Chief executives are taking vocal stands on issues like gun control, climate change and immigration, but global affairs bring a different complexity and calculation, especially for companies doing business in China, The Wall Street Journal reports.
In the aftermath of Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s now-deleted tweet, the National Basketball Association has found the consequences of even implicitly criticizing Chinese policy can be swift and sizable.
But the NBA isn’t the only organization that has run afoul of the Chinese government. Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google both recently removed apps associated with Hong Kong’s antigovernment protests from their digital stores after taking heat from Chinese officials.
Executives have to thread a needle when a company’s commercial and financial interests clash with the CEO’s personal values and the cultural values of an enterprise and its home country, says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a leadership expert at the Yale School of Management.
“One of the rarely discussed downsides of globalization is you get caught in those crosscurrents,” he said.
Yet CEOs are also under increased pressure to be visible on social and political issues, evidenced in part by the new statement released in August by the Business Roundtable, when the group redefined its view on the purpose of a corporation.
Doug Smith, managing principal of the Pittsburgh office of law firm Jackson Lewis, says that in response more companies in the past two years have started bolstering their executive contracts with an eye to social media. They have incorporated clauses giving them more leeway to fire executives for posting something inappropriate online. Read the full story.
