Debugging IBM
The company switches from social engineering back to computer engineering - partly.
We mentioned previously the Heritage Foundation has entered the corporate engagement arena, and one of the main targets of engagement is IBM. We wrote about that here. At the time, the company was stubbornly refusing to make any changes at all.
For them, Heritage's call for merit-only based business decisions and political neutrality simply did not compute. It felt a little like Dave Bowman asking HAL to open the pod bay doors and getting no response. Sorry to nerd about, but HAL from 2001 a Space Odyssey is based on IBM. Note the letters. The letters after IBM are each one letter after HAL. H-I; A-B; L-M. Get it? And for super-nerd points, why did HAL go haywire? Answer: conflicting mission parameters.
And that in a nutshell has been the IBM problem. Conflicting missions. Grow the business vs. political objectives. Computer engineering vs. social engineering. In the movies, it took a reboot to get HAL back on track. The IBM reboot came in the form of shareholder engagement on the inside and social media engagement on the outside. Heritage used its shareholder authority and citizen journalist used his gigantic X platform to get IBM to make major changes:
No more participation in the ideologically extreme Human Rights Campaign survey which demands self-destructive brand decisions (see Bud Light) and paying for puberty blockers for kids.
No more pressure to use pronoun declarations.
No more DEI department. For those who still believe that DEI is about equal treatment for all races and both genders, your software needs an upgrade. It's been about equality of outcome, not opportunity, for some time. DEI departments are shareholder-supported activist departments inside many companies. Often HR works for the company while DEI works on the company.
Taking back endorsements for various pieces of legislation which reduce religious liberty and mandate boys in girls sports and other extremely unpopular positions.
All of that looks like the ship is back on mission.
Congratulations to Heritage Foundation and to all of you other IBM shareholders who are working with us. When we enter into discussions with these companies, you are all in the room with us. It's not just those who take the lead in putting proposals on the ballot. Congratulations also to Alliance Defending Freedom, which once again bested one of the largest companies in the world and a white show law firm in front of the SEC in getting the go ahead for the proposal. At some point these companies need to reconsider paying outsized fees to expensive law firms to fight pro-fiduciary proposals from genuine investors who have the company's best interest in mind and instead make changes which make the proposals unnecessary.
But there still remain some glitches in the matrix. The company appears to discriminate against people of faith in offering employee affinity groups at work and also explicitly discriminates against religious organizations in its employee matching program.
Heritage Foundation's Andy Olivastro has prepared a speech to the board which would be a bracing corrective to the company which his father and his grandfather worked at for 30 years. But he would prefer to not have to give a speech at all. He would prefer that the company get fully back on mission.
In other words, we shareholders, who are ultimately supposed to be in charge, ask once again, "Open the pod bay door, HAL." It's time to let us back in.
Jerry Bowyer is President of Bowyer Research.
Isaac Willour is a Corporate Relations Analyst at Bowyer Research.