The mistake corporations make in adopting the wok policy (O erro das corporações em adotar a política wok)

Nos Estados Unidos, estamos testemunhando uma mudança de paradigma nos negócios.

Anos de políticas de diversidade, equidade e inclusão nas empresas americanas afetaram os seus resultados financeiros.

E se há uma linguagem que os americanos entendem, é a do dinheiro.

Nos Estados Unidos, a Universidade Cornell acaba de afirmar o princípio da neutralidade na sua comunicação, virando assim as costas ao wokismo.

A professora de direito privado Morgane Daury-Fauveau escreveu, em artigo no jornal francês Le Figaro, que outras universidades e empresas anglo-saxônicas parecem estar seguindo o mesmo caminho.

Wokismo nas universidades

Nos Estados Unidos e na França, afirma a professora, após o pogrom de 7 de outubro, os campus foram palco de numerosos atos antissemitas e manifestações que justificavam as atrocidades cometidas pelos terroristas.

Mudanças

Nos Estados Unidos, estamos testemunhando uma mudança de paradigma nos negócios.

 Anos de políticas de diversidade, equidade e inclusão (DEI) nas empresas americanas afetaram os seus resultados financeiros.

E se há uma linguagem que os americanos entendem, é a do dinheiro.

Nos Estados Unidos, a Universidade Cornell acaba de afirmar o princípio da neutralidade na sua comunicação, virando assim as costas ao wokismo.

A professora de direito privado Morgane Daury-Fauveau escreveu, em artigo no jornal francês Le Figaro, que outras universidades e empresas anglo-saxônicas parecem estar seguindo o mesmo caminho.

Wokismo nas universidades

Nos Estados Unidos e na França, afirma a professora, após o pogrom de 7 de outubro, os campus foram palco de de numerosos atos antissemitas e manifestações que justificavam as atrocidades cometidas pelos terroristas.

Várias companhias, especialmente no setor de tecnologia, têm reduzido suas áreas de DEI, cortado investimentos e mudado o discurso, indicando a influência de uma crescente onda anti-woke.

O termo, que indica um despertar para questões como o racismo estrutural, foi criado pelos movimentos progressistas.

Mas, de um tempo para cá, woke tem sido um adjetivo pejorativo usado como arma por políticos de direita.

Why do corporations go woke and who does it really benefit?

Home culture wars what does it mean to be A woke corporation?

Thumb Woke Corporations min

Thumb Woke Corporations min

Why Do Corporations Go Woke and Who Does it Really Benefit?

On February 13, 2014, Meta (formerly Facebook) shared a post describing its updated list of gender identities, making it clear its professed commitment to respecting gender diversity.

The update allowed users more options than male and female. Instead, it featured 58 different terms, such as non-binary, cisgender, genderfluid, and agender.

While people celebrated the release as a much-needed acknowledgement of the complexity of gender identity, there were others that reacted negatively to what they viewed as political correctness taken too far.

In recent years, the term woke corporations has been used to refer to companies which make explicit choices when it comes to their words and actions regarding identity politics.

According to researchers Akane Kanai and Rosalind Gill, woke in this context is the corporate extraction of value from the struggles for recognition led by historically oppressed populations.

These businesses could be seen as a positive force for good and taking a stand against discrimination.

However, there is fear that these companies are becoming too involved in social and political debates, at least from a corporate perspective.

This begs the question: Are woke corporations good or bad for America?

Woke Corporate Agendas Through the Years

It is commonly assumed that corporations have only recently become involved in politics and social issues, as they seek to influence policies and laws that affect their interests.

However, evidence suggests that corporations have long been intertwined with politics and power since at least the early 20th century.

Corporate leaders have made fortunes by using the tools of political patronage, such as gaining the right to exploit public lands and access to bailouts.

They have also used various other methods to gain leverage over policymakers and lawmakers, such as hiring lobbyists and donating to campaigns, and crafting public opinion through advertising and other marketing strategies.

Indeed, corporate involvement in politics and social issues seems to be part of the fabric of our American society.

