When is Co-operative Compleat?

Moving along from the basic discussion about shareholder involvement I notice that David Cameron is now promoting the idea of Co-operatives as part of moral capitalism. Is this really (as he says) historic Conservative Party policy?

Well I think we can leave that question unanswered - the more important point is that fundamentally the political argument is shifting in favour of models that are more integrated with overall societal needs. In general they are becoming more Compleat.

What is missing from all of this is any thought-through guidance as to what that actually means. The Compleat Biz remains one of the few works out there that provide the answers.

I was engaged in dialogue last week with someone who questioned whether it is possible to construct models of business that make the shareholder community more responsive rather than merely being the providers of capital. The answer seems to lie in the political will-power to change the paradigm of the last 60+ years.

On that basis lobbying of politicians should continue unabated to make sure we seize the current opportunity to build a better society for everyone by restructuring the prevailing model of capitalism. (Coincidentally it is likely to be far more profitable as well.)

Is the world waking up to shareholder power?

As readers will know - I've been recommending for years that shareholders should be given a statutory role to get more involved in companies' activities. Prime Minister David Cameron and Business Secretary Vince Cable are now talking about making it a legal requirement for shareholders to have mandatory oversight on directors' pay.

However the time it has taken for emergence of this level of interest in changing the free market model is frankly a disgrace. The prevailing idea that somehow allowing the status quo (on the basis that top talent would walk elsewhere) was blind stupidity. The so-called top talent is often nowhere near as good as the huge salaries that they command appear to state.

The reasons are fairly obvious - big corporate doesn't have any binding requirements to engage with the wider community and the impersonality of size obscures the ground-level impacts of executive management behaviours. Only now are people beginning to make the connections between the free behaviours we have been brainwashed into seeing as acceptable.

The question for the moment is whether this awakening will spread to other areas of corporate activity. Shouldn't there be greater oversight and wider stakeholder involvement in more than just executive pay? The Pension Funds have not done society a huge service to date by their silence in the arena of corporate governance and it would be useful to have rather more critical voices aired.

Time to push the Compleat Biz agenda a little harder - the politicians appear to be starting to listen.