The Stakeholder Engine

We often think of sustainability as a checklist — a report to file, a policy to publish. But in reality, sustainability operates as a system. And like any system, it needs both structure and intent. Once we see it that way, everything starts to connect.

Sustainability is dual in nature: one side governs direction — managing risks, navigating trade-offs, and reinforcing resilience. This is where Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) plays its role, providing structure and discipline. The other side defines destination — ensuring that business outcomes align with what matters to people across the value chain. This is the realm of cultural sustainability, which shapes purpose by embedding stakeholder logic into how the organization thinks, behaves, and delivers value.

That logic is the basis of stakeholder capitalism — a model that shifts the definition of success from short-term profit to long-term trust. It asks not just what the business gains, but how it grows value with employees, customers, suppliers, regulators, and communities. What matters to them must shape what matters to the business.

Sustainability is the operating system that allows this to work — integrating governance, resource use, and social impact into one coherent platform. But no system runs without a code. Internal culture is that code — the internal DNA that determines how decisions are made, how strategy is executed, and how external stakeholder expectations are translated into performance.

Cultural sustainability is where the system begins. A culture designed around stakeholder logic ensures that governance, risk, and operations align toward outcomes that people value. In many ways, climate change itself is a disruption of culture — a threat to how people live, work, and relate to the world.

Stakeholder capitalism has an operating system — it’s called sustainability.

And sustainability’s source code is culture.