This includes non-woke corporations that have also historically have been involved in social issues.

For example, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, founder of Kellogg’s cereal, used his business platform to advocate against the dangers of sex—a social issue he felt strongly about.

The politically active corporations of today are part of a long legacy of corporate influence, as businesses have long been deeply embedded into our political and social systems and have held the power to promote positive social change or maintain the status quo.

The Actual Impact

While the intentions of these initiatives are good, the results can have a negative impact.

Companies may use their participation in social initiatives as a way of distracting from other issues that could limit their profits, such as low wages and poor working conditions.

Furthermore, corporate engagement may allow organizations to present themselves as morally responsible’ while taking advantage of vulnerable populations or manipulating public opinion for their own benefit.

With the proliferation of social media, corporate involvement in social issues has become increasingly common.

Companies are eager to appear socially conscious and willing to take a stand on certain issues.

However, this can lead to unintended consequences, due to companies having greater incentive to benefit financially than they do to genuinely make a positive impact on society.

While individuals can certainly still wield influence within our democratic process, large companies remain a powerful force that continues to shape how Americans think about important issues every day.

Their presence can no longer simply be ignored—acknowledging and managing it must become a part of our discourse if we expect to see real change happen going forward.

The culture of corporate influence on society will always remain a subject of public debate and scrutiny, but we can be more aware of this issue.

Going woke only benefits those on the top

Corporations in the U.S. have historically contributed to both major political parties and supported a range of issues that cut across partisan lines. But something has changed.

Although companies like Chick-fil-A, Fox News, and Hobby Lobby embrace cultural conservatism, they are the minority.

Why are U.S. companies going woke, adopting Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) measures that reflect principally leftist politics and social causes?

It’s not because these companies are genuinely conscientious and socially responsible (there are, of course, exceptions).

Rather, it’s because companies respond to top-down pressures from government, regulators, and activist investors.

The story of how we got here is long and complicated, but it involves a concerted effort by central banks, asset management firms, finance ministries, financial institutions, and sovereign wealth funds to mainstream ESG.

ESG is an acronym for the non-financial considerations that asset managers, banks, and investors factor when they allocate capital and assess risk.

The rise of institutional investors and asset management firms created opportunities for activists to unite powerful players in government and financial services to turn ESG from an ideal into a reality.

Things Change, But Not Always For The Better

For most of the 20th century, shareholders either did not vote their shares or simply stayed out of everyday corporate governance, voting only on big-picture issues such as the hiring of executives or mergers and acquisitions.

If a shareholder did not like the direction the company was taking, she would simply divest by selling her shares.

Today, however, massive, wealthy institutional investors—not retail or household investors—engage corporate boards on the specificities of quotidian operations and management.

They own large shares of companies and in many cases are majority shareholders.

Unlike individuals who invest their own money, they invest other people’s money for fees. Rather than divesting when the company takes an action they do not approve of, they intervene.

Many, if not most, of these institutional investors are also activist investors, pushing corporations into politics.

The beneficiaries of the funds managed by these investors are. often unaware of the politics that their investments support.

When an asset management firm invests beneficiaries money in underperforming funds to support causes rather than maximize returns, they breach their fiduciary duties to the beneficiaries while avoiding legal retribution or punishment.

That’s wrong and unethical.

The Big Three asset management firms are BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street.

They grew dominant by investing state pension money, enormous endowments, and the assets of billionaires and multimillionaires. These asset management firms influence corporate culture in two ways: by their investment strategies and their shareholder proxy voting and proposals.

They operationalized ESG while buying and voting shares in publicly traded companies.

They function like mega corporations that influence the organizational culture of other big corporations, which have begun lobbying for ESG regulations at the federal level.

The Big WHY of Woke Corporations

Why would big corporations back ESG regulation? The first reason is that small businesses cannot afford to comply with complex ESG mandates.

Large corporations absorb the costs of ESG regulations while gaining advantages over smaller competitors that cannot afford regulatory compliance.

Although bigger companies can bear the rising costs of ESG compliance, they cannot do so without passing on costs to consumers.

