Companies are like citizens, they need to act responsibly and try to do more good than harm.

Many of us will have heard of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and similar ideas such as the ‘triple bottom line’, ‘corporate purpose’ and ‘shared value’. In practice, many of these ideas were hijacked by marketeers, which meant that companies claimed great things but stakeholders (like customers, employees and society-at-large) rarely felt the benefits.

Meanwhile, investors were discovering that issues such as sexual harassment cases, slave labour and carbon emissions were having a real impact on return on investment (ROI).