MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Finding the Middle Ground in a Politically Polarized World

To gauge whether — and how — to jump into the political fray, business leaders should consider an issue’s importance to company financial performance and relevance to stated values.

Consumers and employees now expect companies to engage on social, environmental, and economic issues that are part of the political discourse (think immigration, climate change, and trade). Given how politically polarized the world has become, that can put business leaders in a bind.

Here’s the dilemma as it’s usually understood: They can take a political stand and risk upsetting some consumers or employees, igniting oppositional behavior such as boycotts and strikes, and damaging the company’s reputation. Or they can remain silent, ceding the moral high ground and allowing others to write the narrative.

About the Author

N. Craig Smith holds the INSEAD Chair in Ethics and Social Responsibility at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and is a specialist professor at the INSEAD Corporate Governance Centre. His latest book, with Eric Orts, is The Moral Responsibility of Firms (Oxford University Press, 2017). Daniel Korschun is an associate professor of marketing at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business and a 2018 Fulbright scholar. He tweets @danielkorschun.

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