For many years, classical economic theory has emphasized that rational individuals act to maximize personal gain. This principle helped establish free-market systems, replacing hierarchical feudal economies with voluntary exchanges among independent actors. However, growing evidence suggests that lasting prosperity stems not only from transactions but from care, trust, and meaningful human relationships within a company’s network.
On a typical April morning, The FruitGuys, a California-based fruit delivery service, received a heartfelt message from a customer:
“When Jasmine found out my fruit hadn’t arrived, she arranged for someone to drive it — from San Francisco all the way to Bakersfield — and deliver it in person! I was stunned… and so happy to see his smiling face at my door. I love The FruitGuys and will be a customer as long as I live in your service area.”
While most businesses would welcome such feedback, for The FruitGuys, this experience reflects a deliberate strategy centered on empathy. Two aspects make this case remarkable: first, the customer was not a major corporate client but an individual, whose departure would have had negligible financial impact. Second, the person who made the six-hour round trip wasn’t a delivery worker but the director of operations, personally ensuring service quality.
Spending half a day on the road for a single delivery may seem irrational to profit-driven firms. Yet for this company, it aligns perfectly with its values. Prioritizing care over short-term gains fosters loyalty, strengthens reputation, and builds long-term resilience.
This philosophy extends beyond customer service. Organizations like LSDH, a French family-owned dairy processor with over 2,000 employees, provide truck drivers with a dedicated rest lodge offering free meals, showers, and relaxation spaces. Eisai, a publicly traded Japanese pharmaceutical firm, has shifted its mission from selling medications to alleviating patient suffering and supporting families. These companies do not disregard profitability—but view it as an outcome of genuine care, not the primary objective.
Unlike stakeholder capitalism, which seeks to balance shareholder interests with those of other parties, the caring company model focuses exclusively on generating social and environmental value for all ecosystem members, trusting that financial returns will follow. Moreover, while stakeholder capitalism often treats stakeholders as abstract groups, caring companies build personal, face-to-face relationships with real individuals.
Such organizations understand that authentic care compounds over time. Trust reduces friction in transactions, enhances crisis resilience, turns customers into advocates, strengthens supplier commitment, and earns community support. Handelsbanken, a Swedish retail bank, exemplifies this shift. Since the 1970s, it has decentralized decision-making to local branches, empowering advisors to cultivate deep client relationships. As a result—not as a direct goal—it has consistently outperformed competitors for over 50 years.
This transformation begins with leadership. Executives must replace top-down control with a sense of higher purpose, support employee autonomy, and remove barriers that hinder compassionate actions. Their role is not to dictate behavior but to enable care.
The future of economic systems may lie in moving from transactional interactions to relational models. In the 21st century, competitive advantage increasingly belongs to organizations that prioritize relationship quality over isolated financial gains. True prosperity arises not just from market exchanges but from empathy, connection, and mutual trust. Companies that embrace this approach demonstrate that compassion can be among the most strategic business choices.
— news from The World Economic Forum
— News Original —
How caring companies are redefining capitalism
For decades, classical economics has taught us that rational actors seek to maximize self-interest. n nThis idea helped to create a free market economy, replacing domination-based feudal exchanges with voluntary trade among free individuals. n nYet, true wealth comes not just from market exchange, but from care, trust and human connection with the members of one’s business ecosystem. n nOn an ordinary April morning, The FruitGuys, a California-based fruit delivery company, received a message from a client: n n“When Jasmine found out my fruit hadn’t arrived, she arranged for someone to drive it — from San Francisco all the way to Bakersfield — and deliver it in person! I was stunned… and so happy to see his smiling face at my door. I love The FruitGuys and will be a customer as long as I live in your service area.” n nMost companies would celebrate a review like that. But for The FruitGuys, stories like these don’t happen by chance; they’re the result of a deliberate business philosophy built around care. n nTwo details make this story remarkable. First, the client wasn’t a major corporate account — just an individual customer. Losing her wouldn’t have had any significant financial impact on the business. Second, the person who made the six-hour round trip wasn’t a delivery driver; it was the director of operations, personally ensuring the good quality of delivered fruits. n nSix hours on the road — for one box of fruit. For companies fixated on short-term profit, that sounds irrational. But for The FruitGuys, it made perfect sense. n nDiscover n nHow is the World Economic Forum promoting responsible models of consumption? n nIn order to build a resilient future for all stakeholders, the World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Consumption aims to shape responsible models of consumption that are equitable, promote societal well-being, and protect the planet. n nThe Consumers Beyond Waste initiative is empowering consumers to access reuse consumption models at scale. It’s vibrant community of changemakers across leading consumer companies, reuse innovators, civil society, and policymakers have established strategic frameworks to enable an economically viable transition to reuse, along with guidelines for design, health and safety, and municipal considerations to facilitate adoption. In its next phase of impact, the initiative is building a framework for standardized reuse measurement and reporting and