Will Corporations Become More Responsible?

Popular Economics Weekly

Tradingeconomics

It is a sea change in economic thinking when corporate CEOs that belong to the Business Roundtable sign a Statement of Purpose to consider more than maximizing their profits, when maximizing corporate profits at the expense of their employees, social responsibilities, environment, and the public-at-large has been their reigning mindset until now.

They have just announced a Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, in which they “share a fundamental commitment to all of our Stakeholders”.

“The American dream is alive, but fraying,” said Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Chairman of Business Roundtable. “Major employers are investing in their workers and communities because they know it is the only way to be successful over the long term. These modernized principles reflect the business community’s unwavering commitment to continue to push for an economy that serves all Americans.”

While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders. We commit to:

• · Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
• · Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits. It also includes supporting them through training and education that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world. We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect.
• · Dealing fairly and ethically with our suppliers. We are dedicated to serving as good partners to the other companies, large and small, that help us meet our missions.
• · Supporting the communities in which we work. We respect the people in our communities and protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses.
• · Generating long-term value for shareholders, who provide the capital that allows companies to invest, grow and innovate. We are committed to transparency and effective engagement with shareholders.

It was in the 1970s that conservative economist Milton Friedman led the charge against Keynesian economics and government regulation that had rescued America from the Great Depression. The New Deal happened because Americans were willing to try anything to bring back jobs during the Great Depression, for fear that capitalism no longer worked.

A 2016 Forbes article described the Roundtable as comprised of 192 CEOs, and one of the most prominent lobbying groups in Washington, D.C. In 2015, the group spent $19.3 million on lobbying, making it the eighth biggest spender that year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Corporate profits have been on a tear for years, reaching a record share of GDP and Gross National Income in 2018 with the corporate tax cuts. What did they do with those profits? Invested it mainly in buybacks to boost share price and CEO incomes.

FRED

The result was has been record income inequality, as many manufacturing and other high-paying jobs were exported overseas via the growth of multinational corporations in the name of globalization. The FRED graph above illustrates the growth of corporate profits (blue line) over wages and salaries (red line), particularly since the last two recessions (gray columns).

But now income inequality and corporate social responsibility is in the headlines with the upcoming presidential campaign. Senators Sanders and Warren have been the loudest in calling out corporate “corruption”, a code word for using their power to enrich Wall Street and their stockholders, rather than Main Street.

Is this scaring Big Business enough to fulfill their commitment to serve Main Street, as it did during the Great Depression? The tide seems to be turning, as it is becoming increasingly evident that the record income inequality is causing corporations to rethink the role of capitalism in creating jobs that make America a better place to work and live.

Harlan Green © 2019

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Corporate Governance Reform—Women Make A Difference

ANSWERING THE KENNEDYS CALL

NYTimes.com

California State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson’s upcoming Senate Bill SB826 on reforming corporate governance will make corporations more responsive to the needs of the societies in which they operate by requiring more women to serve on their boards.

This is heady stuff, as research has shown that women on a corporate board are more likely to “create a sustainable future” by, among other things, instituting strong governance structures with a high level of transparency.

A 2012 UC Berkeley Hass School of Business study entitled, Women Create a Sustainable Future, to list just a few of the benefits of adding more women to corporate boards, are more likely to be:

· Companies that proactively invest in renewable power generation and related services.
· Companies that proactively address the environmental risks embedded in their financing decisions.
· Companies that provide strong employment benefits and performance incentives and offer employee engagement and professional development programs.
· Companies that offer products with an improved nutritional or healthier profile and have sought credible verification for its healthier status.

“Women and sustainability are two sides of the same coin …. Corporations build better societies if they have balanced boards,” said Halla Tomadottir, executive chair and co-founder of Audur Capital in Iceland, interviewed in the study. Ms. Tomadottir was on the all-female board of the only Icelandic bank that didn’t go into bankruptcy in 2008 during the Great Recession.

Perhaps her most famous quote, made in the Michael Moore documentary, Where to Invade Next? was “One woman on a board is a token, two women a minority. It takes three women to make a difference.” (sic)

“Take for example, a company like Nestlé,” says the Hass study, “which has recently turned its focus toward creating shared value with its product offerings in three areas: nutrition, water, and rural development. Nestlé uses science-based solutions to improve the quality of life through food and diet. "This type of social initiative is well aligned with corporate sustainability for Nestlé. Our research findings to date suggest that having more women corporate directors is correlated with these types of strategies and outcomes. Nestlé’s Board of Directors has three women.”

Senator Jackson’s bill, “no later than the close of the 2019 calendar year, would require a domestic general corporation or foreign corporation that is a publicly held corporation, as defined, whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are located in California to have a minimum of one female, as defined, on its board of directors, as specified. No later than the close of the 2021 calendar year, the bill would increase that required minimum number to 2 female directors if the corporation has 5 directors or to 3 female directors if the corporation has 6 or more directors.”

The behavior of corporations and corporate boards has come under scrutiny particularly since the December 2017 massive corporate tax cuts that its supporters touted would repatriate some of the $3 trillion in overseas assets, as well as raise the incomes of its employees.

But that hasn’t happened to date, as the focus of corporations’ increased profits since then have been to return the windfall to investors and corporate CEOs—either by buying back more shares, going private, or indulging in Wall Street’s merger and acquisitions’ game, rather than creating sustainable programs that would profit society at large as well as themselves.

In a 1970 Times magazine article, the free market economist Milton Friedman argued that businesses' sole purpose is to generate profit for shareholders. Moreover, he maintained, companies that did adopt "responsible" attitudes would be faced with more binding constraints than companies that did not, rendering them less competitive.

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” -Milton Friedman, New York Times Magazine, September 1970.

How the world has changed since then! We now know that ignoring environmental and social issues can be bad for business. Companies that pollute their local communities risk poisoning their customers. Ignoring the state of the local school system can mean depleting the pool of qualified workers. Exploiting workers risks higher turnover and training costs, not to mention greater difficultly in attracting the most qualified candidates.

As part of its findings, SB826 provides some impressive supportive data about the benefits of board gender diversity, including the following:

“(1) A 2017 study by MSCI found that United States’ companies that began the five-year period from 2011 to 2016 with three or more female directors reported earnings per share that were 45 percent higher than those companies with no female directors at the beginning of the period.
(2) In 2014, Credit Suisse found that companies with at least one woman on the board had an average return on equity (ROE) of 12.2 percent, compared to 10.1 percent for companies with no female directors. Additionally, the price-to-book value of these firms was greater for those with women on their boards: 2.4 times the value in comparison to 1.8 times the value for zero-women boards.
(3) Credit Suisse conducted a six-year global research study from 2006 to 2012, with more than 2,000 companies worldwide, showing that women on boards improve business performance for key metrics, including stock performance. For companies with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion, those with women directors on boards outperformed shares of comparable businesses with all-male boards by 26 percent.”

The business world can no longer afford to ignore what it takes to create a sustainable future, a future in which our children can enjoy the fruits of our labor. How can we otherwise tolerate a world growing more populous with limited resources and a warming planet?

Harlan Green © 2018

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen