Stoke up the PR team, Corporate America. Your public image is in for another big-time beating.
Not that U.S.A. Inc. is exactly revered as it is. In a recent poll that asked how 600 of the world’s
largest companies are regarded in their own countries, only one American company – Kraft Foods – had a top-ten reputation rating. Defense contractor Halliburton had the lowest-rated image, beating out companies like Tyco, Exxon Mobil and cigarette-maker Altria Group for the dubious honor.
(Yes, we know that Altria owns 88.1 percent of Kraft. But when people are loyal enough to buy SpongeBob Squarepants Macaroni & Cheese, they’re loyal enough to give you pass on your corporate relatives.)
The poll jives with a Harvard / US News & World Report survey that finds the reservoir of trust in America’s business institutions has dipped to severe drought levels.
Now the Democrats control Capital Hill. And they’ve got their crosshairs locked on to corporate fraud and abuse.
Associated Press reports that the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee promises to launch a plethora of congressional investigations on how business is being done. Democratic representative John Dingell says his to-do list includes:
- Scandals surrounding the new Medicare drug benefit
- Spending by government contractors in Iraq, including Halliburton
- Oil and energy companies that took part in Vice President Cheney’s “carefully cooked” energy task force
- Safety issues relating to nutritional supplements
Add these to Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank’s pledge to hold hearings on “the wild imbalance in executive compensation and the often perverse incentives that accompany them...” And of course you also have “the Wal-Mart issue” becoming a key platform among presidential candidates.
Some say this whole fuss is about the Enron-era scandals, or winning the White House in 2008. But I think this is something bigger – that we’re seeing the emergence of a new socioeconomic order powered by information-age transparency and fueled by increasingly broad, populist notions of corporate social responsibility.
Whatever scandals and malfeasance are uncovered – or drummed up -- the next two years are bound to put strained challenges on the triangular relationship between the nation’s largest employers, their stakeholders and government. The companies that maintain bottom-line value from their reputations will be those that can position themselves as being part of the solution to the deeper anticorporate turmoil sure to come.
© 2006 Steven Silvers
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