There’s a battle under way for the "hearts and minds" of the corporation.
As our own Danielle Lee reports in an article about Dillard’s, a whopping 46% of shares were cast in support of a shareholder resolution in May calling on the company to issue a sustainability report.
But a backlash against corporate responsibility is taking shape and it will only get stronger as the corporate responsibility trend gathers momentum.
In "Supercapitalism," a new book by Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, Robert Reich reportedly argues that corporations are profit-seeking entities that should not be distracted from that mission with grand visions of corporate social responsibility. Social change, Reich argues, should be government’s responsibility and not a driving force in today’s corporation.
But another scribe, Mark Kramer, takes on Reich’s theories in the Conversation Starter blog at Harvard Business Online.
Kramer argues in a post entitled "Why Robert Reich Is Wrong About Corporate Social Responsibility," that Reich wrongly espouses an old-fashioned notion that corporate responsibility is all about being seen as a goody-goody instead of undertaking a program as a competitive advantage.
"Whether one looks at changing consumer tastes, regulatory policy, or litigation, the social consequences of corporate activities are a steadily increasing factor in financial success," Kramer writes. "The companies that get out ahead of these trends not only save money, they gain a competitive advantage over their sleepier competitors. Rather than being a detriment in today’s global competition, factoring social considerations into corporate strategy is a necessity."
But over at the GOPUSA blog, which I don't believe is affiliated with the Republican Party, Tom Borelli is buying no such theories about the inevitability of corporate responsibility endeavors.
In his post, "Corporate Responsibility: What Would Reagan Do," Borelli compares corporate responsibility to appeasement of the old Soviet Union.
And he ties the decline at Ford Motor Co. to the citizenship report it issued in 2000 when the automaker allegedly "declared war" on its most profitable vehicles, its SUVs, by stating that SUVs contribute disproportionately to global warming.
Yup, get ready for the backlash to get more intense.
It’s gonna get mighty dicey out there.
Corporate/Government Responsibillity
I’ve been a fan of Robert Reicht since reading “Locked in the Cabinet several years ago. I haven’t read his new book, but I suspect it is written with the assumption that corporations have so much power that they are unlikely to defer from a short term bottom line profit mentality so that it is the job of the government to step in with regulations to support the common good.
In that book he tells about a tire company that shut down a large plant that harmed workers and the economy of the state in response to a fine for refusing to put inexpensice safety devices on it's machines. Without the devices many employees had been seriously injured, but the CEO had the support of a legislator in in a grandstand play blaming the government for the shutdown of the plant.
Without government iregulations, there is no government, and as we can see, the scoundrals among the powerful and wealthy running corporations and government are ruining our democracy, leading to a fascist state.
Of the critisms, I agree with Mark Kramer who shows the positive financial benefits of ‘social responsibility’ for corporations. Hopefully a more holistic mentality will bring a change in our narrow minded economic system. Jacque French