‘We can’t be silent’: how does business know when to get political?

Busi­ness lead­ers are often remind­ed of the impor­tance of being authen­tic and to wear their val­ues on their sleeves, but with polit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tions becom­ing increas­ing­ly con­tentious, CEOs are split on whether it’s wise to wade into divi­sive dis­cus­sions.

Accord­ing to Deloitte’s glob­al CEO Joe Ucu­zoglu, there’s “no top­ic that cor­po­rate lead­ers are spend­ing more time on than this”. Speak­ing at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF) in Davos – the theme of which is “coop­er­a­tion in a frag­ment­ed world” – he claims board­rooms are con­tin­u­al­ly ques­tion­ing whether their com­pa­nies have gone far enough, or too far, when engag­ing in polit­i­cal debates.

In recent years, busi­ness­es have become increas­ing­ly vocal on soci­etal issues. Fol­low­ing the death of George Floyd in 2020, major cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Net­flix, Nike and Warn­er Media showed their sup­port for the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Supreme Court’s deci­sion to over­turn the rul­ing on Roe v Wade caused a num­ber of com­pa­nies to take a stance, with many choos­ing to pro­vide trav­el and expens­es to help staff in affect­ed states access repro­duc­tive care.

But in an increas­ing­ly polarised world, speak­ing out on big issues comes with its own risks. Last year, hard­ware store Wick­es received back­lash in some sec­tions of the media after pho­tos of its Brighton Pride float, which stat­ed “No LGB with­out the T”, cir­cu­lat­ed online.

Dis­ney also got dragged into the cul­ture wars after its employ­ees staged a walk­out over the company’s slow response to Florida’s ‘don’t say gay bill’, which is designed to restrict dis­cus­sion of LGBTQ+ issues in the state’s schools.

The Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of Flori­da, Ron DeSan­tis, who con­sid­ered remov­ing Disney’s spe­cial sta­tus over its stance on LGBTQ+ issues, has con­tin­ued to rail against what he deems to be “woke” cor­po­ra­tions. He recent­ly pulled $2bn in state Trea­sury Funds from Black­rock because of its focus on ESG invest­ing. Mean­while, Twit­ter CEO Elon Musk has sug­gest­ed that the ‘S’ in ESG stands for “satan­ic”. 

Even Mars’s deci­sion to release a lim­it­ed run of its M&M’s sweets, which pro­mot­ed female empow­er­ment on the pack­ag­ing, has been deemed con­tro­ver­sial by some.

“You’ve seen large cross sec­tions of the cor­po­rate world speak out on big issues and make state­ments about the val­ues their com­pa­ny stands for,” Ucu­zoglu adds. “Now, you’re see­ing some back­lash towards com­pa­nies that have gone too far. Nobody’s got this com­plete­ly fig­ured out.”

CEOs don’t need to have an opinion on everything

Lego CEO Niels Chris­tiansen, who was also speak­ing on the WEF pan­el, believes that although it’s impor­tant for busi­ness­es to take a stance on cer­tain issues, they should only when it relates to an issues where they have an active stake. 

“You don’t want to have CEOs that have an opin­ion about every­thing,” he says. “I need to be very care­ful that I don’t mix up my per­son­al polit­i­cal beliefs with the stance we have as a com­pa­ny.”

The Dan­ish toy mak­er holds a brand board meet­ing that decides which top­ics the busi­ness should have a per­spec­tive on or ones where it is impor­tant for the brand to have a posi­tion. Accord­ing to Chris­tiansen, these are typ­i­cal­ly issues impact­ing chil­dren, such as its deci­sion to remove gen­der stereo­types from its prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny has also sought to pro­mote inclu­sion through the pro­duc­tion of LGBTQ+ themed sets.

Busi­ness founders should “pick a few areas close to the pur­pose of their com­pa­ny to real­ly focus on”, he adds, warn­ing that feel­ing the need to have an opin­ion on “all things in soci­ety” could have con­se­quences for the suc­cess of the busi­ness.

How­ev­er, Stan­ley Bergman, chair­man of the board and CEO of US med­ical sup­plies dis­trib­u­tor Hen­ry Schein, dis­agrees. He believes that there are some big issues about which “busi­ness can’t be silent”.

“There are cer­tain items where soci­ety cross­es the line and where I think busi­ness has the respon­si­bil­i­ty to speak up,” he says.

While Hen­ry Schein is involved in a num­ber of ini­tia­tives aimed at improv­ing access to health­care, Bergman has also spo­ken out on a range of polit­i­cal points, includ­ing immi­gra­tion, diver­si­ty and glob­al­i­sa­tion, as well as denounc­ing the anti-Asian hate crimes that have surged in the US in recent years.  

“There are obvi­ous areas, hate crimes being one exam­ple, where I can­not see how an eth­i­cal CEO can avoid that dis­cus­sion,” Bergman says. “You’ve got to weigh in.”

Dealing with politics in the office

Polit­i­cal divi­sion is also impact­ing the work­place. Accord­ing to Edelman’s lat­est Busi­ness Trust Barom­e­ter only 20% of peo­ple would be will­ing to work along­side some­one who dis­agreed with their point of view.

But enforc­ing neu­tral­i­ty can be equal­ly prob­lem­at­ic. In 2021, Base­camp CEO Jason Fried placed a ban on “soci­etal and polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions” in the work­place. Staff respond­ed with a mass exo­dus.

Meta has also attempt­ed to restrict employ­ee con­ver­sa­tions around cer­tain polit­i­cal top­ics on its work­place com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­forms. The tech com­pa­ny told employ­ees to refrain from dis­cussing abor­tion in the wake of Roe v Wade due to what it described as the “divi­sive” nature of the top­ic.

Rather than sti­fling polit­i­cal debate, Ucu­zoglu believes it’s “real­ly impor­tant that com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to be will­ing to speak out”. How­ev­er, he adds: “It’s also not rea­son­able to expect that com­pa­nies can become the arbiter of every divi­sive soci­etal issue… A busi­ness is going to lose trust if it comes out and is viewed as politi­cised and wad­ing in on the most con­tentious issues that divide com­mu­ni­ties.”

Chang­ing con­sumer and employ­ee expec­ta­tions mean that busi­ness lead­ers are being drawn into polit­i­cal debates more fre­quent­ly. Find­ing the right bal­ance remains key but know­ing where the line should be drawn is becom­ing more dif­fi­cult in an increas­ing­ly polarised world.