Rising prices disproportionately impact the poor and the developing world as ordinary goods and services become prohibitively expensive for a growing segment of the population.

A second reason is that the threat of government coercion incentivizes businesses to support positions that are otherwise against their interests.

Although ESG would not make them better off, businesses will adopt and pursue it if the consequences of non-compliance would make them even worse off. In other words, government distorts incentives for businesses.

Third, ESG has empowered special interest groups—e.g., lawyers and accountants—that earn fees by helping clients navigate new or potential ESG regulations.

The proliferation of ESG ratings, moreover, has generated a new field of high-powered consultants with expertise in private ratings agencies, which form their own interest groups.

Empty Words, Empty Promises

Indeed, America’s wealthiest business owners profit from positioning themselves as morally conscious.

What I found missing, however, is the impact this has on the people who inhabit our country.

When we examine the behavior of socially responsible companies, it becomes evident that their focus is more on improving public image than actually benefiting those in need.

Companies can make promises about donating money to charities or supporting community initiatives, yet often these are little more than empty words.

For instance, many consumers have been taken aback by the sudden rise in companies regarding themselves as socially responsible, only to find out that a small percentage of profits from these companies are donated back into the cause they support.

This trend perpetuates a fascinating paradox: wealthy companies appear altruistic, while quietly failing to engage with those who could benefit most from their actions.

This pattern adversely affects vulnerable communities, because the money corporations promise rarely reaches those who need it most.

In short, while companies may purport to have a socially conscious mission, this does not necessarily translate into an actual benefit for the American people.

Instead of leading by example and committing to meaningful change, corporations prioritize their interests over those of everyday citizens.

We must recognize this pervasive dynamic and begin to push back against it to create systemic solutions that will improve our country.

Why Do Companies Go Woke?

Woke companies are those that are committed to socially progressive causes, with a particular focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion as these terms are understood through the lens of critical theory.

There is little evidence of systematic support for woke ideas among executives and the population at large, and going woke does not appear to improve company performance.

Why, then are so many firms embracing woke policies and attitudes?

We suggest that going woke is an emergent strategy that is largely shaped by middle managers rather than owners, top managers, or employees.

We build on theories from agency theory, institutional theory, and intra-organizational ecology to argue that wokeness arises from middle managers and support personnel using their delegated responsibility and specialist status to engage in woke internal advocacy, which may increase their influence and job security.

Broader social and cultural trends tend to reinforce this process.

We discuss implications for organizational behavior and performance including perceived corporate hypocrisy (woke-washing), the potential loss of creativity from restricting viewpoint diversity, and the need for companies to keep up with a constantly changing cultural landscape.

Woke (wouk)

Woke (wouk), as a political term of African-American origin, refers to an awareness and consciousness of issues relating to social and racial justice.

The term derives from the African-American Vernacular English expression stay woke, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continued awareness of these issues.

In the late 2010s, woke was adopted as a more generic slang term, widely associated with identity politics, socially liberal causes, feminism, LGBT activism, and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used).

It has been the subject of memes, ironic usage, and criticism.

Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

History

Mid- and late 19th century

The terms woke and wide awake first appeared in political culture and political advertisements during the 1860 United States presidential election in support of

History

Mid- and late 19th century

The terms woke and wide awake first appeared in political culture and political advertisements during the 1860 United States presidential election in support of Abraham Lincoln.

The Republican Party cultivated the movement primarily to oppose the spread of slavery, as described in the Wide Awakes movement. Early 20th century

Oxford dictionaries record early politically conscious usage in the 1962 article If You're Woke You Dig It by William Melvin Kelley in The New York Times and in Barry Beckham's 1971 play Garvey Lives! (I've been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey has woken me up, I'm going to stay awake. And I'm going to help him wake up other black people.).

Garvey himself exhorted his early 20th century audiences: Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!

Earlier, J. Saunders Redding recorded a comment by an African-American worker in the United Mine Workers union in 1940 (Let me tell you, friend.

Waking up is a lot harder than sleeping, but we'll stay awake longer.).

