Materiality In Corporate Governance: The Statement Of Significant Audiences And Materiality
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School
September 3, 2015
Harvard Business School General Management Unit Working Paper No. 16-023
Abstract:
Under the prevailing ideology of “shareholder primacy” most boards of directors believe that they are prevented from considering stakeholders other than shareholders in determining material issues and materiality for strategy and reporting. New research is showing that legal foundations exist for directors to indeed consider other stakeholders. To many boards, this is new thinking. In order to assist boards in this new realm of taking into account multi-stakeholder significance, we have structured this paper in four parts and a conclusion. In Part I we review fiduciary duty focusing on to whom this duty is owed. In Part II, we review the relevance of materiality in corporate governance. In Part III, we review our audience-focused materiality determination approach and in Part IV we discuss the new idea of an annual board “Statement of Significant Audiences and Materiality.” We conclude with some preliminary research results, ideas for future research, and next steps.
Materiality In Corporate Governance: The Statement Of Significant Audiences And Materiality – Introduction
Under the prevailing ideology of “shareholder primacy” most boards of directors believe that they are prevented from considering stakeholders other than shareholders in determining material issues and materiality for strategy and reporting. New research is showing that legal foundations exist for directors to indeed consider other stakeholders. To many boards, this is new thinking. In order to assist boards in this new realm of taking into account multi?stakeholder significance, we have structured this paper in four parts and a conclusion. In Part I we review fiduciary duty focusing on to whom this duty is owed. In Part II, we review the relevance of materiality in corporate governance. In Part III, we review our audience?focused materiality determination approach and in Part IV we discuss the new idea of an annual board “Statement of Significant Audiences and Materiality.” We conclude with some preliminary research results, ideas for future research, and next steps.
Much of the material presented in this paper has been adapted and updated from Chapter 5 of author Eccles’ recent book, The Integrated Reporting Movement: Meaning Momentum Motives and Materiality (Chapter 5). Author Youmans was a significant contributor to Chapter 5. By way of a brief explanation, “integrated reporting,” or an integrated report, is the combination of the traditional, financially?oriented annual report with the material parts of a corporation’s sustainability report, showing the relationships that exist between the difference dimensions of performance. Many of the world’s largest corporations are adopting integrated reporting. However, we strongly emphasize that the arguments presented in this paper are as relevant for “Form 10?K and Form 20?F”2 reporting as they are for integrated reporting. While we will refer to integrated reporting from time to time throughout this paper, our key points about fiduciary duty and materiality in corporate governance apply to reporting in a totally general sense.
It is this general sense that describes the difference between Chapter 5 and this paper. While Chapter 5 looked at materiality and governance in the context of integrated reporting, this paper is focused on materiality in the context of corporate governance, with traditional, integrated, and sustainability reporting as equally applicable consequences. In our ongoing research into the role of the corporation in society, we have found that the materiality principles supporting integrated reporting, along with the principles underlying the idea of the corporation itself, apply to all listed corporations regardless of reporting regime or nationality.
I. Fiduciary Duty
The objective of the corporation, as a separate and potentially immortal legal person, is simply to survive and, if possible, to thrive. Since shareholders own only freely tradable rights (to vote, to claim residual assets, and to the wages of capital), the burdens of ownership and management of the corporation’s assets are entrusted to the board of directors. This trust is commonly referred to as “fiduciary duty.”
A prevailing ideology across the globe is that directors’ fiduciary duty requires them to place primacy on shareholders’ interests. Research is showing, however, that in every nation examined thus far, this is indeed ideology, not law. Shareholder value is an outcome of the corporation’s use of capitals, not the objective of the corporation.3 Shareholders and providers of financial capital are but one audience of the corporation. As the corporation mobilizes financial, manufactured, intellectual, human, social and relationship, and natural capital, each capital has one or more stakeholders who have an interest in this form of capital.
Moreover, the potential immortality of the corporation implies that future generations are also stakeholders. Considering all possible combinations of issues and stakeholders, along financial and nonfinancial attributes (i.e., environmental, social and governance, or “ESG” issues), with current and future time frames, would make the directors’ fiduciary task impossible, as corporations have limited resources and limited competencies to deploy against these capitals. In the face of these limited resources, directors must make choices as to which audiences are significant; these will be a subset of all of the firm’s stakeholders. These “significant audiences” determine which issues are “material” to the ability of the corporation to sustain itself over a self?defined period of time. As the trustees of the corporation, directors too often focus on issues that are only material for short?term financial performance. We suggest that directors focus on significant audiences and this implies a broader range of issues, over a longer time frame, to be considered in determining materiality. Because shareholder primacy ideology has been widely perceived as a legal requirement, directors by and large have not seriously considered the full array of potential audiences that may be significant.
In order to set the global, country?by?country legal framework that allows directors to consider the universe of stakeholders in their materiality determination process, global research is being conducted. This research has shown, so far, in every jurisdiction across the world without exception that the board of director’s primary duty is to the corporation itself as a separate legal person. The concept of corporate personhood, separate and apart from shareholders, from other providers of capital and from other stakeholders, is universal and underlies both limited liability and liquidity of freely tradable shareholder rights (i.e., “shares”). In some jurisdictions, most notably the United States, there is “primacy duality” in that directors’ duty to the separate corporate person is co?equal to directors’ duty to shareholders. In no jurisdiction is a duty to shareholders a higher duty than to the corporate person. In some jurisdictions, such as Brazil, the current legal definition of the corporate person includes the full range of potential stakeholders, such as employees, customers, and NGOs representing various interests of civil society.
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