advancing the development of reuse policies and legislation at scale. n nThe New Frontiers of Nutrition initiative is dedicated to transforming lives through the power of nutrition via system-wide change. Leading experts and researchers in nutrition, companies from multiple industries, and public partners are joining forces to shape transformative solutions to accelerate the availability, access, and adoption of nutritious food choices to empower holistic – physical and mental – health and wellbeing of consumers. n nLoading… n nThe Future of Personalized Wellbeing initiative is harnessing the power of digital biology to revolutionize the overall well-being of individuals. It has convened a community of technology innovators, consumer companies, data experts, academics, and progressive public sector actors to establish a future-oriented vision and roadmap for the widespread adoption and use of precision consumption solutions focused on precision nutrition and personal care. n nThe Scope 3 Decarbonization: The Consumer Opportunity initiative is identifying the demand-side strategic pathways required for Scope 3 decarbonization within the net-zero commitment framework. It brings together an ecosystem of leading cross-industry actors and public sector organizations to empower citizens in leading net zero lives anchored in new patterns of consumption. n nContact us for more information on how to get involved. n nRethinking what value means n nFor decades, classical economics has taught us that rational actors seek to maximize self-interest — that each transaction should generate as much financial value as possible for each of the involved parties. This idea helped to create a free market economy, replacing domination-based feudal exchanges with voluntary trade among free individuals. Commerce, in many ways, was liberation. n nYet, freedom without connection can lead to isolation. A purely transactional approach to business can erode the social fabric that free markets depend on. Two facts will suffice to illustrate this point. Studies show that levels of trust in governments or large corporations have never been so low and the feelings of loneliness have never been so high, particularly among young people. Thus, value should not be measured only through the lens of short-term transaction efficiency; it should include the cost of negative externalities or, in simpler terms, of damage caused by business to society and the environment. n nThe rise of caring companies n nBusinesses, like The FruitGuys and many others we have studied, show an even more powerful way: they measure success not so much by revenue or profit but by the strength of their relationships and bet that economic results will follow. Their organizing principle isn’t ‘maximize every transaction’, but ‘care, unconditionally.’ n nThis applies to customers, but also to other members of the company’s ecosystem – clients, suppliers and local communities. At first glance, the logic of caring companies might look like stakeholder capitalism. But a deeper look reveals that the caring company concept is rather novel. First, unlike stakeholder capitalism, which tries to balance the shareholders’ interest with those of other stakeholders, the caring company focuses only on the social and environmental value for the members of its business ecosystem and bets that the value for shareholders will follow. Second, unlike stakeholder capitalism, which often views stakeholders as abstract entities, the caring company builds relationships with each concrete member of its business ecosystem — it cares for people that its employees can talk to face-to-face. n nTake, for example, LSDH, a family-owned French industrial dairy with more than 2,000 employees. It welcomes truck drivers who arrive at its premises with a dedicated lodge with free food and drinks, showers and rest areas. Or look at Eisai, a listed Japanese pharmaceutical, which has transformed its focus from developing and selling drugs to alleviating the suffering of patients and their families. n nBoth of these companies don’t ignore profit. But profit for them is the consequence, not the purpose, of authentic care. By acting out of such care — even when it costs time or money — these companies deepen trust, build loyalty and strengthen their entire business ecosystem. n nTheir behaviour might look counterintuitive to traditional economists, but it’s profoundly rational over time. Authentic care compounds. Trust lowers transaction costs, increases resilience during crises, transforms customers into advocates, creates dedication of suppliers and builds the support of local communities. n nLoading… n nFrom transactional to relational systems n nTo make care operational, companies must redesign their core business processes — customer service, supply chains, HR practices and more — around authentic relationships, rather than self-interested transactions. This is what Handelsbanken, a leading Swedish retail bank, did in the early 1970s. By giving decision-making power to its branches, instead of concentrating it in its headquarters, the bank allowed each advisor to maintain a close relationship with their clients. As a consequence, and not as a primary goal, Handelsbanken has outperformed its competitors year after year for more than five decades. n nSuch a transformation begins with leadership. It demands that executives replace a mindset of command and control with one of higher purpose, coupled with commitment to employee freedom and responsibility. They also understand that their leadership role is to eliminate the obstacles to providing unconditional care by employees, rather than to tell them what to do. n nThe future of capitalism n nRevitalizing capitalism requires resetting some of its fundamental assumptions. For centuries, it has revolved around maximizing the value of each transaction. In the 21st century, the competitive edge belongs to organizations that focus on the quality of relationships instead. n nTrue wealth comes not just from market exchange, but from care, trust and human connection with the members of one’s business ecosystem. Caring companies prove that acting this way may be the smartest business decision of all. n nIsaac Getz and Laurent Marbacher are co-authors of The Caring Company: How to Shift Business and the Economy for Good.