Watch: Blackrock CMO Frank Cooper III on how to better close the corporate value-action gap

In 2019, Business Roundtable’s 181 member-CEOs shook up the corporate world by proclaiming that companies should no longer exist solely to enrich their shareholders, but should also strive to serve their customers, their employees, the community, and the environment, too—a concept that’s become known as as stakeholder capitalism. It didn’t come purely from the goodness of their hearts, though, but in reaction to the changing habits of consumers, who increasingly prefer to buy from businesses that put purpose before profits. 

Which begs the question that Quartz CEO Zach Seward poses in this episode: Is this change just all talk?

Not according to his guest, BlackRock senior managing director and global CMO Frank Cooper III, who believes that—especially in the midst of overlapping crises like covid-19, racial injustice, and climate change—the attitude-behavior gap is truly closing in corporate America. “Employees, customers, and investors are all lining up behind this,” Cooper says. That includes BlackRock itself, whose CEO made a public statement in 2020 calling the enablers of climate change a long-term investment risk.

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