{"title": "Corporate Responsibility and Wokenomics | Thomas Taussi | Negotiator 91", "titleOriginal": "Yritysvastuu ja wokenomics | Thomas Taussi | Neuvottelija 91", "episodeNumber": "91", "guest": "Thomas Taussi", "publishedAt": "2021-07-23", "duration": "49:44", "durationIso": "PT49M44S", "youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUPW5_e1ie0", "fiCanonical": "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/103-yritysvastuu-ja-wokenomics-thomas-taussi-neuvottelija-91", "originalLanguage": "fi", "format": "full", "topics": ["leadership_governance", "ownership_capital_tax", "free_speech_society"], "description": "The Aalto University researcher Thomas Taussi argues that Milton Friedman's classic 1970 essay has been widely misread. Friedman did not dispute the importance of stakeholders and did not condemn all corporate social responsibility — he criticised one particular doctrine, in which a company's resources are spent on activities with no purpose of supporting the business. The episode's load-bearing observation is conceptual: responsibility sets itself no limits and does not explain itself, with the consequence that almost anything can be pursued under its cover. Taussi locates the source of his own scepticism precisely — the question is not whether the goals are good, but whether limits can be set at all on things that depart from the core business. The examples include Neste Oil's biofuel turn, Stora Enso's China venture, the Finnair deportation controversy, the Google and Apple dismissals, and Basecamp's depoliticisation.", "chapters": [{"t": "00:00", "title": "Opening teaser: the limits of responsibility, and the Finnair deportation controversy", "seconds": 0}, {"t": "01:41", "title": "Thomas Taussi, and the profit purpose in the Companies Act", "seconds": 101}, {"t": "02:52", "title": "Friedman's 1970 essay has been misunderstood", "seconds": 172}, {"t": "04:29", "title": "Responsibility as a fashion, and the five foundations of a business", "seconds": 269}, {"t": "06:41", "title": "Influence or responsibility: Neste Oil's biofuel strategy", "seconds": 401}, {"t": "08:47", "title": "Wahlroos's three-way split: markets, democracy and hierarchy", "seconds": 527}, {"t": "10:29", "title": "Transparency in the division of power, and ideological agendas inside an organisation", "seconds": 629}, {"t": "12:43", "title": "The UN sustainable development goals, Stora Enso and Kemijärvi", "seconds": 763}, {"t": "16:33", "title": "Wokenomics: Google's James Damore, and the Apple case", "seconds": 993}, {"t": "19:23", "title": "Responsibility as a cloud of concepts: Finnair and Finnwatch", "seconds": 1163}, {"t": "21:24", "title": "A chief executive's weak protection, and minimising reputational damage", "seconds": 1284}, {"t": "22:53", "title": "Basecamp and Coinbase: the depoliticisation of a company", "seconds": 1373}, {"t": "24:27", "title": "The chief executive as moral compass in the Trump era", "seconds": 1467}, {"t": "26:50", "title": "Business leaders as advocates for the EU recovery package", "seconds": 1610}, {"t": "28:34", "title": "A concept that sets no limits: useful practice or end in itself", "seconds": 1714}, {"t": "30:49", "title": "ESG standards in a listing, and impact investing", "seconds": 1849}, {"t": "33:15", "title": "Cognitive diversity, and the mythical spread of practices", "seconds": 1995}, {"t": "36:03", "title": "The EU taxonomy: nuclear, hydro, and the lesson of wind", "seconds": 2163}, {"t": "38:17", "title": "Choosing the rapporteurs, and parliamentary transparency", "seconds": 2297}, {"t": "40:45", "title": "Costly signalling: the peacock, private jets and diversity departments", "seconds": 2445}, {"t": "44:29", "title": "Friedman's paradox: fear of pressure groups, and paying the ransom", "seconds": 2669}, {"t": "46:53", "title": "The positive brand of the market economy, and closing words", "seconds": 2813}], "sourceTranscriptType": "none", "subtitleMethod": "none", "provenance": "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and the publisher's own chapter marks, translated one for one. The marks are genuine: twenty-two of them, with gaps from 71 to over 200 seconds, tracking the recording rather than a grid. No transcript is published here — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. The guest argues one side of a contested question and nobody defending corporate responsibility practice is present; the named cases, including the Finnair controversy and the Google and Apple dismissals, are described from his position and the organisations involved are not represented. The host offers a counter-reading which Taussi accepts as an addition rather than adopting. Recorded 23 July 2021.", "coreTheses": ["The criticism is conceptual rather than political: a term that sets no limits on itself can be used to justify almost anything, whatever the merits of any particular goal.", "Friedman's essay criticised one doctrine and is routinely read as condemning all corporate responsibility, which is a misreading with consequences.", "The real question is not whether the aims are good but whether any limit can be set on departures from the core business — and nobody in the debate has proposed one.", "Costly signalling explains why the most visible responsibility measures are often the least efficient ones, which is Veblen's argument applied to a modern setting."], "slug": "ep91-yritysvastuu-ja-wokenomics-thomas-taussi", "guestsCanonical": ["Thomas Taussi"], "guestPages": ["https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/guests/thomas-taussi/"], "page": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep91-yritysvastuu-ja-wokenomics-thomas-taussi/", "markdown": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep91-yritysvastuu-ja-wokenomics-thomas-taussi/index.md", "captions": null, "transcript": null, "videoId": "mUPW5_e1ie0", "dbId": null, "qaCoveragePct": 0.0, "qaSemanticVerdict": "metadata_only", "aiArticleEn": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep91-yritysvastuu-ja-wokenomics-thomas-taussi/", "aiArticleFi": "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/economy/ep91-yritysvastuu-ja-wokenomics-thomas-taussi/"}