THE NEW CEO ACTIVISTSAnd for many leaders, speaking out is a matter of personal
conviction. David Green, the founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby, a
family- owned chain of crafts stores, cited his religious beliefs when
opposing the Obamacare requirement that health insurance for
employees include coverage for the morning- after pill among all
other forms of birth control.
Some leaders have commented that a greater sense of corpo-
rate purpose has become important to Millennials, whether they
be employees or customers. Indeed, research from Weber Shand-
wick and KRC Research fi nds that large percentages of Millennials
believe that CEOs have a responsibility to speak out on political and
social issues and say that CEO activism is a factor in their purchasing
decisions.
Sometimes leaders point to multiple motivations. “I just think it’s
insincere to not stand up for those things that you believe in,” Jeff
Immelt, the former CEO of GE, has said. “We’re also stewards of our
companies; we’re representatives of the people that work with us.
And I think we’re cowards if we don’t take a position occasionally on
those things that are really consistent with what our mission is and
where our people stand.”
The Tactics of CEO Activists
Though they’re motivated by diverse interests— external, internal,
and deeply personal— activist CEOs generally employ two types of
tactics: raising awareness and leveraging economic power.
Raising awareness
For the most part, this involves making public statements— often
in the news media, more frequently on Twitter— to garner support
for social movements and help usher in change. In such state-
ments business leaders are communicating to stakeholders where
they stand on a whole slate of issues that would not have been on
the CEO’s agenda a generation ago. For example, Goldman Sachs’s
CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, and Biogen’s former CEO George Scangos
have spoken out publicly on government policies that aff ect the