Home > Business > Industry

SK chief calls for social contribution metrics to allocate resources at Tokyo Forum

Published: 21 Nov. 2025, 17:47 Updated: 23 Nov. 2025, 17:14

LEE JAE-LIM
[email protected]

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won delivers a speech underscoring the importance of social values at the Tokyo Forum 2025 on Nov. 21. [SK]

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, who also heads the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies, underscored the need to systematize social contribution to ensure a sustainable future at Tokyo Forum 2025 on Friday.

Chey noted that traditional capitalism has concentrated solely on financial performance, with little consideration for social contribution — a factor he said is essential for addressing complex challenges arising from the deepening of capitalism.

“Because social contribution has been difficult to measure, we have failed to allocate resources optimally to create it,” he said at the University of Tokyo, adding that technological advances such as AI could be a critical turning point. “In the past, measuring social contribution involved high transaction costs and was hampered by a lack of data. Now, with digital technology and AI, we have powerful tools that make solving these problems possible.”

Chey said that once social contribution can be systematically measured and evaluated, it becomes possible to allocate resources differently and design incentives that change behavior. He described this shift as a form of “new capitalism,” arguing that if capitalism embraces not only financial value but also social contribution, “we can build a much better framework for a sustainable future.”

As an example, Chey highlighted SK Group’s own “social contribution measurement” system, which quantifies social impact. Each SK affiliate, he explained, evaluates factors such as job creation, tax payments, environmental impact and contributions to local communities using a plus-and-minus scoring model. Once companies start measuring these areas, he said, it fundamentally changes how corporate decisions are made.

Tokyo Forum is an international conference co-hosted annually since 2019 by the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of Tokyo to address pressing global issues arising from rapid technological progress and mounting geopolitical tensions. This year’s forum is being held under the theme “Rethinking Capitalism: Varieties, Contradictions and Futures.”

The 2025 edition runs from Friday to Saturday at the University of Tokyo.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [[email protected]]