Corporate Performative Activism

Lily Roby

lr158117@ohio.edu

 

Performative activism is considered being an activist in social justice or similar issues, usually either by actively protesting or by spreading knowledge about these issues. However, the difference between normal activism and performative activism is that the latter makes a very little difference in the world, and is usually done so in order to improve the image of the individual or company.

This form of activism is a huge issue especially within the corporate world, where talking about social movements like Black Lives Matter or the Me Too movement can gain companies followers and notoriety just because people believe that they're supporting those issues. However, many companies are simply being performative in the discussion of these issues and aren't doing anything to support the movement.

Picture source: UN NEWS/Daniel Dickinson

For example, according to this piece by The Washington Post, banking company JP Morgan Chase's head called a meeting with top executives in order to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, resolving the meeting by promoting two black women to higher leadership positions. Other than announce the two promotions, JP Morgan Chase has done very little to support black Americans and the movement in general, with only 2.2% of black senior executives making up the company according to JP Morgan Chase's 2019 Sustainability Report.

Performing activism in order to gain views, new and younger employees, or more purchases in order to support a company that claims to care about current social movements is incredibly unethical, especially when the company doesn't follow through with its claims to support these movements or push for equality.

However, some people believe that corporate activism is important, even if it's performative. It still gets messages out there about social issues and spreads the awareness of what people should be doing in order to help these certain movements.

Cory Marks-Soloman, a contributor for academic site The Conversation, elaborated on this in a July post, explaining that "research on corporate activism suggests that businesses often engage in social activism because they want to sway public policy outcomes, not solely to appeal to liberal customers and social employees."

Agreeing with this statement can be a very iffy stance to take, because while businesses may engage in social activism to promote certain public policy outcomes, it is still highly unethical to pledge to help a movement or group of people and then not or barely follow through with it, as seen in Starbucks' pledge to help Ferguson. Doing so not only loses the trust of consumers, but is blatantly lying to the public.