While recently reviewing the Friends of the Earth US (FOE) website, I saw that they introduced a new genetic engineering policy campaigner named Eric Hoffman. Congratulations to Mr. Hoffman. Perhaps at a future time, he and I can have some interesting discussions on issues of mutual concern. But I hope that those future discussions would be based upon better writing than that which I found in connection with Mr. Hoffman’s employment announcement.
As part of the FOE US introduction of Mr. Hoffman, FOE used the following lead-in passage:
Friends of the Earth is a fierce advocate of scientific progress, but corporations often seek profit from scientific developments with little regard for human health. We must take precaution (sic) to ensure new technologies don’t do more harm than good.
Now, I’ll put aside the minor spelling error in their second sentence. I’ll also put aside the fact that there was no date on this post, which is really just a “bush league” error when it comes to Website writing and management. Instead of those small errors, I’ll just concentrate on the meaning of the passage itself.
This approach of playing the “anti-corporate card” gets a bit wearisome, and is plainly just bad argumentation. The anti-corporate card to which I refer is the phrase, “corporations often seek profit from scientific development with little regard for human health.” Let’s take this phrase apart to see how it represents poor argumentation on the part of FOE and only weakens any argument that they are trying to make.
“Corporations often seek profit.” Yes. Okay, I can go along with that part. That is the function of a corporation, to seek a profit in its activities, many of which are directed at scientific developments. Thankfully they do that. Without profits, no one would ever get a merit raise in pay. And without scientific developments, people would be dropping dead from what are now, as compared to the past, “easily-cured” illnesses or from complications arising out of minor injuries. Now, let’s move on to the next part of the phrase and talk about “with little regard for human health.”
This part of the phrase conjures up a picture of research & development departments operated by zany, madcap scientists who indiscriminately toss new products out the door without adequately testing them, or at least without testing them to the satisfaction of government regulators within the jurisdictions in which their corporations do business. In my career, I’ve known many R&D personnel, and have found them to be painfully cautious and responsible personalities, almost to the point, perhaps, of being too cautious. I’ve yet to meet one who I would consider as either a businessperson or scientist with “little regard for human health.” If, indeed, these individuals, and the corporations for which they worked, “often” acted as portrayed by this phrase, their mad scientist-like lack of “regard for human health” would produce deadly products quickly killing thousands, drawing the ire of the marketplace, causing the corporation to lose revenue quickly, putting the
Continue reading FOE Plays Anti-Corporate Card
All irregular competitors are not created equal. Nor do they necessarily later all become equal and evolve into threats about which a company should be uniformly concerned. Some irregular competitors have more mojo than others; either because of smarter staff or better funding or both.
When you’re a corporate communications or PR person trying to deal with an irregular competitor who is talking trash about your company, it’s good to know something about them. (That harks back to what Sun Tzu said.) An understanding of the irregular competitor’s strengths and weaknesses will help you: 1) to determine whether you should be responding to them at all; and, 2) if it’s determined that you should respond, to have a knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses which can help you choose which strategies and tactics to apply against them.
To assist in this understanding, today I introduce The Irregular Competition Threat Index. This is a scale rating system that I will use in some of the case study posts on this blog. This rating system will rank the irregular competitors discussed in terms of their general strengths and weaknesses in the use of social media. You may select those irregular competitor case studies specifically under the category Irregular Competition or more generally under the category Research – Case Studies.
The ranking of irregular competitors in The Irregular Competition Threat Index will be primarily along factors of their social media and web campaign strategies, but offline strategic factors may also contribute to their rating, and these will be called out in the case study posts.
So, I look forward to presenting some interesting case studies and I also look forward to your feedback.
(Update: The Irregular Competition Threat Index was renamed the Irregular Competition Social Media Threat Index (ICSMTI) and moved to exclusive coverage on www.KahunaInstitute.com. You may access the ICSMTI ratings on that site by going to the ICSMTI Page.
For those interested in learning about the anti-corporate movement, I recommend a book that I recently completed. The Rise of the Anti-Corporate Movement by Evan Osborne is a first-rate work.
Subtitled Corporations and the People Who Hate Them, in this book Evan does good work in laying out the history of the corporation, taking us back about four millennia to the origin of what evolved into today’s modern corporation. He then moves us forward in time, tracing the development of the corporation from ancient Assyria, up through 18th century Britain, and then to its current form both worldwide and in the United States. At each stop in this journey through corporate time, Evan stops to impress upon the reader the details of corporate myth created at each stage, emphasizing how those myths trickled down into today’s collective social conscience, but debunking the myth before continuing the journey.
During the early parts of the journey, he deftly points out that previous forms of the corporation had, by virtue of their legal foundation in significantly less democratic societies, much more power than the corporate form takes in today’s America, decrying the claims by anti-corporate activists that modern corporations are omnipotent and all-powerful. He punctuates this illustrative journey of countering the claims of the anti-corporate movement (ACM) with profound insights, based on common sense and everyday observations. One such insight undermines general ACM claims of runaway corporate power by observing the corporate disdain for the corporate income tax and stating that if corporations were truly as all-powerful as the ACM makes them out to be, then indeed there would be no income tax.
About a third of the way through the book, Evan, an economist at Wright State University, takes on the economic assertion often put forth by the ACM, that society is actually poorer because of the existence of the corporation. Over many pages, he does an excellent job explaining how this claim is invalid. His counter-argument is clear, cogent, and convincing. I’ve read other books making this same argument (For example, The Role of Business in the Modern World, by David Henderson.), but they were not nearly as on-point or as substantially sourced as is The Rise.
