If you thought corporate virtue signalling peaked when 1300 Australian companies backed marriage equality, you had better think again. In this book, Jeremy Sammut shows why the support of big business in that campaign could be just the beginning of corporate meddling in politically-contentious issues to come. Companies will become political players campaigning for ?systemic change? behind ?progressive? social, environmental, and economic causes if the Corporate Social Responsibility ? CSR ? activists operating inside Australia business get their way. The notion that corporations need a ?social license to operate? threatens to give business leaders a license to play politics on company time ? and with shareholders? money. But to ensure the business of business remains business and not politics, it is not enough simply to complain about the takeover of business by ?corporate lefties?. Introducing a new principle ? the ?Community Pluralism Principle? ? into company governance would hold the leaders of Australian business accountable for stopping corporate meddling in political debates that are none of business?s business. Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Culture, Prosperity, and Civil Society Program at the Centre for Independent Studies. He has a PhD in Australian history and is the author of The Madness of Australian Child Protection: Why Adoption Will Rescue Australia?s Underclass Children and contributing editor of The Future of Medicare: Health Innovation in 21st Century Australia both published by Connor Court.
