ReportSSRN

Sustainable Fiduciary Duties for Investors -- How fiduciary duties can be a key to escape the climate prisoner’s dilemma

Andreas Wildner and Maurits Dolmands, 2025

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4962416

This paper shows how applying fiduciary duty to investors can bridge the gap to common-sense climate action by helping overcome the collective action problem that often slows climate-aligned investment. By recognizing climate and nature risks as financially material, investors can shift from passive market participants to active actors in the clean economy transition, reducing systemic risks and aligning portfolios with long-term climate goals

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ArticleMaslansky + Partners

Five Corporate Communication Strategies that Won’t Work in 2025

Lee Carter, 2025

The authors believe it is imperative to stay in the conversation about changes to the business environment because of this new administration, but we need to move on from “Making the Problem Too Big”, “Ignoring Popular Sentiment”, “Failing to Find Common Ground”, “Not Telling Your Story”, and “Talking About All the Good You’re Doing in the World.”

ArticleHarvard Business Review

Getting Strategic About Sustainability

Jason Jay, Kate Isaacs and Hong Linh Nguyen, 2025

This article presents a framework leaders can use to better focus their sustainability strategies. It consists of four lenses: the business value lens (What affects our bottom line?), the stakeholder influence lens (What are people trying to tell us?), the science and technology lens (What does the data tell us about our impact and future?), and the purpose lens (What do we stand for?). The framework is intended to help leaders balance external pressures with internal priorities and objective data with stakeholder perceptions.

ToolCenter for Political Accountability

Guide to Becoming a Framework Company

2025

The CPA-Zicklin Framework for Corporate Political Spending was developed to help companies manage the risks associated with election-related spending. The Framework provides twelve provisions that companies can implement to help better engage in and manage election-related spending.

ArticleHarvard Business Review

How to Approach Business Ethics as Global Consensus Breaks Down

Richard Bistrong and Anna Romberg, 2025

This piece explores how companies can maintain ethical business practices as geopolitical tensions and authoritarianism erode global consensus on anti-corruption and rule of law. The authors argue that compliance systems alone are insufficient and call for stronger values-driven leadership, cross-border ethical alignment, and proactive stakeholder engagement to navigate growing political and moral complexity.

ArticleMIT Sloan Management Review

How to Strategize in an Out-of-Control World

Adam Job, Nikolaus S. Lang, Ulrich Pidun, and Martin Reeves, 2025

Addresses the increasing role that political turbulence is having on corporations’ ability to accomplish strategic objectives and tips for navigating external political uncertainty.

ReportEarth4All, the Predistribution Initiative, Beyond Bretton Woods, and Africa Investor

Investing to reconnect financial value with people, nature, and the real economy

Delilah Rothenberg, Hubert Danso, Frank Van Gansbeke, 2025

This deep-dive paper is a collaboration between Earth4All, the Predistribution Initiative (PDI), Beyond Bretton Woods (BBW), and Africa Investor (Ai) and focuses on the role that capital markets investors can play in building a more regenerative and inclusive economy that supports the long-term wellbeing of people and nature. Building on the 2022 report to The Club of Rome, Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, this paper provides concrete proposals for how institutional investors can support systemic change.

ArticleForbes

It’s Time For NGOs To Rethink Their Sustainability Strategies

Robert Eccles, 2025

Eccles draws on a survey of 884 sustainability experts in 72 countries, which finds that NGOs’ go-to tactics—such as boycotts, litigation, and public shaming—are seen as low-impact and risk fueling backlash. It points instead to higher-leverage strategies like policy advocacy, education, and constructive engagement with skeptics as more effective paths forward.

VideoUnite America

Majority Rules 101 (Director's Cut)

2025

Tells the story of Alaska’s landmark adoption of open primaries and ranked-choice voting, showing how these reforms empowered broader voter participation, curbed partisan gatekeeping, and led to more representative, cross-partisan governance—offering a powerful blueprint for restoring trust in democracy. Includes an analysis of the impacts of current election processes and rules -- such as closed primaries, uncontested seats, and winner-take-all elections -- as well as the arguments against the reforms adopted in Alaska.

ArticleMedium

Meeting the moment: Economic and financial reform in the age of populism and the polycrisis

Delilah Rothenberg, 2025

This piece argues that capitalism’s existing rules often deepen inequality and systemic risks, but by changing those rules to focus on upfront redistribution of wealth, power, and opportunity—a “predistribution” approach—inequality can be meaningfully reduced. It urges institutional investors to lead reforms that reshape capitalism for a fairer, more resilient economy instead of reacting only after crises occur.

