Corporate values tested

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Salesforce proved this week that, in times of national crisis, even the most progressive tech companies are ultimately beholden to their bottom lines.

After the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Salesforce employees pushed the company to stop its work with the NRA, an ethically dubious organization that has arguably served as one of the main barriers to any real gun control reform in the U.S. in the past decade, one in which gun violence has soared. Salesforce’s message to employees was clear: The company’s values stop when a customer hands us money.

“I don't want to get into the business position where we're deciding which customers are allowed to use our platform,” co-CEO Bret Taylor said in a recording of the all-hands obtained by Protocol. “I think that would violate our principles and violate our principles of trust.” Salesforce declined to make Taylor available to further explain those principles.

Salesforce ending its relationship with the NRA will not stop mass shootings. But the hypocrisy of providing technology to an organization actively blocking gun reform is becoming increasingly glaring with every mass shooting.

The message flies in the face of the so-called “stakeholder capitalism” that Marc Benioff and others routinely preach. Despite those attempts to reframe capitalism as a force to improve the lives of everyone, most Americans are still skeptical. The upside? CEOs are trusted by the public more than politicians and the media, which should theoretically give them a stronger platform to push for change.

Salesforce’s recent decision also seems to run afoul of the company’s own moral stance, which is plastered across its website: “Salesforce has sought to change the world for the better through technology that builds stronger relationships,” reads one page.

Or listen to Benioff at Davos in 2021: “There has been a mantra for too long that the business of business is business, but today the business about business is improving the state of the world.” How has the NRA’s ability to build stronger relationships with its target audience helped change the world for the better? How has Salesforce’s relationship with the NRA improved the state of the world?

To be clear: Salesforce is not the only company guilty of this. Employees at Google, Microsoft and other technology companies have all raised similar complaints about working with the NRA, ICE and other customers that have, by and large, been ignored.

To Salesforce’s credit, the company has been at the forefront of corporate activism on some of the significant social issues of our time. The company underwent several compensation overhauls to address gender pay discrepancies. Benioff also famously pushed back against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Indiana.

And you can point to the decision that a number of tech giants have made to provide employees access to abortion care in places where reproductive rights have been severely curtailed or stripped away completely as a sign that corporations can sometimes do the right thing. But they are just simply limited by a powerful force called Wall Street, regardless of how tough of a pill that is to swallow. While investors are increasingly putting more weight in so-called ESG metrics, at the end of the day shareholders want a return. And that means companies like Salesforce are limited in the actions they can take that might undermine business.

As hot-button topics like gun control drive even deeper divisions in the U.S., corporations are going to need to take more of a firm stance or risk making everyone mad. Meanwhile, 19 kids are dead. And before another crazed gunman litters a school with bullets, as has happened 27 times so far this year, we’re asking for someone, anyone, to do something, anything, that could drive change.

No one is arguing that businesses shouldn’t be able to make money. And yes, cherry-picking customers based on the preferences of employees would open any company up to a potential disaster scenario. But CEOs across corporate America talk ad nauseam about culture and the importance of being a mission-driven organization, so it makes perfect sense for workers to expect their employers to act accordingly in moments of crisis.

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