Target 8.3: Decent job creation and small-enterprise growth
Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
MSMEs are over 90 percent of firms and about 70 percent of employment worldwide. IFC estimates a USD 5.2 trillion finance gap for formal MSMEs plus USD 2.9 trillion for informal ones. The lenders that can close it are largely listed banks and fintech and mobile-money firms. Corporate conduct on SME lending, supplier payment terms and platform fees is therefore a necessary input, alongside government policy on formalization. Bank lending priorities are already a proxy topic. Ceres' 2024 campaign moved JPMorgan, Citigroup and RBC to make commitments and won 23 to 29 percent at Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Those proposals concerned climate finance rather than SME access. Owners supply a necessary input, and governments must also act on formalization.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Filed a 2025 shareholder proposal asking Amazon to commission an independent audit of warehouse working conditions.
Amazon 2025 Shareholder Proposals, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2025
1 campaign on record
Commission an independent audit and report on the working conditions and treatment of Amazon warehouse workers.
Result: 26 percent support
Amazon 2025 Shareholder Proposals, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2025
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.