How Companies Reckon with Past Wrongdoing

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sarah Federman, assistant professor at the University of Baltimore, studies how companies handle their historical misdeeds and what that means for employees and customers. From insurance firms that backed slave owners to railroad companies that transported victims of the Holocaust, many legacy companies can find they played a role in past transgressions. Federman makes a moral and practical argument for uncovering and addressing these misdeeds, even though there may no longer be legal repercussions. And she shares how some leaders have been transparent, apologized, and found meaningful ways to make up for their organization's difficult history. Federman wrote the HBR article “How Companies Can Address Their Historical Transgressions: Lessons from the Slave Trade and the Holocaust.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So you got the job. Now what? Join me, Eleni Mata, on HBR's new original podcast, New
0:08.1	Here, the Young Professionals Guide to Work, and how to make it work for you. Listen for
0:13.8	free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here. See you there!
0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR idea cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickyf. Many of today's
0:49.7	blue chip brands have been around for a long time. Decades, a century, even longer. And they
0:56.4	revel in that long history. This long run, however, is often seen through rose colored glasses.
1:02.7	Because many of those histories don't stand up so well in today's world. I'm not talking here
1:08.9	just about a past misstep by an ousted CEO. I'm talking here about organizational involvement in
1:15.1	the sufferings of a past time. Like insurance companies that backed slave owners, railroad companies
1:21.9	that had a role in the Holocaust, banks that assisted military dictatorships, and the list
1:27.2	continues with companies that helped exploit indigenous peoples or natural environments around the
1:32.6	world. So what's to be done about this? Is all of this just a distant past that can be forgotten
1:38.2	in the blur of history, or should companies get honest about their long record and face it?
1:44.1	Today's guest has some perspective on that. Sarah Federman studies the way companies talk about
1:49.1	their past and come to terms with it, both internally and outwardly. She's an assistant professor at
1:55.2	the University of Baltimore and the author of the HBR article, how companies can address their
2:00.4	historical transgressions, lessons from the slave trade and the Holocaust. Sarah, welcome to the show.
2:07.3	Thank you so much for having me. So to start, there is always competitive pressure on leaders and
2:14.9	companies to make the right move in today's world. Why are past moves of yesterday's world,
2:21.2	something they need to worry about? Yeah, there's a few reasons for that, and I can understand that a
2:26.8	lot of corporate executives today, it's the last thing they want to think about. Survival is so
2:31.6	difficult. They've come into business because they're forward-looking and they're visionaries in
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Harvard Business Review, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Harvard Business Review and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.