Page two of the Best Buy Code of Ethics document goes on to say:
"It is also about self-restraint:
- Not doing what you have the power to do. An act isn't proper simply because it is permissible or you can get away with it.
- Not doing what you have the right to do. There is a big difference between what you have the right to do and what is right to do.
- Not doing what you want to do. In the well-worn turn of phrase, an ethical person often chooses to do more than the law requires and less than the law allows."
Right again. Sometimes an ethical organization chooses to do less than the law allows. In this case, doing less than the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling allows would have meant exercising financial restraint in not supporting a candidate who openly seeks to oppress a significant segment of your customer population, no matter how much his business politics will benefit the company's bottom line.
So, perhaps Best Buy should gather together all those who are authorized to make political contributions in a boardroom and read page two together. Out loud. And then discuss.
It would be a good idea for Best Buy to either live up to their own page two or to change page two altogether. Or at least remove it from the internet in order to eliminate such transparent access to their own obvious conflicts of interest.
Just because Best Buy and every other member of the U.S. retail industry has been granted the right to fund political candidates, does that mean they should? Instead of figuring out how to operate in the complexities of the political arena, shouldn't these two companies focus their resources on mastering the complexities of the retail industry?
It seems like Target and Best Buy are just waiting for the firestorm of consumer protests to burn itself out or allow the next big corporate drama to take over the headlines. Here's why that's probably not going to happen any time soon...
The HRC does a pretty masterful job at organizing and motivating LGBT activism. The LGBT community is encouraged to support the corporations that support the LGBT community. And that reciprocal back-scratching philosophy is backed up by some well-executed infrastructure.
A detailed and extensive list of brands, products, and companies is compiled each year, along with their gay-friendly workplace rankings. The LGBT community is encouraged to spend their consuming dollars on brands, products and companies that rank high, and to boycott brands, products and companies that rank low. There's even an iPhone app that can assist consumers in making gay-friendly choices while they shop.
To assume that those who care about this LGBT issue today are going to stop caring about it tomorrow is to not know much about a subculture filled with people who feel like they have struggled for acceptance and respect every day of their lives. Anyone who is forced to accept things they cannot change on a daily basis, can be easily motivated to work really hard to change the things that can be changed. Consciously choosing which retail store to give your money to is definitely something that can be changed.
Major retail chains do participate in politics in many ways that we know about and in some ways that we probably don't want to know about. It's a part of American corporate business that's not going to stop no matter how many Facebook fans are amassed against it. (The Boycott Target Facebook audience has grown by 16% in the past seven days, by the way.)
No matter which political candidate a corporation supports, they risk offending a large group of people with opposing views. So how will retail leaders know which political expenditures are not going to end up hurting more than they help?
The answer, I suspect, is somewhere on page two.
More About Retail Politics:
- 2010 Best Retail Places to Work for LGBT Equality
- Retail Political Affiliations and Contributions
- Wal-Mart's Own Version of Retail Politics
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