact their ability to do business? These are just a few of the questions at the center of achieving durable performance.

Through a robust systematic process enhanced by big data and scientific testing, we analyze complex stakeholder relationships with diligence and scale. We believe the cumulative impact of these insights has the potential to helps achieve improved shareholder and stakeholder results, capturing better outcomes by solving for the double bottom line.