Research & Insights

This Playbook provides an analytical approach to advancing employee ownership (EO) across seven countries in the sub-continent, offering insights that can be adapted to other EMDEs where EO remains underutilized. The Playbook highlights the potential of EO to create more inclusive and resilient economies, particularly in emerging markets where wealth concentration and economic inequality remain pressing challenges from within and across countries. By giving workers a direct stake in the success of the businesses they help build and sustain, EO can drive long-term prosperity, improve business performance, and strengthen communities.

This paper analyses the growing disconnect between financial markets and the real economy, and asks: how can we rebalance Earth and humanity’s balance sheet? It explores the role that actors across capital markets, including investors, policymakers and regulators, can play in in building a more regenerative and inclusive economy that supports the long-term wellbeing of people and nature.

A collaboration with Impact Frontiers (IF) on the Investor Influence project (formerly named Investor Contribution 2.0) which takes an expansive view of the multifaceted ways investors shape outcomes for stakeholders and the natural environment and recommends that these considerations should be an embedded part of investors’ impact management approaches.

A recent webinar co-hosted by the manager of the UK railways pension schemes, Railpen, and the Predistribution Initiative (PDI), themed "Perspectives on Workforce Directors – Opportunities & Challenges", explored the potential and hurdles of integrating workforce directors into corporate boards.

This paper, in which the Predistribution Initiative contributed, considers the different mechanisms through which socio-economic inequality can affect financial markets and the private sector, as well as the incentives for participants interested in reducing socio-economic inequality.

As part of the Sorenson Global Impact Leaders, our Executive Director, Delilah Rothenberg contributed to the "What’s Next in Impact?" report where thought leaders and impact practitioners share suggestions on how we can work together to achieve a sustainable, resilient, and thriving future.

There has been a growing cadence of convenings, panels and publications focused on scaling investment and financing strategies to build wealth and influence for workers and communities in impactful ways across North America. These strategies include a focus on shared ownership of enterprise, shared ownership of real assets, and individual ownership of assets. This report provides key takeaways from the Ownership Lens Investing Movement virtual convening.

Do environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and impact investing practices in their current forms provide investors with sufficient tools to play a meaningful role in “Building Back Better” following the COVID-19 crisis? Many investors, including those who identify as “Universal Owners,” often seek to manage ESG risk and opportunity through corporate governance interventions. However, certain investment structures can also have negative impacts relating to ESG goals and management of systematic risk. Furthermore, they can undermine the positive impacts sought by investors at the portfolio company-level.