Last year, companies began to withdraw from the promotion of their efforts to include diversity capital and social justice activists blamed the incoming administration of Trump. It has been a violation of the federal law to discriminate for 60 years, so moderates seemed strange to add a layer of discrimination in hiring, even one considered positive. And they never considered that it has been done in their place due to the pressure of the previous administration.
The reaction was completely predictable, but in both cases it was on the sidelines. Without any benefit, the corporate CEOs ignored the mantra ‘stay out of it unless their clients are dominated by the mantra.
In the 1930s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Louis B. Mayer study, asked why he was not taking advantage of the madness of the horror movie, “Frankenstein”, etc. that had made universal money so much. He replied: “Why sell two tickets when I can sell four?” In his case, he referred to family films instead of only adults, but if their product is for Republicans and Democrats, cheese or alcohol, it is advisable to alienate or tell the world that supports Hamas or Dogle’s terrorists or anything else.
The way of doing that, Affirmed by experiments in 2020 and 2021It is simply staying out of polarizing political problems. In a 2020 experiment, Bondi et al. He framed the information about the companies so that the respondents knew the corporate position and if it is left, inclination to the right or centrist. In version 2021, they included whether the company’s communication communication included financial support.
They discovered that for hot problems, a company was not going to win taking a position. People who supported the company’s behavior were compensated by those less inclined to like. (1) For Republicans and independent, remaining apolitic was beneficial if they expected a company to be partisan. Only the Democrats considered negative for companies to stay out of politics if they felt that the company was politically aligned.
However, you also have to understand your cultural environment. A company in San Francisco is automatically considered left by the majority of the country, so they actually benefit from explicitly affirming that they are apolitical instead of being alone. And it is fine that a company is in favor of well -known problems in which everyone agrees that no one is against clean water, a company can even give money to the conservation of nature or someone else who cares about clean water, but another very different one to promote epidemiology statements that small amounts of PFA in water are giving to the people who cancer and Trump are denied to prohibit the products where science does not show.
The short version is that, if you can sell to four clients, two Democrats and two Republicans, instead of only two, they are sold to four.
Citation: Bondi, T., Burbano, VC, and Dell’acqua, F. (2025). When (no) talk about business politics: experimental evidence. Strategic Management Magazine46 (5), 1105–1119. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3684
NOTE:
(1) Opinions are not dollars, of course, so surveys have little use of the real world and this is only EXPLORATORY. There is no way of knowing if less people would buy their cheese depending on anything except the price or their ideas about quality. Another reason why the risk may not be worth it.
#polarized #people #companies #polarized #political #problems
