Hiring a CEO with vile political views

[cartesiandaemon]

A little while back, there was a fuss, "should a corporation hire the obvious candidate for CEO if they donated money to a campaign against allowing equal marriage".

What I think should happenBut lots of posts about it framed it as "should everyone refuse to hire people with different political views" and concluded "no, even if the views are

Comments

[matrixmann]

A coporation can hire everyone for each position they want to and they don't need to care about his private views.
That's the way this system chose to be.
If there's one willing to change that, he needs to decide which side it's going to stand upon. Does it want to let everyone believe what they want to believe even if it's insulting to partakers - or does it want to show them a solid direction everyone better sticks to and radical deviation is going to receive its due negative resonance?

[cartesiandaemon]

Thank you for commenting. I'm sorry, I didn't understand your comment at all, what were you trying to say?

[matrixmann]

As long as you live in a society, a state and an economy which lets everyone do as he wants and never takes a heart to state "we're not going to condone *this* (replace every issue you want for this word)!", there're always going to be persons occupying seats which carry around questionable views on life. Just because each enterprise is allowed choose whoever they want to.
There's nobody telling them "you offer a platform to points of view on life which we find illegal and highly insulting, therefore you should not put this person into this position or you'll be sanctioned".
...Clearer?

[obandsoller]

I largely agree with this, especially how the argument was (infuriatingly!) wrongly framed by some.

I am a little hesitant about this though: 'I don't think we should refuse to employ anyone with vile political views, but I do think we shouldn't put them in charge of doing things which their politics tells them not to, unless they make a clear and convincing statement that "I may not agree with it, but I admit my job responsibilities say I should ignore that and I will abide by them."'

I think that CEOs have an awful lot of power, and are the public face of a company, so they should face greater scrutiny over issues like this (and if they're not able to answer effectively then I don't really understand how they could fulfill their other responsibilities as a CEO

[cartesiandaemon]

I largely agree with this, especially how the argument was (infuriatingly!) wrongly framed by some.

Thank you,

I am a little hesitant about this though

I think I didn't express that clearly enough, or at any rate, I mostly agree with what you said in response. I didn't mean everyone should have to pro-actively disclose and disavow their political views. By "in charge" I meant CEO or similar position without an immediate boss who can make sure you're actually doing your job. But that a CEO who has publicly expressed views incompatible with the organisation they propose to run, has, as an alternative to not being hired at all, the option to say "but I'll manage without being affected by this opinion" and see if people believe her/him.

If it makes things clearer I don't think that there is a problem with Lillian Ladele losing her job, but I am unsure that Arthur Redfearn was handled in a fair manner.That sounds about right. I'm really scared by having a BNP bus driver because it's likely to make people unsafe using the bus, but there

[ewx]

You can't ignore your customers' and staff's views. Or rather: you can, but if enough of them go elsewhere then you may find it very expensive, and your shareholders might not react very well to you getting their business into a mess.
Put another way, if you want to be an overt racist/homophobe/etc in charge of a company, stick to ones with a captive market and which only needs staff who don't have any better options. (I don't have any examples in mind.)