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I’m skeptical that the second generation ever really comes about. There are a lot of financial incentives not to deny the reality beyond what is required for a decent public image. And that image will be insulated from the less visible practices of any company. As long as a company can make the right gestures and set (unrealistic) goals in the favored direction, it can keep doing practical stuff. Or get eaten by someone who does.
Mission statements have been jokes since at least the 90s. Probably since ancient Sumer, but I couldn’t find a source for it. And yet companies keep making them, because the cost-benefit remains low.
Mission statements have been jokes, and small or large treasures in both money and manpower and legitimacy spent on them, regardless. A company need not replace a quarter of its existing workforce (or put them on estrogen) to find its HR staff bizarrely willing to tolerate bad employees that are on the 'right' side of that line, to bring harsher standards against those on the 'wrong' side, or to promote hilariously illegal policies.
Which in theory could be fine from a pure libertarian perspective, but I'll bring a variation of the rant on McCarthyism forward. We decided -- not that long ago! -- that discrimination on the matter of race, gender, ethnicity, or religion were Bad. And then it turned out the determination wasn't exactly on those means.
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"Here at Ea-nāṣir and Sons, we are committed to providing a well-trained and motivated team to safely produce copper products that meet industry standards and ensure customer satisfaction."
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...Within the company, or within society as a whole? This game doesn't stop at a corporation's borders.
Late last week, someone posted the story of a middle-aged anti-racist professor getting wrecked by the next generation. While being evidently committed to the ideology, the professor also had competing values that balanced out his views and behaviors, to at least some extent. Crucially, he could not actually deliver on what his ideology promised: legible progress toward an "anti-racist" world. He gained status by making promises, and then he failed to deliver on those promises, which left him vulnerable to a younger, meaner type shoving his principles and reservations out of the way to implement the ideology "for real".
You might be right that the corporate environment is less receptive to such pushes. But the corporate environment's concessions are helping to shape the cultural environment, which shapes the political environment, which in turn can impose arbitrary new rules on the corporations. If the second generation can't arise inside the corporation, that doesn't mean they can't impose their will from the outside.
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In tech, it already has.
You and @Bernd have made similar claims. What exactly do you mean by tech?
I’d argue that the position of tech giants in today’s market puts them more in the category of consumer goods. Phones, social media, etc. are less insulated from personal tastes. That leads to tech as tastemaking, and it makes them relatively vulnerable to social pressure.
I think my industry is insulated not just because I’m not in California, but because we don’t sell to the general public. Same for heavy industry, for big finance, for medicine…who’s going to cancel us? We are not making our money off of the perception of fashion.
Tech. The FAANGs, and the SF startups, and the various companies who aren't startups any more but want to be FAANGs
You can call a tail a leg but it won't make it so. The names of the sectors are somewhat arbitrary but at least they are pretty well agreed on. Consumer goods is e.g. Unilever and Proctor and Gamble... and there's evidence at least of P&G being "second generation".
And I’m saying that the consumer goods category is what’s most responsive to idpol. The market of middle-class liberal consumers is really insulated from heavy industry. Not so much from iPhone trendsetting.
There's no "pull" from consumers in either tech or consumer goods, it's all push from the companies and their ad agencies. No consumers wanted that Gillette (P&G) ad about how men suck, least of all the consumers of men's razors. The "it's consumer demand" thing is just a threadbare fiction told to dismiss complaints, and it's long since worn through.
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