EPI
Purpose, strategy and performance
The EPI seeks to establish best practice purpose governance, globally. To do this, we have invited a number of leading businesses and investors to work alongside the research partners.
The body of work coming out of the Enacting Purpose Initiative is also contributing to the British Academy's 'Future of the Corporation' initiative, forming a critical part of its insight agenda.
We are supported by a number of leading universities, corporations and professional service firms including the Law School at the University of California Berkeley; BCG BrightHouse; EOS at Federated Hermes; and the senior leadership teams from a large number of global organisations from across Europe and the US. Our thanks go to these partners, and to the members of all three of our steering groups.
Report # 1
In 2020, we brought together our first set of meetings, convening a series of 30 business leaders from organisations and institutions headquartered in the UK and Continental Europe to form a Directors Steering Group. These meetings resulted in our first report "Enacting Purpose within the Modern Corporation: A Framework for Directors", a copy of which can be downloaded below. This report made three contributions as follows:
Report # 2
In 2021, we convened a second set of meetings establishing two parallel discussion tracks - one for board directors and one for the investment community. We brought together a group of 30 business leaders from organisations and institutions headquartered in the US to form the Directors Steering Group and a separate Global Investor Steering Group which was attended by 30 leading asset owners and managers. These meetings were hugely productive, and resulted in our second report "Directors & Investors: Building on Common Ground to Advance Sustainable Capitalism", a copy of which can be downloaded below. This report built on the momentum from the first EPI report, outlining:
Other Papers
We have separately worked with colleagues across academia and business on the question of how to best measure and report purpose. Our first discussion paper "Measuring Purpose - An Integrated Framework" can be found in the reports section of this website below alongside the Steering Group reports.
Project Team
Commentary
https://hbr.org/2020/09/the-boards-role-in-sustainability
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LszKiU0fkEw
https://www.ft.com/content/177c89e3-4451-4566-9635-79a0469399db
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/09/02/enacting-purpose-within-the-modern-corporation/
https://boardagenda.com/partner/enacting-purpose-initiative/
https://www.thinkbrighthouse.com/who-we-are/