On March 26th, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced on Twitter that all employee travel to the US State of Indiana would be cancelled until further notice.
He made this announcement to denounce a new “religious freedom” law adopted by Indiana Governor Mike Pence, which would allow businesses to refuse to serve homosexual customers. According to Benioff, this was a blatant case of discrimination. Governor Pence initially refused to change his position.
A Wave of Support
In its aftermath, Benioff also threatened to cancel a conference gathering 3000 employees that would bring approximately $8M into the State and to reduce his investment in Indiana. He also announced that he would help his employees living in the State to move elsewhere if necessary.
In the following days, Benioff garnered much support from technology entrepreneurs, including current Apple CEO Tim Cook. Mr. Cook, who announced his own homosexuality earlier this year, said that he was deeply disappointed by the passing of this law in Indiana, stating on Twitter that “Apple treats all of its customers equally, regardless of their nationality, religion or sexual orientation”. Cook also lobbied the Governor or Arkansas to veto a similar law in his State.
Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon also rallied with Cook to oppose this law being passed in Arkansas. McMillon stated on Twitter: “Passing this law undermines the spirit of inclusion present in the State of Arkansas and does not reflect our values [at Wal-Mart]”.
Given this pressure, Governor Pence was forced to reconsider his position and to sign a bill clarifying the law’s wording to specify that everyone would now be welcome in Indiana businesses without any form of discrimination.
Until that moment, I couldn’t recall having seen recently the business community react so strongly and swiftly to a social issue.
This made me think, what if the business leaders got involved more often in the debate of our major social issues?
Many Recent Examples
Interestingly, the weeks that followed would reveal many more examples of activism from business leaders.
Last week, the legalization of same-sex marriage across the United States had been supported by the leaders of 379 corporations, up from an initial list of 278 corporations, which included both Silicon Valley giants Apple, Facebook and Google, but also Fortune 500 companies like Nike, Goldman Sachs and Disney. These leaders had shown their support by filing a brief in 2013, claiming amongst other things that unequal tax treatment could lead to lower employee morale.
The previous week, following the Charleston race-related attack, many CEOs joined the chorus to urge South Carolina to take down the confederate flag. Salesforce’s Marc Benioff chimed in, and the call was soon retweeted and echoed by some top tech leaders at AirBnb and Twitter. Starbucks also issued a press release to share their support.
About a month ago, in Canada, more than 60 business leaders including the CEOs of Hootsuite and Shopify signed a petition to prevent Bill C-51 from being adopted, as it would give 17 government agencies access to additional confidential information about their citizens (i.e. religion, sexual orientation, medical history, etc.). The group published an open letter in the National Post explaining the Bill’s negative impacts on the business environment, including reduced confidence in Canada from international players.
In past years, many legendary founders like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have also taken stances and spoken out about tax policy on several occasions, notably by demanding that the top 1% wealthiest should pay more taxes.
Issues with Diffuse Benefits
Obviously, corporations and businessmen sometimes have a very poor reputation when it comes to their involvement in matters of public policy. Often, their actions and positions take the form of lobbying, with the goal of winning specific benefits for their company or their business sector. We often think of the construction, natural resources or even tobacco industries. At its worst, this kind of lobbying is accompanied with payoffs and private contracts without any transparency.
However, in most of the social stances above, the interesting differentiator is that all of the CEOs were united to demand changes that would have wide-ranging benefits for society in general (ie. a human rights issue), not specific advantages for their individual businesses. Would this not be a better form of lobbying, rather than calling for specific changes with isolated direct benefits?
Also, could we imagine a world where CEOs unite their voices more frequently in the future to assert their positions on society’s challenges, such as gender- based pay equality, the representation of women on corporate boards, balanced budgets, tax havens, the environment, wealth disparity, inter-generational equality, etc.?
To Take a Stance, or Not
If citizens can occupy the streets to make their views known, it would seem logical that entrepreneurs and business leaders would also have the right to express themselves in public.
It may also make business sense. A recent Washington Post article also notes: “CEOs were once reluctant to wade into public debates on social issues, avoiding controversial topics like gun control, gay rights and same-sex marriage. But more and more are now doing so, perhaps because of the ease of speaking out on social media or the realization that customers and employees increasingly care about a corporation’s values”.
However, business participation in such debates would also surely have significant limitations. First, the concept of social progress itself is subjective: it can be viewed as a step forward for some and step back for others with differing values.In other words, leaders’ points of view do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board of Directors, employees, investors, customers or other stakeholders. Second, leaders’ points of view may not align with the business interest of their companies. Finally, in all cases, there is always the risk of being perceived as tempting to influence public policy or meddle with democracy.
Despite all of this, I think that the participation from our business leaders and job creators in some debates may be desirable to accelerate progress. Obviously, their involvement must not be driven by personal gain, but animated by a sense of responsibility, transparency and a genuine desire to contribute.
The business community has a voice. I predict that it will use it increasingly more openly to push social issues forward.
[Note: This article was originally published in Les Affaires].