Pushing Davos Leaders Beyond Good Intentions and Greenwashing
This year’s forum will seek to give concrete meaning to “stakeholder capitalism”—a more inclusive and sustainable model of increasing earnings.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos three years ago, Paul Polman, then the chief executive officer of consumer-goods giant Unilever, was a standard bearer of the enviro-capitalist elite. Before leading a standing-room-only session on gender inequality, he’d given a separate talk on the United Nations’ sustainable development goals and later in the week appeared alongside the prime minister of Norway and an indigenous-rights activist from Chad to discuss the threats of deforestation.
At the time, despite the forum’s mission that dates to the 1970s to improve the state of the world, Polman may have been considered something of an outlier addressing an audience of financial and business leaders whose focus was on creating greater shareholder value. His benevolent message certainly didn’t resonate with Kraft Heinz Co., the ketchup giant backed by frugal private equity firm 3G Capital that made an unsolicited $143 billion takeover bid the following month. Unilever emphatically fended that off.