ToolThird Side Strategies

Mitigating the Ultimate Systemic Risk: Key Questions Investors Should be Asking about Public Affairs Governance Right Now

Lauren Caplan, 2025

As investors increasingly focus on systemic risks, few risks are as consequential as the weakening of democratic institutions and the rule of law -- or today’s once-in-a-generation operational and strategic challenges from AI, an increasingly chaotic political environment, and more. Yet, as an investor, it can be difficult to translate these systemic risks into concrete actions. Focusing on public affairs governance – how companies make decisions about whether and when to engage in the public sphere, can be one helpful lens.

This new tool from Third Side Strategies helps investors to ask sharper questions—of companies and of themselves. It introduces the concept of CPR Governance (a set of best practices for whether and when to engage in the public sphere) which helps investors in two ways: (i) prompting companies to think more concretely about their public affairs practices and strengthen any areas of weakness highlighted by the questions, and (ii) providing investors the information needed to more effectively manage this systemic risk across their portfolio.

ToolVolans & WBCSD

Mobilising Trade Associations as a Force for Good: A Playbook for Companies

2025

This playbook sets out practical guidance for companies on how to optimise their indirect “policy footprint”. It covers how to assess and improve associations' alignment and impact, by clarifying their strategic policy priorities, evaluating where to invest in important trade association relationships, and engaging those associations constructively and effectively.

ReportBrennan Center for Justice

Money in the 2024 Election

2025

This series offers a retrospective on how rising political spending—especially via dark money and super PACs—is shaping public perceptions, fueling polarization, and undermining trust. It highlights record-breaking ad spending across TV and digital platforms and calls for stronger disclosure and enforcement to protect democratic integrity.

ReportOECD

OECD Recommendation of the Council on Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying and Influence

2025

The Recommendation on Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying and Influence provides concrete guidance for governments in ensuring lobbying and influence activities support effective public decision-making while limiting the risks of undue influence, and it provides a framework to support businesses and other influence actors in conducting their lobbying and influence activities in a responsible manner.

Tool#unifyUSA and Living Room Conversations

Of, By, and For The People: Living Room Conversation Guide on the Constitution

2025

This guide offers conversation practices and norms that help people move beyond political echo chambers, enabling genuine learning, mutual understanding, and connection across divides.

ToolWe Mean Business Coalition

Responsible Policy Engagement: Corporate Climate Policy Engagement Reporting Template

2025

This framework assists companies in reporting both direct and indirect climate policy engagements aligning advocacy with science-based targets and the Paris Agreement. It provides a structured format for reporting to stakeholders—like investors, NGOs, and regulators—clarifying the company’s role in influencing climate policy and improving accountability.

ArticlePew Research Center

Several Economic Issues Seen as Top National Problems by Americans

2025

This Pew Research report highlights inflation, healthcare affordability, and the federal budget deficit as top economic concerns shaping public grievances and trust in business, with money in politics emerging as a critical related issue undermining confidence in institutions.

ReportUniversity of Pennsylvania

Steady On: Toward Principled, Sustainable Corporate Leadership Addressing the Reality of Human-Caused Climate Change

Leo E. Strine, Jr., 2025

Urges corporate leaders to stay the course on climate action, integrating sustainability into core governance and fiduciary duties. Strine offers a critique of anti-ESG backlash as inconsistent with capitalism and argues that long-term climate leadership protects workers, investors, and the economy.

ReportGlobescan

Sustainability in the USA: What Consumers Think and Expect in 2025

2025

This report uses the UN SDGs to assess U.S. sustainability progress, highlighting where the country is falling short—especially on inequality, climate, and declining trust in institutions. It emphasizes that public expectations are rising, and urges businesses to align with enduring values and evolving customer priorities through transparency, collaboration, and long-term strategy.

ReportSSRN

Sustainable Fiduciary Duties for Investors -- How fiduciary duties can be a key to escape the climate prisoner’s dilemma

Andreas Wildner and Maurits Dolmands, 2025

This paper shows how applying fiduciary duty to investors can bridge the gap to common-sense climate action by helping overcome the collective action problem that often slows climate-aligned investment. By recognizing climate and nature risks as financially material, investors can shift from passive market participants to active actors in the clean economy transition, reducing systemic risks and aligning portfolios with long-term climate goals

ArticleThe Shareholder Commons

System Stewardship Isn't Politics: It's Capitalism

2025

This piece explains “system stewardship,” where investors consider how company actions affect the broader economy and long-term market health. It emphasizes that this approach is not political but financial, highlighting reports showing that climate change and diversity can create systemic risks that investors should address to protect returns.

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