Lead Belly uses the term near the end of the recording of his 1938 song Scottsboro Boys, when explaining the eponymous incident, saying I advise everyone to a little caution when passing by, stay awake, keep your eyes open.

The Scottsboro Boys was the name given to a group of nine black teenagers who were wrongly accused of rape in the state of Alabama in 1931.

On March 25, 1931, several people were traveling on a freight train between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee.

A group of white boys got off the train and reported to the local sheriff that they had been attacked by a group of black youths.

The sheriff stopped the train and searched it, arresting the black youths and finding two white women, who accused the group of rape.

The case was first heard in Scottsboro, Alabama, in three rushed trials in which the defendants received poor defenses.

All of the involved people, except a twelve-year-old boy, Roy Wright, were convicted of rape and sentenced to death, which was common in Alabama for black men convicted of raping white women.

However, with the help of the Communist Party of the United States of America, the decisions were appealed.

The Alabama Supreme Court upheld seven of the eight convictions and granted thirteen-year-old Eugene Williams a new trial.

The then Chief Justice John C. Anderson dissented from the decision, saying that the defendants had been deprived of an impartial jury, a fair trial, a just sentence, and an effective defense.

Contemporary

The first modern use of the term woke appears in the song Master Teacher from the album New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008) by soul singer Erykah Badu. Throughout the song, Badu sings the phrase: I stay woke.

Although the phrase had no connection to issues of justice at the time, Badu's song is later credited with such issues.

Stay awake, in this sense, expresses the intensified continuative and habitual grammatical aspect of African-American Vernacular English: in essence, to be always awake, awake, or always vigilant.

David Stovall said: Erykah brought the term to life in popular culture. It means not to be placated, not to be numbed.

In popular culture

Implicit in the concept of wokeness is the idea that this awareness must be earned.

Rapper Earl Sweatshirt recalls singing I stay woke along with Erykah’s song and his mother refusing the song and responding, No, you’re not.

In 2012, Twitter users, including Erykah Badu, began using woke and stay woke in relation to issues of social and racial justice, and #StayWoke emerged as a widely used hashtag.

Badu prompted this with the first political use of the phrase on Twitter; she tweeted in support of the Russian feminist performance group Pussy Riot: Truth requires no belief. Stay woke. Watch closely. #FreePussyRiot.

From social media and activist circles, the word spread widely through mainstream usage.

For example, in 2016, the title of a Bloomberg Businessweek article asked Is Wikipedia Woke? in reference to the online encyclopedia’s largely white contributor base.

Modern Usage

In the late 2010s, woke came to indicate a healthy paranoia, especially about issues of racial justice and politics, was adopted as a more generic slang term, and has been the subject of memes.

For example, MTV News identified it as a top teen slang term for 2016.

In The New York Times Magazine, Amanda Hess raised concerns that the word had been culturally appropriated, writing, The dilemma is constructed.

When white people aspire to gain consciousness points, they walk straight into the crosshairs of allyship and appropriation.

In business and marketing

In an article for Time magazine, journalist Alana Semuels detailed the phenomenon of woke capitalism, in which brands have attempted to include socially conscious messages in advertising campaigns.

In the article, she cited the example of Colin Kaepernick leading a Nike campaign with the slogan Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything, after Kaepernick caused controversy by refusing to sing the US national anthem as a protest against racism.

The term corporate wokeness has also been used by conservative writer Ross Douthat.

Criticism

Both the word and concept of woke culture or politics have been subject to parody and criticism from commentators on both sides of the political spectrum who have described the term as pejorative or synonymous with radical identity politics, racial strife, extreme forms of political correctness, cancel culture, censorship, virtue signaling, and as part of a general culture war.

British conservative author Douglas Murray voices criticism of modern social justice activism and woke politics in his book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity.

He has also argued that woke is a movement with reasonable goals but that it is somewhat overwhelmed, and therefore many people have mocked woke in recent years, and many people do not like being described as woke.

