The traditional view of corporate stakeholders is rapidly becoming obsolete in our hyperconnected world. We can no longer neatly categorize people into simple roles as shareholders, employees, or customers. Today’s reality is far more fluid – employees also own the company’s stock, buy its products, and live in communities affected by its environmental practices.

This multifaceted relationship between individuals and corporations is further transformed by digital technology. Social media and online platforms enable instantaneous coordination among stakeholders who previously operated in isolation. Employees can share workplace concerns directly with shareholders. Customers can organize boycotts that immediately affect stock prices. Community members can build coalitions across traditional stakeholder boundaries. In a recent paper, we argue that this technological infrastructure gives historically disconnected stakeholders unprecedented power to influence corporate behavior

The timing is particularly significant as Millennials and Gen Z move into positions of economic influence. Many investors, employees, and consumers of these generations are digital natives and motivated by environmental and social values rather than purely financial interests. They’re also uniquely skilled at using social media and online communities to coordinate collective action.

This shift creates a new model of corporate accountability – “total governance” – inspired by soccer legend Johan Cruyff’s “total football” strategy where players fluidly move between positions rather than staying in fixed roles. Instead of corporations answering primarily to institutional shareholders focused on quarterly returns, they must increasingly respond to coordinated pressure from stakeholders acting across traditional boundaries to advance shared human values.

The implications are particularly profound for public, consumer-goods companies, whose success depends on maintaining positive relationships with many types of stakeholders. When those stakeholders can almost instantly share information and organize collective action, corporate behavior that violates widely shared values faces swift consequences in both the marketplace and the boardroom.

While this new paradigm can’t overcome the outsized influence of concentrated wealth and executive power in corporate governance, it represents a significant evolution toward making corporations more responsive to human values beyond pure profit maximization. The framework helps explain recent phenomena like the rise of ESG investing, employee activism at major tech companies, and consumer boycotts that rapidly translate into shareholder concerns.

As digital platforms continue evolving and younger generations gain economic power, this total governance model may challenge the current lack of corporate accountability. By enabling coordinated action across traditional stakeholder boundaries, digital networks may make corporations more responsive to the ordinary people who interact with them in multiple capacities – or, as happened in the political sphere with the failed revolutions of the Arab Spring, they may become new instruments of power for the pre-existing elites. For anyone interested in the future of corporate accountability, understanding total governance is essential.  This evolution in corporate governance may prove to be one of the most important legacies of our digital transformation.

This post comes to us from professors Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci and Daniel J.H. Greenwood at Hofstra University College of Law. It is based on their recent paper, “Total Governance,” available here.