The Mature Corporation: A Model of Responsible Capitalism
This volume represents the first textbook of the Maturity Institute, a new, not-for-profit, multi-disciplinary professional development institution established in 2012 to address the developmental needs of corporations. It explains the institution’s brief history, philosophy, goals, principles, strategic framework and measurement of mature, management practice. It offers a critique of earlier attempts to temper and moderate the worst excesses of late 20th century capitalism including concepts of ‘balanced scorecards’, ‘triple bottom lines’ and ‘corporate social responsibilities’. It tackles the root causes of capitalism’s present malaise, tracing them back to the mantra of ‘shareholder value’.
In its analysis, the text describes a mutually inclusive, whole system, value paradigm where every societal stakeholder can benefit from corporate activity, where true wealth creation, resource utilisation and sustainability go hand-in-hand. This book provides a sophisticated, yet practical, navigation chart for all organisations needing to address the immense social and economic changes of the unfolding millennium.
Paul Kearns is Chair of the Maturity Institute and one of its founding members. He is also a Senior Partner in the UK-based advisory firm, OMS LLP (Organizational Maturity Services) which developed OMINDEX as the primary instrument for measuring the Total Stakeholder Value of corporations. He is the author of several seminal works at the forefront of thinking in how organizations manage their people, including HR Strategy (2010) and The Value Motive: The Only Alternative to the Profit Motive (2007).
Stuart Woollard is Managing Partner of OMS LLP (Organizational Maturity Services) and co-founder and Council member at the Maturity Institute. He is currently leading pioneering work using the Maturity Institute’s OMINDEX to show how the very best organisations are able to serve society, build effective human value systems and provide the greatest benefit for all stakeholders. He has published research on the management of people in global contexts and was appointed an Innovation Fellow at King’s College London in 2010. He was part of the international leadership team at E*TRADE Financial and UK Managing Director, and previously led advisory businesses, both independently and at Arthur Andersen. He is a regular conference speaker and teaches on MBA and graduate programmes.
"“We live in a world increasingly riven by political and social divisions. At the heart of these divisions is the increasing perception that we have developed an economic system that pits some groups against others and piles its rewards onto the few at the expense of broader benefits across our societies. At the heart of this divide is the shareholder-focused corporation - a concept that explicitly privileges short term shareholder returns over everyone and everything else. In this book, Paul Kearns and Stuart Woollard elegantly lay out the destructive nature of such a political economy. But, more than that, in making practical the concept of Total Stakeholder Value, they offer a whole system perspective as to how this corrosive structure can be changed to benefit us all - including shareholders themselves. They rightly point out that corporate value and social value can, and should, be aligned in what they call The Mature Corporation. They achieve this by taking a holistic perspective and, through the OMINDEX, focus on practicable ways to achieve system change rather than merely putting sticking plasters on to a broken construct. Corporations operate within the market rules set by governments. It is therefore pointless to blame individual executives for operating within the incentives set by those rules. This book offers a valuable road map through which we can all work to evolve our market structures to deliver widespread benefit. It is time to stop merely bemoaning our growing political and social divisions. Time to start the process of repair and of building political economies that drive progress towards shared and sustainable prosperity. This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to embark on that journey.”
Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia
Founder and Trustee, radix.org.uk
Author: Beyond Governance: Towards a Market Economy That Works For Everyone. RADIX, 2017.
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