Blog: Business as usual is broken. Shared ownership could be the fix.

As leaders gathered in Davos last week, the challenges of climate breakdown and widening inequality should have been top of mind. Yet if these gatherings continue under the assumption that “business as usual” will somehow resolve these crises, progress will remain out of reach. At Davos, leaders of global corporations were joined by those from politics and civil society. Of these three pillars of society, arguably, those from the private sector hold the most sway. This professional managerial class have such influence because they run the businesses that hold the wealth of those individuals that Oxfam, in the same week, identified as owning nearly half the world’s wealth (around 43%-47%), whilst only representing 1% of the population.

That is a concentration and quantity of wealth that is as bad for the economy as blood clots are to the human body. But nearly four in five people across the OECD work in the private sector. That alone makes business a decisive player in shaping people’s lives. 

But the world faces environmental breakdown, rampant inequality and growing social isolation. Against this backdrop, “business as usual” looks dangerously outdated. The question is not whether business must change, but how.

Who owns and runs a business determines whether it serves only shareholders or a much wider public purpose. Shared ownership and governance models can help turn companies from extractive machines into engines of community resilience. These can be understood as democratic businesses.

The potential outcomes are profound: advancing ecological and social goals, protecting democracy, reducing inequality and shoring up communities against the shocks of climate breakdown.

Take the first of these. External finance often drives companies to prioritise short-term profit and endless growth. Venture capital, private equity and stock markets demand ever more financial extraction through dividends, buy-backs and lucrative exits. Structuring ownership to keep decision-making independent from these pressures allows purpose – not profit – to lead. Embedding social and ecological commitments into a company’s articles, while giving workers, communities and others, real power, helps ensure these commitments survive.

Then there is democracy. Concentrated wealth buys political influence; it’s no accident that conventional firms spend heavily lobbying for their own interests. By contrast, democratic businesses lobby less for narrow gain and more for the public good. Research even shows that “workplace democracy” boosts political engagement, strengthening democracy itself.

On equality, the evidence is equally clear. Since neoliberalism took hold 45 years ago, deregulation and the weakening of collective bargaining have widened income and wealth gaps. Worker- and community-owned businesses buck the trend: they pay more fairly, reduce pay disparities and share ownership of the enterprise itself.

And when it comes to resilience, roots matter. Footloose corporations often abandon communities when profits fall, leaving behind shuttered shops and toxic legacies. Locally owned and governed firms, by contrast, tend to stay put – keeping jobs, sustaining trust and rebuilding economies from the ground up.

The lesson is simple. Businesses that democratise ownership and governance are better equipped to serve the people and places that depend on them. They are freer to plan for the future rather than chase the next quarter’s returns. And they are more likely to protect what really matters: their workers, their communities and the planet.

It’s time for us to decide who businesses serve.

Shared ownership won’t solve every challenge we face, but without it, we will keep replaying the same failures. Businesses can either remain engines of extraction or become stewards of shared prosperity. The world doesn’t need more promises from Davos. It needs businesses built for people and planet—not just profit.

Michael Weatherhead is Development Lead at Wellbeing Economy Alliance. If you’re passionate about transforming business ownership and want to get involved in this work email michael@weall.org.