World Day of Social Justice: Why Value Sharing Can’t Wait

On February 20, World Day of Social Justice, we often tell ourselves that justice is primarily a matter of laws, institutions, and major political decisions. Yet much of today’s injustice is manufactured—or repaired—much closer to home: in the way companies choose to share the value they create.

In OECD countries, the share of labor income in national income is declining in favor of capital owners. According to a report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), globally (including OECD countries), this share has fallen by 1.6 percentage points since 2004, reaching 52.3% in 2024, representing a loss of $2.4 trillion for workers that year.

Income inequality—and even more so wealth inequality—has widened: the highest earners are increasing the gap, while the lowest earners are seeing their conditions deteriorate. The World Inequality Report 2026 indicates that, globally in 2025, the richest 10% will account for 53% of total income (compared to 8% for the poorest 50%), while in terms of wealth, the richest 10% will hold 75% (compared to 2% for the poorest 50%).

In France, the poverty rate reached a record high of 15.4%, illustrating the gradual erosion of social cohesion under the effect of these macroeconomic dynamics.

Against this backdrop, value-sharing mechanisms within firms—from profit sharing and employee ownership to training, wellness programs, and more democratic governance—are shifting from optional corporate add-ons to indispensable tools for social justice. They are among the compelling levers available to make World Day of Social Justice more than a symbolic date.

For decades, the dominant corporate playbook has revolved around two concepts: value creation and value capture. Strategy textbooks explain how companies create value through innovation, efficiency, and collaboration with suppliers and customers and then capture as much of that value as possible through bargaining, market dominance, and control over key resources. In this framework, a firm succeeds when it maximizes the portion of the “pie” it keeps for shareholders.

The emerging idea of value sharing challenges this one-dimensional logic. It begins with a simple yet radical question: even when a firm has the power to retain most of the value, should it? And with whom should it share?

Employees, suppliers, local communities, customers—and even nature, through environmental stakeholders—all contribute in different ways to value creation. Stakeholder theory argues that fairness requires these actors to participate in value appropriation as well, and that sustainable performance depends on balancing these relationships rather than maximizing a single objective such as shareholder wealth.

Value sharing can be driven by two distinct motivations:

• The first is instrumental: managers share value to unlock higher productivity, innovation, and loyalty, ultimately boosting long-term profits.
• The second is normative: leaders accept lower short-term returns because they recognize an ethical responsibility to improve workers’ lives and support communities. 

In practice, these motivations often coexist. A company may introduce a profit-sharing plan because it “pays off” but also because denying workers a fair share during periods of record profits is socially and morally indefensible.

The report Value Sharing Mechanisms: From Optional to Indispensable?, which we produced with Nil Aydin, HEC Alumni 2024, offers a sobering account of what happens when firms neglect employee value sharing. It revisits controversies involving household names such as Amazon, Walmart, McDonald’s, Uber, and Tesla—all criticized for low pay, unsafe conditions, or worker misclassification that deprives employees of basic social protections.

These are not isolated public relations incidents. They reveal a structural pattern: when companies treat labor purely as a cost to be minimized, while asking workers to absorb shocks such as inflation or productivity pressure alone, they invite unrest, reputational damage, and regulatory backlash.

Research cited in the report shows that replacing disengaged employees can cost up to 150% of an annual salary (Freeman et al., 2010). By contrast, value-sharing approaches that strengthen loyalty and engagement can stabilize both the workforce and overall performance. What seems like a “cheap” strategy—suppressing wages and benefits—quickly becomes expensive when strikes, legal challenges, and public boycotts follow.

A company boasting record profits while its warehouse workers line up at food banks faces more than a moral dilemma; it faces an existential one. At a time when trust in institutions is fracturing, every company becomes a micro-laboratory of either social cohesion or social disintegration.

Far from being a symbolic concept, value sharing is backed by a growing toolkit of approaches that organizations worldwide are beginning to adopt.

First, profit-sharing plans allocate a portion of profits to employees, often in the form of bonuses or retirement contributions. Evidence from U.S. firms suggests such schemes are associated with productivity gains of 3.5% to 5%, especially in smaller companies—demonstrating that sharing the pie can help grow it. The John Lewis Partnership in the UK, where employees receive bonuses tied to group performance, has long built its culture and brand around this principle of shared prosperity.

