The “Woke” Corporation
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.
For decades our college professors have been teaching subjects with a “woke” bent. Being woke today is defined as “enlightened and aware about racism and social injustice.” If you’re woke, you see it everywhere, regardless.
So, no surprise that many of our corporations are now being led by woke executives who bring their college-learned wokeness to the workplace and the marketplace.
Since the beginning of publicly held corporations – the first being the Dutch East India Company in 1602 – publicly held and traded companies have had as their primary goal to increase the value of their stock by generating profit.
And while governments have provided the legal mechanisms for the formation and operations of public companies, the companies themselves have stayed away from partisan politics. Certainly, many have formed PACs to support political candidates, but that support by individuals has been generally geared toward those friendly to the company and business in general. In addition, most major corporations support lobbyist activities geared to the same objective.
But that has changed in the last decade or so. Now we have too many corporations that put themselves in the political and “woke” midst.
In 2021, Cocoa Cola, Delta Airlines and MLB supported a move of the major-league All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver in response to election legislation passed by the Georgia legislature. The law enacted there is constitutional and passed by the majority of the representatives of Georgia citizens, yet the ‘woke’ publicity about it was all negative.
A month ago, Disney made it publicly known it would work and support activities to counteract Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law prohibiting teachers from ‘teaching’ gender identity options to K-3 children, saying it was anti-LGBTQ.
For its “wokeness” Disney will lose its unique, preferential governmental status in Florida and beginning in 2023 will be paying property and income taxes to local cities, counties, and the State for its 43 square miles of property and operations.
It’s a given that the big social media companies have had an agenda to silence
certain views and opinions on their sites. To change that bent to censor speech, Elon Musk made a bid to purchase Twitter, Inc. – followed by an outcry of dissent by the company and the media.
That was followed by an editorial in The Published Reporter titled “Get Woke, Go Broke.” In addition to the situations described above, it notes the financial woes of CNN and Netflix becoming woke. Viewers and subscribers have withdrawn in droves.
Another corporation going woke is Bank of America, which encourages employees to be “woke at work” and tells white employees to “decolonize your mind” and “cede power to people of color.”
‘Get woke, go broke’ is the price these and other companies are paying.
Why? 2 reasons:
- Woke is not what many customers, are and support, and
- Corporations play a dangerous game inserting themselves into the political arena.
If I, and likely you, were sitting on the board of one of these corporations we would consider a CEO who was immersing the company into the political fray as a basis for termination. Not because we agree or disagree with the opinion of the CEO, but because choosing sides will not sit well with those customers and employees opposed to that political view.
For profit corporations gain nothing toward achieving their goals to produce profit and value for the company by speaking out, or taking stands, on political policies that don’t affect them.
But there’s a body of thought out there called ‘stakeholder capitalism’ which is now often taught by our colleges and universities. Stakeholder capitalism is the idea that companies should serve not only their shareholders but also other interests and society at large. In other words, it’s encouraged in some circles for corporations to go woke. The lines separating the goals of government, politics and private enterprise gets completely blurred in that scenario.
Then there’s something called ESG: ‘environmental, social, and corporate governance.’ It’s an approach to evaluating the extent to which a corporation works on behalf of social goals that go beyond the role of a corporation to maximize profits on behalf of the corporation’s shareholders. Typically, the social goals advocated within an ESG perspective include working to achieve a certain set of environmental goals, as well as a set of goals having to do with supporting certain social movements, and a third set of goals having to do with whether the corporation is governed in a way that is consistent with the goals of the ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ movement.
To indicate how far this has gotten, S & P now has an ESG index for investors who want to invest in companies with a high ESG ‘grade.’
Don’t get me wrong, but this type of thinking – giving ‘grades’ to corporations using ESG goes beyond social responsibility for a profit-making company. Certainly, we expect corporations to treat employees fairly and to follow the laws regarding safety and pollution – and support their communities. But attempting to influence capital markets with whether a company is woke enough goes beyond the pale for me. You can assume, for example, that corporations that showed their wokeness and swelled the coffers of the Black Lives Matter organization got a high ESG score several years ago. I doubt if it would merit a high ESG grade now.
If that’s your thing when investing your money, Allah bless you and put your money in woke corporations.
For me, capitalism is about profit – maximizing it. Pretty old-fashioned, huh? Certainly unwoke.
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Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/former-mcdonalds-ceo-fight-woke-politics
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/corporate-america-culture-wars-disney-ed-rensi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company
Spider Bites
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