This is definitely a book that should be read by all engaged in business issues involving activists and NGOs.
It’s also a book that could benefit members of the general public, to help dispel some of those corporate myths generated over the past few hundred years. I have no illusions that members of the general public will read this book any time soon. But, the loss is theirs because of the great insights they would miss. I’ll close with one of those insights.
Near the end of the book, when Evan invokes the late economist Milton Friedman who stated that the corporation owes no more “social responsibility” than any other member of society, Evan states that it is just as improper for the anti-corporate campaigner to use the law to force
Continue reading A Journey in Anti-Corporate Thought
In the field of issues management, it’s common knowledge that some corporations now “partner” with NGOs on various issues of “social concern.” That term “social concern” is often one that is defined by the NGO, rather than the corporation, by the way. So now, instead of an NGO and a corporation fighting tooth and nail over an environmental issue, for example, they work together toward a “common goal.” Okay. That seems all warm and fuzzy, on the surface. But let’s dig a little deeper into the nature of this “partnership.”
In a situation like this, what’s that “common goal?” For the NGO, the goal would be the achievement of, perhaps, a social agenda objective that they have pursued for years, often via an adversarial relationship with the corporation. For the corporation, what’s the goal? What motivates the corporation to take on such a “strange bedfellows” relationship? Well, as a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor commented, corporations often approach NGOs to partner on a common project so that those same NGOs don’t turn around in the future and spread bad press about the corporation. A “common goal?” Seems more like a protection racket.
Imagine this scenario. Corporation X is concerned that future bad press could negatively impact their expected future revenues. So, to preclude the threat of negative press, an implicit threat at least, the brass at X dial up their historical foes at NGO Z and play let’s make a deal. The brass over at Z aren’t going to say, “Hey X, thanks for calling, but no thanks.” No. Z’s ship just came in. The pressure that the folks at NGO Z have been applying to Corporation X all of these years has just paid off.
Didn’t I see a scene something like this in at least one episode of The Sopranos?
Now, when the NGOs and the corporations get together like this, at least according to the previously mentioned Christian Science Monitor article, no money changes hands. The article stated that the NGO doesn’t receive any fees from the corporate partner. But isn’t there an exchange of value here? Isn’t this somewhat like a scene from The Sopranos? Let’s look at it this way.
The Sopranos Example – Paulie, grey slicked-back side wings and all, goes into a shop and “tells” the proprietor that the shop could “have some trouble” in the future. This “implicit threat” means that the shopkeeper might lose some of his or her “expected future revenues.” But, Paulie and his problem-resolution specialists can “protect” the shop and make that trouble “disappear,” for some consideration of course. In this Sopranos example, that consideration is money.
Paulie and his problem-resolution specialists get what they were looking for, i.e., they reach their direct objective. The shopkeeper avoids that “implicit threat” and gets to keep his or her future revenue stream.
The NGO Z/Corporation X Collaboration Example – The presence of NGO Z represents an “implicit threat” to Corporation X, the threat of
Continue reading NGO & Corporate Collaboration: How Far Does It Go?
Wondering how your company can become more competitive in today’s “anti-corporate” business environment? (Or at least a business environment that’s portrayed as being “anti-corporate.”) Hey. Who isn’t? Apparently it’s “known” that today’s company operates in an “anti-corporate” environment. So let’s talk about it.
I recently finished reading “Engaging Fringe Stakeholders for Competitive Imagination” by Stuart Hart and Sanjay Sharma. In this 2004 article from the Academy of Management Executive, the authors offer up the theory of engaging with “fringe stakeholders” in order to reach two objectives. The first objective, which is related to anti-corporatism, is about avoiding what the authors call “smart mobs,” which they define as the wrath of individuals that can be created and mustered online for the purpose of spreading negative information about the company. The second objective the authors describe is related to efficient product development. The achievement of both of these goals depends upon getting pertinent information from the fringes of the stakeholder sphere which surrounds a company. The article details how companies may go about achieving these goals.
The achievement of the second objective, more efficient product development, is described with various case studies showing how certain corporations have extended their market research operations to the outer fringes of the societies in which those companies do business. From this “fringe information” collected have come new initiatives for products designed to solve problems that the companies had not known existed prior to their journey to the fringe. Thus, the term “competitive imagination” used in this article’s title. The insights gained through the fringe market research give those companies who conduct it a competitive leg up on their competition. Very sound reasoning. No objections here at all.
There is a double-edged sword in this approach, one that cuts toward both objectives. The authors maintain that by performing this type of informational outreach, not only may a company discover new consumer insights for application within product development, but the company may also simultaneously engage with fringe stakeholders, or what they describe as “non-salient” stakeholders, who had previously been ignored by the company. As I pointed out earlier, this is the first objective that the authors raised. Hart and Sharma say that through this engagement and interaction with, and from the subsequent input from, these fringe stakeholders, the company may preclude a public relations backlash initiated by these fringe actors, who may manifest as the “smart mob,” against future company actions. Again, I have no objections here. Proactive communication can serve as a preemptory tactic, reaping future benefits. But what I do object to is the premise upon which Hart and Sharma base most of their thesis. That premise is found in one pair of statements near the beginning of this article.
On the second page of this article we see the passage,
The power of governments has eroded in the wake of globalization and the growth of transnational corporations with global supply chains that span several continents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society groups have stepped into the breach, assuming
Continue reading One Source Doesn't An Anti-Corporate Environment Make
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About  Here at " Richard Telofski on The War on Capitalism," I discuss and analyze the individuals and groups conducting campaigns against capitalism. In the articles on this site, I provide analysis on lesser known facts about this movement. More . . .
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