Second, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) allow workers to become co-owners. Research highlighted in our report shows that U.S. employees in ESOP firms approaching retirement hold, on average, ten times more wealth than peers in non-ESOP companies. These firms are also three to five times less likely to lay off staff during downturns. During the Great Recession, employment grew in ESOP firms while it shrank elsewhere—illustrating how shared ownership can serve as a crisis buffer.

Third, non-monetary mechanisms such as skills development, wellness programs, and recognition systems are powerful but often overlooked forms of value sharing. Investing in training expands workers’ capabilities and future opportunities, echoing Amartya Sen’s view of development as the expansion of human freedoms. Deloitte University, the firm’s internal training hub, has become a strategic asset rather than a cost center. Comprehensive wellness benefits—like those offered by Google, from mental health support to fitness facilities—improve both well-being and productivity, as research on happiness and economic performance suggests. Studies of recognition programs in European firms show that simple, non-financial gestures can significantly increase employees’ sense of being valued—and with it, their motivation and retention.

Value sharing also extends beyond the employee–employer relationship. Fair pricing and long-term contracts with suppliers, as practiced by companies such as Starbucks or Unilever, help stabilize supply chains while improving livelihoods in producing countries. Local hiring and sourcing, community development initiatives, and inclusive pricing models for low-income customers illustrate how firms can embed social justice into everyday operations.

At its core, value sharing raises a fundamentally political question: who has the authority to decide how the fruits of economic activity are distributed?

For much of the past half a century, Milton Friedman’s doctrine—that the sole social responsibility of business is to increase profits—has provided a clear answer. Under this view, corporate governance is oriented primarily toward shareholder interests, provided firms operate within the bounds of the law.

Today, that view is increasingly untenable. Contemporary stakeholder theory by Edward Freeman argues that because multiple actors co-create value, governance structures must incorporate their voices into decision-making. Practical avenues include employee representatives on boards, as seen in European co-determination models; stakeholder councils; or seats reserved for environmental NGOs to represent the interests of nature and future generations. These approaches do not eliminate shareholders’ role, but they rebalance it within a broader community of claimants.

Parallel to these developments, innovations in ownership are gaining prominence. In Denmark, shareholder foundations hold significant stakes in companies such as Carlsberg, using dividends to fund scientific and cultural initiatives while ensuring stable, long-term stewardship. In Spain, the Mondragon group operates as a federation of worker cooperatives in which employees are both owners and decision-makers, enjoying greater job security and higher wages than in comparable firms. These models are not without challenges—but they demonstrate that alternative approaches to organizing power and distributing value are both possible and competitive.

Regulation is reshaping the landscape. The European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and similar frameworks are (slowly) transforming what were once “nice-to-have” CSR initiatives into mandatory disclosures and risk management processes. In this new environment, simply reporting carbon footprints or diversity metrics will no longer differentiate a company.

Our report suggests that the next frontier of competitive advantage may lie precisely in the ability to share value more effectively than rivals—more fairly, more transparently, and more creatively.

This should fundamentally change how we talk about corporate responsibility on World Day of Social Justice. Rather than applauding isolated philanthropic acts, we should ask: How is value truly created and distributed across value chains? How are inflation shocks and productivity gains allocated among shareholders, workers, and consumers? Who sits at the table when decisions about wages, bonuses, and investment priorities are made? What is the social justice paradigm that a firm seeks to embody? What are the corresponding actions, metrics, and monitoring dashboards required to operationalize and evaluate their commitments?

When designed well, value-sharing mechanisms can transform the workplace into a genuine engine of social cohesion. They can reduce income volatility, build wealth for those historically excluded from it, and deepen democratic participation within organizations. When designed poorly—by substituting bonuses for wages or concentrating benefits at the top—they can become yet another vehicle for injustice.

On February 20, it is tempting to look to governments to correct inequality through tax and welfare reforms. But if we are serious about social justice, we must also examine the everyday institutions that shape our lives: the companies that employ us, buy from us, and sell to us. Whether they acknowledge it or not, they now stand on the front lines of a new social contract.

In a world of shrinking labor shares, rising living costs, and eroding trust, value sharing should be at the center of the debate. It is one of the clearest tests of our economies' ability to build prosperity that is accompanied by justice.