Generational changes pressure CEOs to take up political activism

This is a mostly-fake, media phenomenon. Most CEOs and most companies do not engage in political activism, we just tend not to notice people not speaking out. What's described in this article is something the authors (and most journalists) want to happen, but it isn't actually happening at most companies.

As an employee I want to join a company and exchange my services for money. Not join a political movement. I can also vote with my feet, if a CEO decides he wants to drag politics into this equation I can try and go else where. Also in my limited experience companies driven by some hr agenda about inclusivity and diversity have stopped promoting based on merit, instead promoting based on quotas. That will only last so long. Also hearing this moralising nonsense while they invest heavily in China makes me doubt there's any sincerity behind this. Just wanting to look virtuous to a bunch of misled virtue signaling staff, who are probably in the minority but who are extremely vocal.

This feels like a natural evolution as companies try to ingrain their employees with the concept of being a part of the "family."

If a company asks and gets you to spend SO much of your time living and breathing their values, then it only makes sense for that generation to push for the company to live out their values/the ones that resonate with them.

That being said, I agree with the comment that MOST CEOs and companies do not engage in any kind of political activism and don't have a reason to do so.

Companies that are extremely entrenched can use activism as positive PR. What you will never see is Companies engaging in activism that could possibly hurt themselves.

For instance a company that already pays everyone they employ more than $15 an hour might very well campaign for a $15 minimum wage. It costs them nothing and improves their image.

A company that employes a huge amount of people at the current minimum wage would never campaign for it to increase. It would be too costly. But they might find something else to be activist about. Currently popular are LGBT interests or BLM.

Both of those are worthy causes but you should give companies serious side-eye when they post BLM messaging on twitter yet campaign against raising the minimum wage or improving workers rights.

"CEOs can no longer resort to an avoidance strategy: "The middle ground is no longer feasible for anybody. Silence means acquiescence, which means complicity.""

Oh yes they can, and should. There is no appeasement possible in this. The only way to deal with these cultists is to keep them firmly at arms length and don't play their mind-games.

The old quote comes to mind: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"

Perhaps this puts me among the first to stop clapping, but I would argue it's not generational changes, and it's not activism, it's appeasement. A CEO is a job like any other, they aren't founders, and they can be replaced by their boards like any other employee. Their job is to stay on message and sustain narrative that returns value to their investors, and if they have to deal with brand pressure from activists, their job is to do the needful.

A CEO isn't hired to be brave or risk a brand for some personal principle. It's also easier to affect concerned noises and gestures to appease domestic pressures instead of say, being principled about conditions in your foreign factories. It is a political job, and all politics is blackmail.

The quesiton all CEOs and senior executives are made to ask themselves is whether they want pride, or power? The ones who survive are these activist CEOs who take a public stand for global justice, because discretion is the better part of valor.

>CEOs can no longer resort to an avoidance strategy: "The middle ground is no longer feasible for anybody. Silence means acquiescence, which means complicity."

Nope, companies can take strong stances like Coinbase and say: you are for the mission or you're gone. Simple.

A small group of very loud, and generally (unfortunately) rather unproductive people is doing just that.

But then again, if the response is to kowtow to the activists and not fire them for not doing their job - then I suppose I have no remorse for when your business eventually goes under, because you were not focused on your primary business objective.

And as somebody who comes in to work to work and keeps his politics firmly in his personal sphere, it's a good indicator for why I might not ever want to work for you.

A different kind of activism, perhaps. Isn't the "work should just be for work" attitude simply a political statement of its own—one in support of the status quo?

This is partly driven by fear of the de facto activists (graduates) that graduate from ideological bootcamps (universities) and infiltrate (join the ranks of) corporations, and partly fear of activists in the media.

Frankly, much of the activism we're seeing isn't all that dangerous to get behind and parrot given the current climate, so there's no real swimming upstream here (what's more "risky" at most colleges: being conservative or liberal? Which would make you terminally unhip?). Many students simply absorb the worldview imparted to them by university education (+ media and primary ed) without ever really stopping to consider any of it. So if you want a glimpse of tomorrow, look to what college students are learning today.

So there's an element of concerted political action (surveillance, the fusion of state and corporation, radical social changes esp. where human sexuality is concerned), but a good dose of the logic of the culture playing out. Ideas have consequences. It just takes a while for them to unfold. It would however be foolish to ignore the oligarchic dimension of it all. Plato's Republic has much to say about this and it rings eerily true.

This wouldn't have been an issue if we let corporations be money maximizing machines working within the confines of the legal system (and a strong legal system that treats them as such). Instead, we look to corporations for health care, retirement funds, a sense of purpose and belonging. This is the natural outcome.

In a lot of cases, I am not sure what the "pressure" actually is. Why do CEOs or other corporate employees care at all about the noise made by activists on Twitter or small numbers of employee activists? Why not just ignore them and move on? I feel like there would be no real impact and that they're unnecessarily caving into demands from progressive activists regularly. In doing so, these corporations are alienating center-left, center, and right customers as well as tilting the scales of our politics. This is especially true for highly influential companies that control information like Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

The old adage is "with great power comes great responsibility"

Most CEOs are not perceived -rightly or wrongly- as paragons of virtue, so one can see this not ending particularly well.

(The use of "CEO" here is the traditional use to refer to C-suite execs of large multinationals, and not necessarily business owners / founders... which are probably a distinct animal)

A long time ago I wanted to set up a proxy voting service - the idea was that your pension fund invested in X hundred companies, and you therefore had X/100 shares in each - with a median pension a single person would get to vote at a large % of AGMs annually.

Now one or two or 50 shares wont make much difference - but this eventually becomes shareholder democracy.

Sounds like a natural result of the Citizens United vs FEC. Corporations are now the richest and most influential "people" in our political system. Where there is power, there will be attempts to sway that power.

so what is the objective/cost function here? My hypothesis:

- the longer humanity survives, the bigger the value.

- the more of humanity contributes to that goal, the bigger the value.

- the more of economic activity contributes to that goal, the bigger the value.

and finally, why is this relevant:

The more educated people are aware of this situation and are working in relevant companies, the higher the pressure for the companies to comply towards this objective function.

So, personally, I'd appreciate the phenomenon to move from anekdotal to the direction of 5 sigma.

Kind of a weird premise. CEOs have always used their wealth and corporations to wield political power.

Speaking of CEOs and politics, I think JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon would be a terrific president.