Essay by Eric Worrall
Get woke go broke?
Can Business Alliances Move the Needle on Climate Change?
Featuring Peter Tufano.
By Rachel Layne on February 6, 2026.Who will champion environmental, social, and governance issues at a time when such causes are under fire? Peter Tufano says that business alliances could play an important role.
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One of the first tenets of systems change is that ‘It takes a village.’ I have a particular interest in this topic because a lot of my career has been about collaboration in service of positive systems change through business. I cofounded the Innovation Lab at Harvard, and joined with seven other deans to found Business Schools for Climate Leadership. These days, I lead a consortium of 150 schools and regulatory bodies to advance climate finance.
…Our conclusion was that there was an ownership type, among public firms, that seemed to have less appetite for what we call ESG: Family firms, or firms with vestigial family ownership. The way that a family becomes an owner in a publicly traded firm is by selling stakes to non-family members. Public firms with remaining family ownership show far lower adoption of ‘ESG’ practices than firms with institutional, employee, managerial, or government ownership.
Given that families usually claim that they have longer-term horizons and greater social sensibilities, we tried to understand this finding in more detail. While perhaps family owners might tend to treat firms as piggy banks, it’s not just about ownership, but also about control. Where families are in the second or third generation, the firms are much more prone to adopt ESG practices, and when they are in charge, even more so.”
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Read more: https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/can-business-alliances-move-needle-on-climate-change
It’s kind of sad really. While mum and dad are busting their guts trying to build a future, woke teachers to whom they entrust their kids education are filling the kids heads with woke nonsense.
So when the kids take over the firm, they don’t understanding how damaging focusing on anything other than running the business is. They start living the ESG visions their teachers instilled in them.
I was going to say “and then the business fails”, but the case for this isn’t as clear – apparently the claim the third generation loses the business is a bit of a myth. Or maybe it isn’t, the sources I looked up are contradictory. Maybe by the third generation the business is robust enough to withstand a little ESG nonsense from woke third generation owners, if the founder and his or her successor picked the right senior managers.
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They don’t loose the business, they sell it.
If they haven’t ruined it before the sale sign goes up.
Not only a myth many businesses owner’s grandchildren simply don’t want to Putin the effort their grandparents did so the business is unimportant to them.
Not desire and lesser work ethic
I’ve made this comment further down 19th Century Industrial England saying
“Clogs to clogs in three generations”
At pennies on the dollar after doing stupid (fill in blank) and go under. Seen it happen repeatedly.
Startups need YEARS to develop a customer base and become profitable. 2nd or 3rd generation business are well established and thereby far more likely to be able to AFFORD to “Go Green”. 1st generation businesses NEED to be conscious of ALL expenditures to get to the.profitability point. And let’s face it, joining Gang Green, even for a business, is costly. Renewables are far more costly than reliables and Electrification is more costly than traditional gas energy.
EVs cost more to buy than ICVs
EVs cost more to run than ICVs
EV tires get replaced far more often than ICVs
Heat Pumps cost more than gas powered Central Heat
Electric Ovens cook differently than Gas Ovens
Electric Ovens require 220v outlets and separate dedicated breakers
Installing Electric Ovens, Heat Pumps and Home EV charging often requires 200A or 320A breaker boxes and upgraded services.
Hey WUWT. I’m logged in, and click for replies to my comments, but am not getting them. Not in my in box. Not in my SPAM. I have not changed m e mail address. Watts Up?
No one talking to you?
ESG …
Extremely Stupid Gullible ??
😉
ESG=Economic Suicide Guaranteed.
From observing and/or working at family-owned places, I’ve come to think it’s a bad idea to involve your family in your business.
Firing an underperforming employee or ending a contract with a business partner is stressful enough without having to go home with those same people at the end of the day.
Going ‘green’ is a scam.
First let me give you three examples of the best things you can do for the environment with almost no cost. Composting, recycling aluminium, drying clothes on a line.
Just how ghetto is that? How can it be a cause if it is a chore?
Spending money on solar that does not work is a scam. Worse than that if one of your causes is social justice do you just ignore the human cost is genocidal slave labor?
BEV are a scam. If the electricity comes from a load following nuke plant it might be a good choice. Of course that is before the problems with non lead acid batteries use were known,
I follow web sites ‘what is going on with shipping’ and battery fire safety. If you are on a ferry with a BEV, go wait at the life boat station.
If the electricity comes from a load following nuke plant . . .
Outside of France, I don’t know of other places where nuke’s load follow.
I agree.
All commercial and naval nuke plants are designed to load follow. I was an expert on that. I am retired now. I belong to a drinking king club with a boating problem. The local nuke power plan, Colombia Generating Station (aka WNP-2) is on economic dispatch during spring run off.
The coal trains still go down both sides of the river. The jobs making electricity and aluminium are gone. Washington and Oregon are examples of states that did not reduce global CO2 emissions but did reduce job satisfaction by sending the jobs to China.
To the younger generations it might be fashionable and seemingly progressive to adopt green business practices, but after they start examining their bottom lines, they are likely to start adopting more realistic ones as long as they haven’t suffered catastrophic losses already. By then it might be too late and it might be time to jump ship entirely.
Rags to riches to rags in three generations is a cliché, probably because it happens so often. The woke nonsense is just one more way to make it happen.
I’ve never bought or been involved in ESG. I buy the cheapest thing I can. I buy cheap Chinese shit. I live in Australia, afterall. I don’t do vegan or feminist places or halal bs.
I’ve learned from experience that if you don’t go mainstream, you go broke.
Only those, who have never run a business can imagine ESG or DEI or Net Zero focus is something they should be involved in.
The main push for those business destroying distractions and tendencies towards woke interests comes from the Public Sector. There they never have to concern themselves with things as fundamental as profit or indeed even continued existence.
Every business that is growing is focused on return on investment/spend.
How do I get more for less.
That basic principle drives innovation, champions new ideas that lead to more miles/gallon, more yield from less inputs, etc.
The word profit, has become unfashionable in polite circles and is never mentioned at all in Public Sector run activities. The fundamental facts are clear. Any business or any endeavour that fails to make a profit will cease to exist, without profit it is a dying business. ESG, DEI and all the other acronymic nonsense, now fed into young business brains is a distraction from real business.
The old instructions are as valid today as they ever were, “ya gotta chop wood and carry water”, ya gotta nickel and dime.
There will never be a time when we here, ya gotta ESG and ya gotta DEI
Yep.
The fundamental disciplines of running a business never change.
You’re in it to make a quid, not for self-actualization.
There’s a saying in 19th century industrial England
“Clogs to clogs in three generations”
The first generation builds the wealth, the second manages and spends it, the third gets rid of it.
This is just a 21st century way of achieving the same thing, but without the clogs.
The Murdoch media empire is an interesting case.
One of Rupert’s sons seems laser-focused on keeping the business strong & growing, while the other son seems to be all caught up in the ESG / DEI distractions.
No prizes for guessing which son the stock market favors to run the business empire.