A string of companies are going "un-woke" after deciding to be "more realistic" about environmental, social, and governance efforts.
Firms including Unilever - owner of Dove, Vaseline and Hellmann's - have axed their new ESG initiatives and will instead "be silent versus to take a stance".
In January, computing giant Dell cut part of its marketing team that focused on sustainability and other ESG-related marketing roles.
Unilever also disbanded its "digital sustainable choices team" - a small global group that sat within its marketing department.
A string of companies are going "un-woke" after deciding to be "more realistic" about environmental, social, and governance efforts
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"Many executives have made the decision that it's sometimes safer to just be silent versus to take a stance, because they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and their bottom line and are very concerned about how this will be perceived," Naomi Wheeless, a board director for Eventbrite told Business Insider.
The new initiatives have received backlash over recent years amid the rise of "woke capitalism".
Bud Light faced a boycott after the drinks firm partnered with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for an Instagram campaign last year.
Investors pulled $13 billion out of sustainable funds in 2023 over underperformance and political unease, Morningstar reports.
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Philip Mirvis, an organisational psychologist and research fellow at Babson College's Social Innovation Lab said: "It's a bona fide countermovement against both ESG and DEI.
"Certainly for businesses, this is about making money. And in the conventional logic, all of these issues represent risks."
Similarly, businesses such as AIG, Amazon, and ExxonMobil have slimmed down some of their climate initiatives.
Andrew Jones, a senior researcher at the Conference Board's ESG Center added: "We saw a lot of companies make very bold commitments — we're going to be net-zero emissions by whatever date, 2040, 2050.
Investors pulled $13 billion out of sustainable funds in 2023 over underperformance and political unease, Morningstar reports
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"And often those commitments came but there wasn't always the underlying work."
Many are still skeptic about CEO activism, including Alison Taylor, an associate professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.
She said: "This is a business. A company is not a democracy, and so all these leaders wanted to imply it was a democracy when it suited them. Now it doesn't suit them."