In 2019, Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked magazine, described individuals who promote woke politics as either people who tend to be identitarian, censorious and puritanical in their thinking or a culture warrior who cannot accept the fact that there are people in the world who disagree with them.

He also stated that woke politics is a crueler form of political correctness.

Former US President Barack Obama has made comments that have been interpreted as a critique of woke culture, stating that this idea of purity and that you never compromise and are politically awake, and all these things — you should get over it quickly.

The world is a mess. There are ambiguities. People who do really good things have flaws.

In 2023, American philosopher Susan Neiman released a critical work on the Woke movement called The Left is Not Woke, demonstrating that the racism of the Woke movement led to the breakdown of the universality of left-wing thought.

In Portuguese-speaking culture, the most forceful criticisms are around theorists João Bernardo, Antonio Risério and Claudinei Cássio de Rezende.          

Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter (Vidas Negras Importam or Vidas Negras Contam) is an international activist movement, originating in the African-American community, that campaigns against violence directed at black people.

BLM regularly organizes protests around the deaths of black people by police officers, and broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the criminal justice system in the United States.

In 2013, the movement began, with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin.

The movement became nationally recognized for its street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two African-Americans: Michael Brown, resulting in protests and riots in Ferguson, and Eric Garner in New York City. Since the Ferguson protests, movement participants have spoken out against the deaths of numerous other African Americans by police or while in police custody, including Tamir Rice, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Jonathan Ferrell, Sandra Branda, Samuel DuBose, and Freddie Gray, which led to protests and riots in Baltimore.

In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter began publicly asking politicians—including candidates in the 2016 U.S. presidential election—to state their positions on BLM issues.

The movement as a whole, however, is a decentralized network and has no formal hierarchy or structure.

In 2016, the movement, which began in the United States, spread to countries such as Brazil, South Africa, and Australia, where activists took to the streets and social media in solidarity with victims of police violence.

They have adopted the rallying cry Black Lives Matter to amplify their struggles in their own countries and to point out what they see as the hypocritical approach of the media and government.

In January 2021, BLM was nominated for the international Nobel Peace Prize.

The nomination was made by Norwegian MP Petter Eide.

Foundation

Previous movements

BLM claims inspiration from the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, the black feminist movement of the 1980s, pan-Africanism, the anti-apartheid movement, hip hop, LGBT social movements and Occupy Wall Street. Several media organizations have referred to BLM as a new civil rights movement.

Some of the protesters, however, actively distinguish themselves from the older generation of black leadership, such as Al Sharpton, by their aversion to middle-class traditions such as church involvement, loyalty to the Democratic Party, and respectability politics.

Political scientist Frederick C. Harris has argued that this group-centered leadership model is distinct from the older charismatic leadership model that characterized civil rights organizations such as Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Sharpton's National Action Network.

Online campaigning

In the summer of 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin, the movement began with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.

The movement was co-founded by three black community organizers: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.

Garza, Cullors, and Tometi met through the Black Organization for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), a national organization that trains community organizers.

They began to question how they would respond to what they saw as the devaluation of black lives after Zimmerman’s acquittal.

Garza wrote a Facebook post titled A Love Note to Black People, in which she said, Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.

Cullors responded: #BlackLivesMatter. Tometi added her support, and Black Lives Matter was born as an online campaign.

Ferguson Activism

In August 2014, BLM members organized their first national protest in the form of a Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride to Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown.

Over five hundred members descended on Ferguson to participate in nonviolent demonstrations.

Of the many groups that descended on Ferguson, Black Lives Matter emerged from Ferguson as one of the best-organized and most visible groups, becoming nationally recognized as a symbol of the emerging movement.

The activities on the streets of Ferguson caught the attention of several Palestinians who tweeted advice on how to deal with tear gas.

This connection helped draw attention among black activists to the ties between the Israeli military and police in the United States, and later influenced the Israel section of the Movement for Black Lives platform, launched in 2016.

Since then, Black Lives Matter has organized thousands of protests and rallies. Expanding beyond street protests, BLM has expanded into activism on American college campuses, such as the University of Missouri protests in 2015–16.