The corporate America lever

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

By Brooke Williams

“Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world”
 —Archimedes, 220 BC

Systems guru, Peter Senge, believes that the best way to change a situation is to intervene at the point of highest leverage. Applying systems thinking to conservation has me wondering what that point might be.

A month ago, a friend of ours came through town. We hadn’t seen Eric Reynolds for a while. He’s been involved in the outdoor product industry for decades and recently started Nau, a new clothing company. (You can read about Nau in last month’s Outside Magazine.)

Of course, one of Eric’s goals in starting this company was to make money. But more than that he wanted to explore a new type of corporate responsibility. Here in America, he says, corporations have all the rights of individuals, but none of the obligations or responsibilities.

Could it be that corporate America might be the key point of intervention, when it comes to conservation?

As Eric and I talked, I learned that under American corporate law, corporations have one and only one purpose: to make money for their stockholders. And if the corporation doesn’t make money, the stockholders can sue the directors.

Why else, I wondered, can a corporation pollute our lives with toxic waste that make us sick, give us jobs that are meaningless, dangerous or both, and pay us less than we can possibly live on? Good people do bad things with their companies because they have to, according to corporate law.

I remember that summer of 2003 when the Enron scandal was discovered. I have a picture in my mind from the television news: A well-dressed, fit-looking man in a dark suit with a perfect purple tie and a great haircut is standing next to a police cruiser.

His hands were cuffed behind his back. I remember being surprised by the look on his face. It wasn’t the hot look of anger and he wasn’t looking down because he was embarrassed.

He stared directly at the camera with a look that mixed astonishment with total shock.

I could tell that he really didn’t have a clue what he’d done wrong, because all he had ever done was make money for his company, which is what he’d always been taught to do. In a way, I felt sorry for him.

Eric left me with a lot to think about and a lot to read. I now have a stack of articles by Robert Hinkley, a corporate attorney who left his practice to promote his Code for Corporate Citizenship. Hinkley writes in the Multinational Monitor that

The cause of most corporate abuse is no secret. The thing that keeps greenhouse gases pouring out of smokestacks and tailpipes is the same thing that results in vendors of designer sneakers paying Third World children less than a dollar an hour.

It’s also the same thing that keeps tobacco companies marketing their products to children, fast food companies paying less than living wage and meat packing companies maintaining dangerous working conditions. That thing is the dedication of the corporation to the pursuit of profit.

The law stating that the purpose of a corporation is to make money is called the doctrine of shareholder primacy. Hinkley believes in adding 28 words to the law of shareholder primacy.

His new Code for Corporate Citizenship would then read, “the purpose of this corporation is to make money, but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public health or safety, the communities in which the corporation operates, or the dignity of its employees.”

I hold a strong belief that people, given the right choices, are more likely to do what’s right. Corporations have the same rights as individuals. Corporations are comprised of people.

Imagine a future where corporations are no longer required to make profits regardless of the cost to society, and those in charge begin to make the right choices. Business – corporate America – could become the lever that moves and saves the world.
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The corporate America lever | Planet JH News Article: Left Wing Local

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