|
After three newsletters on the key themes of my 55 years of business ethics teaching, it is time to return to the present moment of 2025. How are we ethically responding to an authoritarian administration that is exclusively self-interested, as well as disrespectful and even cruel to anyone not in its favor? It goes without saying that the 2026 and 2028 elections are keys to restoring decency and justice to the American nation—but what are we doing in the meantime? I have read several articles and reports in the past week that highlight efforts to build ethical norms and behavior from the ground up, to reboot an American culture of shared concern for one’s immediate community and fellow townspeople. These efforts are being launched in hundreds of American communities and the many local institutions that make up our civic culture. There are hundreds of efforts to jump-start dialogue across the partisan and cultural divide, including Democrats and Republicans sitting down together at the local level, rural and urban residents of the same state discussing how to make their states better, and nonpartisan inquiries into how to strengthen our democracy. Complementing the long-standing work of the League of Women Voters and local affiliates of Common Cause are dozens of other, more recently founded groups. These include Braver Angels, the Better Arguments Project (with support from Allstate), and Unify America. They promote local dialogues in a nonpartisan and respectful environment. Other efforts are documented on the website of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. There is no substitute for face-to-face engagement across differences, and every community can find ways of bringing people of different views together, either to address a shared problem or to understand each other’s views on a contentious issue. I am confident these dialogues can produce a common commitment to shared American values—including family, freedom, and social and economic progress. There is also a new emphasis in corporate strategy to double down on local community engagement and involvement. Community relations programs have been a bit of a backwater of business responsibility in recent years, with the focus shifting to national and global environmental initiatives, DEI programs, and human rights issues. But today many corporations are beefing up their community-based local efforts for several reasons: to demonstrate that their ethical and social commitments have not evaporated under pressure from the Trump administration, but also as part of a deliberate effort to strengthen the non-partisan foundations of national life on which they depend. FSG, a global nonprofit consulting firm that has partnered with foundations and corporations to create equitable systems change addressing the broader concerns of responsible business, recently released a guide for “how corporations can be place-based change agents” (see here). Some 50 years ago, I wrote a similar report on how “new business coalitions” in American cities were defining a new era of local business responsibility. At the time, I worked at Chicago United—a prime example of this movement—and consulted with my counterparts at Cleveland Tomorrow, the New York Partnership, and similar groups committed to the overall health of their cities in the 1970s. Today’s corporate developments echo some of that energy. The greater corporate focus on local communities is reemerging in part because companies have been forced to step back from, or at least stop talking about, their broader social and ethical commitments. But they are also recognizing the critical importance of local civic culture to any notion of national strength and economic strength. FSG’s report suggests four distinct strategies for new corporate commitments at the local level. Companies can be: Anchor institutions that catalyze local economic growth for buying, hiring, investing and giving locally Collaborators that catalyze or support multisector place-based collaborations to solve a shared social challenge Specialists that prioritize one specific locally relevant social issue and use a range of resources to address it Community-directed donors that design local investments strategies by prioritizing community voice and input
None of these roles are new, but the new emphasis is significant as companies search for opportunities to sustain corporate cultures of ethics and social concern. For some, of course, an enhanced emphasis on local engagement can divert attention from their capitulation to pressure from an authoritarian administration. But I prefer to see these efforts as more often trying to keep the flame of responsible business alive so that it can thrive again when the national context permits it. Universities too have launched new courses and special events on democracy and dialogue to better educate a new generation of young Americans on the challenges of sustaining democratic institutions. This can also demonstrate a university’s continuing commitment to democracy, ethics, and social concerns, as they are forced to abandon DEI programs and other social initiatives. Stanford, where I taught for 23 years, introduced a revised freshman sequence of courses on the theme of “Citizenship in the 21st Century,” and also holds an annual Democracy Day. These initiatives are both educational and also promote the value of careers in public service (see here and here). There are innumerable opportunities for each of us to engage in local action—at the same time we are focused on electing leaders who will reach across the aisle and promote constructive cooperation and compromise. A group of my own friends have launched a “democracy salon,” convening small groups with political diversity to discuss critical issues in American democracy. I now lead a small “ethics roundtable” of Silicon Valley leaders who discuss and issue nonpartisan statements about critical local problems. Each of us needs to help reboot this commitment to American democracy and freedom at the local level. These efforts can strengthen the democratic foundations of American society and sustain our shared commitment to democracy, free speech, freedom, and social and economic progress.
|
