The financial system has been extraordinarily successful at moving capital to where it can create more financial value. But it has not been successful at moving capital to create social or environmental value. The result is large swaths of society and the environment that continue to need capital even as our global economy grows year over year. The resulting tension between those that have and those that need capital is leading to new frameworks for how capital can be conceived, measured and balanced. These multi-capital approaches bear the potential to create more responsible and sustainable companies. However, too frequently, multi-capital approaches are presumed to lead to inclusive or equitable distribution. This is a problematic presumption as one does not necessarily lead to the other and unless mechanisms are put into place to guide the development of multi-capital frameworks, the potential exists to exacerbate the disproportionate concentration of social and natural resources toward more wealthy groups of people. This paper explores the link between evolving multi-capital (financial, manufactured, social, intellectual, environmental and human capital) approaches and our ability to create more inclusive and equitable distribution of wealth and argues that in order to link multi-capital and inclusive capitalism, a series of fundamental reforms in shareholder agency will need to be adopted.
