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Howard Schultz lamented in a statement before retiring from the Starbucks board of directors this week interview Both Democrats and Republicans have been “hijacked by extremists.”
The coffee mogul, who gave up an independent bid for the White House in 2019, often talks about the company’s ability to unite a divided country. But as the United States prepares for another election, executives are increasingly concerned about extremism.
Former Dow Chemical Co. chief executive Andrew Liveris recently told the Financial Times while promoting his new product that the business world once thought of itself as a “bipartisan enterprise” where moderates could be found on both sides. Book, Leading Disruption. As polarization intensifies, businesses are “in the middle,” he said.
“But found there was almost no one to talk to,” he added.
But the disruption CEOs are worried about now is not the same as the concerns they had about taxes or trade in previous elections. There are growing concerns that intolerance and dark rhetoric are dividing employees, angering consumers and even endangering workplace safety.
This summer, Target employees were harassed over LGBTQ-themed promotions and Anheuser-Busch InBev facilities were threatened, heightening alarm. Johnny Taylor, chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management, added that the divide between Trump voters and Biden supporters “has led to all kinds of workforce conflicts.”
He said his members reported “genuine concerns” about how Donald Trump’s supporters would respond to his upcoming legal trial.
“I don’t think we’re going to wait 14 months; we’re going to wait 14 months,” he said, referring to a potentially worrying scenario in the run-up to the November 2024 presidential election. “I think we’re starting to feel that clearly now. a little. Now there’s a rumble. ”
Rather than just worrying about extremism, some CEOs have concluded that they should be the ones bringing the discourse back to the center—or at least the center as they define it.
Taylor’s organization is launching a “workforce civility” initiative that treats political differences as diversity issues. At the state level, groups like Idaho Leadership United are doing something similar, rallying business and civic leaders to reject bigotry and political violence.
Tommy Ahlquist, CEO of real estate developer and co-founder of The Idaho Group, explains that businesses can’t thrive without safe, inclusive communities where talent wants to move. He has seen local leaders attacked online and even faced “thugs” outside his home in one incident, saying: “Today’s world is forcing more people to say, if I don’t stand for something, then I don’t stand for something. Stand for anything.”
Ahlquist, a Republican who ran for governor in 2018, had argued that CEOs could solve such problems by entering politics. But he said he realized it was “a different world.”
Liveris believes that it is not “wokeism” for business leaders to intervene in politics from their daily work.
“You have to help the pendulum find its center,” he said. “That’s the business role.”
The concept of “corporate political responsibility” has drawn attention from people of all political leanings who distrust corporate power and ask why unelected executives should influence the electoral process. There is every reason to expect that even debates promoting greater consensus will be met with pushback from CEOs. Whether workplace civility initiatives can reverse America’s long-running polarization trend is also an open question.
But U.S. business leaders appear increasingly convinced they have to try something, and increasingly worried. Ahlquist noted that U.S. elections tend to “heat up.”
“I think more challenging times are coming,” he said.
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