Posted on 05/23/2017 4:30:59 AM PDT by cmj328
Many public companies or public company products, including the following, have seriously damaged their brands' value (and stock price) in recent years by strident liberalism:
Starbucks
Target
ESPN
Fox News
Why is this happening? What does this say about corporate governance structures serving the interests of shareholders?
What blows my mind is the move to the Left by Fox. Since Ailes departure they seem to have decided to ditch success in favor of a “Progressive Ideology” that appears to be the aim of the Murdoch brothers wives. It is about time for the Old Man to step in and stop this trend before they become a third rate network.
Political correctness is killing us, literally.
I haven’t watched or used any of the four you mentioned in some cases years.
I have also completely stopped watching the NFL
Remember, these corporate weenies have children in the schools that teach PC. Also, a lot of them are younger now and they have been taught PC all their lives. They think the nation is made up of PC inculcated weenies like them and that’s the market they are targeting.
You cannot compare filth like PMSNBC and Fox.
Not perfect.....never perfect..... it is far more conservative than any of the major news networks or print journalism.
Right now they have the Trump Middle East tour. While PMSNBC has on the fake news of the Trump/Russia connection.
It says that corporation boards tend to become fiscally and managerially reactionary thereby hiring managerial rather than entrepreneurial directors.
Board members are lawyers, accountants, political operatives and fund managers. They are governed by ideology rather than business principles. They believe that customers are a fixed commodity unaffected by corporate policy.
Ivory tower elitists believe that the masses will follow wherever an effective ad campaign leads. Rather than admit their myopia they double down on their narrow agenda and destroy the business they manage.
Free market forces are no longer working. The failure of the federal government to enforce anti-trust law since the Reagan administration has resulted in corporate economic power in many industries concentrating in a few oligopolies. These mega corporations collude with progressive governments to stifle smaller competitors and when they can’t stifle new competitors, the leviathan government enables them to buy out the threat resulting in less competition and even more concentration of economic power.
Concentrated economic power, allied with a large socialist state results in:
1) Less competition
2) Less innovation
3) Concentration of wealth in the hands of a few
4) Corruption in government. Big corporations fund campaigns and buy votes in Congress.
5) A complex tax code, impossible for the average person to understand, and full of special provisions for big corporations, many of whom pay little or no taxes while small businesses and individuals are crushed.
6) Direct subsidies and/or exemptions from laws for mega corporations who buy political influence (GE, Solyndra, Tesla, big pharma).
7) A legal system too expensive for average citizens to seek redress from lawbreaking corporate actors.
8) Corruption of the judiciary (Kelo decision) where the property rights of citizens are trampled on by big corporations enabled by government.
9) Government intervention with subsidies to protect prop up financially ailing businesses from bankruptcies (remember 2008 and the bank and auto industry bailout). Local and state governments take tax revenue from small business while doling out tax exemptions and rebates to large businesses.
10) Fewer jobs. Every merger results in losses of hundreds if not thousands of middle class jobs.
The last few elections have proven the GOP serves the oligarchs and not the conservative voters they profess to serve.
All of the above serves to make the economy inefficient, society corrupt, and government rapacious at the expense of individual freedom. Breaking up the oligopolies into smaller companies will bring vigorous competition and innovation to stagnant markets as well as create more jobs.
What bothers me is the political correctness that occurs within the companies. I worked for a large company for many years until not that long ago. Every month there were signs in the hallways and lobby “celebrating” the latest demographic... Black History Month, Gay Pride Month, etc. It reflects the values of the company. Hiring and promoting were based as much on skin color and sex as they were on talent and merit. Grrrr.... glad I retired.
Many who have worked in corporate environments can probably recall and attest to the groupthink that permeates many/most of them.
A good example is United Way campaigns. Companies are obsessed with '100% Participation' and all the attendant bragging, badging, etc. to the point of devoting entire days and pulling every last person away from their offices, cubes and any critical projects to browbeat them about 100% participation.
The United Way has always been top-heavy with administration, but even after United Way executives were discovered to be living high on the hog, flying first class, etc. the mania for 100% participation did not wane.
Some employees occasionally ask to be allowed to make their donations directly to a charity they have a special affinity for due to family circumstances eg the American Cancer Society and for the donation to be recognized as - wait for it - 'their fair share' but to corporate virtue signalers this is simply not good enough.
If you ever seen or read 'The Chocolate War' then you get an idea of what sort of manipulation and pressure are involved in do-gooding and how people lose their minds when they are given a bit of power.
In the current era, corporations have gone well past anodyne charity appeals and are now box-ticking like mad: LGBT, illegal aliens, trannies, et al are all fodder for their image-boosting largesse to say nothing of the college-style elevation of minorities to positions well beyond their talents with their colleagues deadly afraid to point out the obvious. If efficiency, results, profitability, etc. can and do suffer then so be it.
Corporations take the normal fear of violating group norms and leverage it to the hilt.
NewsCorp execs endorsed John Kerry in 2004. Fox News didn’t “suddenly” lurch Left. The administrative powers have been there awhile.
I haven’t watched or used any of the four you mentioned in some cases years.
I have also completely stopped watching the NFL
now that we know how virtuous you are, have you something to contribute to the point of the thread...?
Kellogs shot it’s wad too.
Until boards of directors start going to jail, this will continue.
people lose their minds when they are given a bit of power.
the entire history of mankind is an exercise in the will to power attempting to conflate to the smallest possible entity, in order to usurp the maximum benefits...
The truth: It is happening because progressively funded investment fund managers and consultants publish negative projections and pseudo-intellectual hit pieces on companies that fail to meet their PC causes; so-called socially responsible investment funds have grown to ~$4 Trillion AUM. Not green enough, not diverse enough, then try to use “studies” to indicate this will hurt a companies bottom line and publish hit pieces, and in some cases fund litigation or proxy wars against target companies. Of course, they also don’t buy the stock as part of their (sometimes multi-billion) portfolios. Understand these are the fund managers that your 401k dollars may eventually go to, and you can see the problem. Investment has become entirely politicized, and if the large fund managers aren’t buying your stock, you will be hurt in the short term, which is what most shareholders and boards are responding to. I had dug out several examples of this in the past, but don’t have them at my fingertips.
Do you know where all those people who hold liberal arts degree specializing in gender, feminism, homosexual, African-America, or any other type cultural grievance studies get hired at?
The advent of globalism has put more of a focus on appeasing different cultures and employee “awareness”. Human Resource departments provides a bastion of opportunity for those specializing in those studies. Heaven help society when someone gets a BA in some grievance study and parlay that into an MBA or any economic graduate study.
Excellent!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.