Woke Capitalism Flunks Early Cost-Benefit Analysis
When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong
WSJ: “Disney’s Clash With Florida Has CEOs on Alert; State’s pushback against the company shows the risks executives may confront”
“In private meetings and coaching sessions over the past few weeks, top business leaders have been asking a version of the same question: How can we avoid becoming the next Walt Disney Co.?”
Bloomberg’s Adrian Wooldridge : “Mickey Mouse Is Corporate Progressivism’s Canary in a Coal Mine; The furor facing Walt Disney Co. in Florida is a warning that capitalism won’t regain its legitimacy by alienating half the country.”
“But the problem with corporate progressivism is that it is destined to be as counterproductive as it is windy. How can you renew business’s license to operate if you are alienating the conservative half of the country? Michael Jordan’s famous observation that Republicans buy sneakers, too, needs to be modified in the light of today’s corporate antics: Republicans have values too. The more businesses endorse the left side of the culture war, the more they will motivate the other side.”
“Getting ‘kind of pushed’ by your employees is hardly an exercise in leadership. Corporate progressives like to chide Milton Friedman and his supporters for short-termism. But what could be more short-termist than winning easy applause by promising to solve the world’s most pressing problems? Rebecca Henderson, a Harvard Business School professor and one of the leading gurus of the new paradigm, called one of her books ‘Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire.’ Corporate progressives, however, are fighting fire with gasoline.
“The greatest legacy of the stakeholder value movement may well be to add woke-washing to the list of corporate crimes.”
Bobby Burack: “A study found that Americans who align with the ‘woke’ account for only 8% of the electorate. They barely exist. Yet they are to whom media & entertainment executives cater. The brands most responsive to ‘political correctness’ are cratering. All of them”
Corporate executives seem to have forgotten their responsibility IS NOT to their identity driven employees but to the stockholders of their corporation. As the last paragraph states only 8% of those who vote are in the ’woke’ group. It is time for the executives to inform that minority they DO NOT determine corporate policy!