Oh Boycott
Are the objectionable personal beliefs of a company’s CEO a good reason to boycott the company? Can something that a CEO does as an individual, and not in her role as a representative of her company, be a good reason to boycott the company?
After hearing comments made by the CEO of Chick-Fil-A about gay marriage in 2012, Douglas made the blanket decision to never eat at the restaurant again. He saw his actions as a form of activism, “voting with his dollars”, and he was proud to take a stand against the company’s CEO for espousing views that he, Douglas, found morally wrong. In a similar fashion, Douglas recently decided to stop purchasing coffee at Starbucks after reading an article that described how the company was being sued for sourcing coffee from farms that practiced unethical child labor. Though the company markets its coffee as being ethically sourced, a consumer 1advocacy group challenged Starbucks, claiming that they were aware of the issues in their production pipeline. Douglas’s colleague Jean has never agreed with Douglas about his boycott of Chick-Fil-A, and so Douglas is surprised to hear that Jean is actually considering avoiding Starbucks while the supply chain issues are on-going. When asked about it, Jean insists there is a substantive difference between the views of a company’s CEO and the company’s business practices. According to Jean, avoiding a restaurant is not an effective protest against something that the CEO has said. Jean sees no clear link between the CEO’s views and his place of work. More generally, he worries that boycotting the restaurant is a form of lazy activism that pacifies consumers and keeps them from engaging in more effective forms of resistance against homophobic points of view. In the case of Starbucks, though, the company itself is engaged in business practices that Jean sees as unethical. He thinks that boycotting the coffee chain for how it operates in itself is different from boycotting a company over the views of its employees. Douglas isn’t sure that Jean is right, but the conversation has inspired a new worry for him. If he and Jean both feel obligated to change their purchasing habits in response to the actions of a business or its employees, are they obligated to investigate the practices of any business they frequent? Douglas thinks that Jean may be acting hypocritically, but does that mean that he is being hypocritical as well by not working harder to investigate the views of the CEOs of other companies that he frequents?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1.Are the objectionable personal beliefs of a company’s CEO a good reason to boycott the company? Can something that a CEO does as an individual, and not in her role as a representative of her company, be a good reason to boycott the company?
2.Is there a difference between the objectionable views of a CEO when they are vocalized publicly and the objectionable business practices that a company engages in? If a CEO represents a company, where does the line lie?
3.Is it hypocritical for someone to boycott a company that they disagree with if they don’t also look into the other companies they frequent?
4.Is it wrong to boycott a company when there are other, more effective forms of activism that one could take part in instead?
