After a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, I got into a bit of off-camera back-and-forth with Squawk Box co-anchor Joe Kernen. We’d been talking on air about President Trump’s relationship with CEOs. I argued that business leaders have a moral responsibility, one that is increasingly connected to business performance. Kernen felt I was being naïve, that corporate morality is a facade that is quickly jettisoned in favor of financial opportunity.
Perhaps both things can be true–the responsibility, and the avoidance of it–but that’s not what we discussed after the cameras got turned off. Kernen felt I’d adopted a holier-than-thou posture by specifically bringing up the Nazism and white supremacy that sparked violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Did Fast Company talk about moral responsibility when President Obama brought rappers who were former drug dealers into the White House, Kernen asked me? The implication is that I was applying a double standard when it came to President Trump.
I found the exchange a bit mystifying. Not because I’m not susceptible to bouts of righteousness; we all are. And we can all gain from a better understanding of the perspective of others (even if we disagree with them). But my point wasn’t about politics or about Trump, it wasn’t about Democrats versus Republicans. The point I was trying to zero in on was about business leaders, regardless of the political landscape, and their increasingly vital role in shaping and encouraging our culture and society.
We’ve been writing consistently about the values and mission that undergird business enterprises. A corporation is a platform for many things: employment, wealth creation, the distribution of products and services, and so on. But it is also a cultural platform, a network through which messages are sent and received about what is acceptable, what is laudable, what is expected in our social intercourse.
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