
Why does ‘Make the world a better place’ sound so outdated as a corporate mission?

Summary
- America Inc seems to be turning by the winds of politics. If Meta’s change of heart, as articulated by its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, works for the business, expect other US companies to follow.
Not so long ago, Mark Zuckerberg [seemed to want] the public to view him not just as an empire builder, but also as a world-saver.
Meta Platforms’ CEO publicly committed parts of his vast fortune to causes like immigration reform and voter access.
He spoke out about combating poverty and hunger and stressed the importance of equality.
In a flurry of announcements, Zuckerberg confirmed a change of heart.
Now, he [appears to have] whittled his ambitions.
Getting rid of fact checkers and loosening the rules on what users can say on Meta’s platforms [will likely] heighten misinformation and abusive speech.
He also ended Meta’s commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Also Read: Zuckerberg’s Meta shift will leave the user base of his platforms split
This may be an extreme case, but across America Inc, the trend is pointing in the same direction: CEOs are spending much less time, energy and money trying to publicly position themselves as change agents.
In Silicon Valley, the make-the-world-a-better-place discourse of the early boom years has mostly disappeared.
On Wall Street, big institutions from JPMorgan Chase to Goldman Sachs and BlackRock have abandoned one of the world’s biggest finance groups dedicated to battling climate change.
Companies that put out statements about racial justice after the murder of George Floyd have rolled back DEI investments.
Some of the CEOs who stood up to Donald Trump’s Muslim-majority country travel ban and condemned the 6 January riots have made $1 million donations to his inauguration fund.
You could argue that many of those initiatives were just corporate virtue signalling.
But what’s clear is companies don’t feel much of a need to virtue signal anymore.
And no wonder: The public isn’t all that interested in virtue right now, and business seems to be having a hard time convincing Americans that it ever had much of it.
CEOs’ attempts to portray themselves as do-gooders have typically been a business posture rather than a moral one.
Starting a foundation or throwing a smidgen of a company’s resources behind a popular cause has historically been a useful tool to repair corporate reputations in the aftermath of scandals and catastrophes.
Starbucks, for example, instituted a policy in 2018 that let anyone, not just paying customers, hang out in its stores or use its bathrooms.
This was instituted after the company was accused of racial bias and faced boycotts when two [African American] men were arrested in a Philadelphia store.
“We are committed to creating a culture of warmth and belonging where everyone is welcome," the company said.
This week, Starbucks said it would end the practice in order to help reinvigorate the brand. Its management does not seem too worried about blowback or being labelled a flip-flopper.
Plenty of these corporate reversals are a straightforward response to political winds blowing towards the right and President-elect Donald Trump.
Zuckerberg admitted as much in his announcement, justifying his decision by saying “the recent election also feels like a cultural tipping point."
The company has the same calculus as many others: It would rather be called a hypocrite by those on the left than become a target of the right for ‘woke’ policies.
But it’s also apparent to America Inc’s CEOs that not only has the “#resistance" that pressured them to stand up to Trump’s line-crossing in his first term gone mute, but some business leaders are being cheered for flouting traditional expectations of decorum.
Case in point: the language used by Elon Musk, who has only seen his wealth and power grow.
Also Read: Welcome Elon Musk, the shadow president-elect of the United States
Now Zuckerberg seems to be following a similar playbook.
His burst of activity last week included announcing new Meta board member Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a Trump loyalist who two years ago was captured on video slapping his wife; telling Joe Rogan that companies need more “masculine energy," overseeing the announcement that Meta would end its DEI efforts; and saying that it would get rid of fact checkers on its platforms—a change he acknowledged would mean they would “catch less bad stuff."
The Intercept published excerpts of the new internal training materials, which said allowed speech would now include examples like “immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of bleep" and “gays are freaks."
Will Zuckerberg’s company also find itself rewarded?
Users and advertisers may be grumbling, but so far there has been no mass exodus from his platforms.
If Meta’s big pivot succeeds, we can expect to see more CEOs exploring [dark spaces]. And why not? If the US public does not expect more of business leaders, why bother to keep such temptations in check? ©Bloomberg