One important characteristic of corporate liberalism has always been its inventiveness. Corporate liberals have understood the importance of adapting their business practices to changing economic and political conditions— they have been proactive, not reactive. Throughout the 1920s, corporate liberals constantly devised and revised various welfare capitalistic schemes, and the widespread, lasting prosperity of that era convinced them that these programs were working exceedingly well. As company welfare proliferated, its proponents made lavish claims about the benefits this approach conferred on individual firms and the economy as a whole.

The concept of business–government interaction, though less well entrenched in the thinking of corporate liberals, also attracted considerable attention and experimentation in the 1920s. On this issue, however, a split occurred: some corporate liberals favored limited contact between business groups and various agencies of the federal government, whereas others deemed such contact unnecessary or even counterproductive. Support among corporate liberals for welfare-capitalist formulations remained strong until the advent of the Great Depression; although a certain ambivalence about associationalism existed, it did not preclude study of such ideas and even action.

Corporate liberals devoted themselves to creating a more rational,modern economy, one that would be largely liberated from strikes, recessions, and depressions.They sought greater stability for business enterprise and ways to sustain prosperity for major stakeholders: corporate executives, stockholders, and workers. Corporate liberals insisted on business control over the economy and tended to see government and labor as occupying subordinate but supportive positions. The economy they envisioned could be achieved through expansion of company welfare or, perhaps, by application of modest associational prescriptions. Some New Era corporate liberals, such as Gerard Swope or Marion Folsom, emphasized private welfarism while shying away from interaction with the state. Others, such as Henry Dennison, viewed company welfare and associationalism as parts of an integrated whole. All corporate liberals, however, pursued some brand of economic rationalization designed to improve the overall performance of corporate capitalism.

Gerard Swope, Marion Folsom,Averell Harriman, Edward Stettinius, and other like-minded individuals recognized capitalism's flaws and countered them by offering private solutions. In this view, labor got a fair deal through long-term employment and welfare-capitalist packages that included bonuses, profit sharing, group insurance, pensions, and even unemployment insurance. Employers benefited because these programs helped attract and keep workers, while inducing them to work harder.