Pornhub’s sexual wellness centre feels disingenuous because it contradicts its core business, yet businesses should care about their purpose.
It’s not surprising to see a porn company facing criticism from broader society. What is surprising is when society criticises their business activity rather than their content. That’s exactly what happened recently when Pornhub, the world’s biggest porn site, launched a sex education platform.
Pornhub’s sexual wellness centre is “an online resource aiming to provide readers with information and advice regarding sexuality, sexual health and relationships”. It seems nice in principle, if a little contradictory. As Leah Fessler noted for Quartz, “If any industry has negatively impacted young people’s understanding of healthy sexual behaviour, it’s mainstream porn.”
It’s almost like an arms manufacturer sponsoring the Nobel peace prize. The commercial activity of the business colours the way we view their philanthropy. It can strike as superficial, disingenuous and hypocritical. A marketing exercise in disguise.
Sarah Ditum makes this argument in New Statesman. She writes, “This is a place [where] people who wouldn’t usually go to Pornhub can get used to the idea of going to Pornhub.”
Economist Milton Friedman once described corporate social responsibility as “hypocritical window dressing”. Looking at this case, he might have had a point.
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Friedman’s issue wasn’t with businesses using philanthropy as a way to make profits. Indeed, he might have been OK with that. Friedman believed the only responsibility businesses had was to increase their profits. His critique of Pornhub wouldn’t be that it is bad philanthropy. It’s that they’ve embarked on philanthropy at all.
Friedman’s idea is known in academic circles as “shareholder value theory”. It’s dwindling in popularity within the business world. Many now think businesses should aim their activities at a core, unifying purpose.
This sees commercial success as an outcome of good business practice, not a definition of it. It provides an alternate platform for critiquing the Pornhub model of corporate philanthropy.
John Browne, Robin Nuttall and Tommy Stadlen advance this view in Connect: How Companies Succeed By Engaging Radically With Society. They think “corporate social responsibility [CSR] is dead”. By CSR, they mean prosocial activity which is “not usually seen as something that relates very closely to what the business actually does”. It’s nice, but disconnected from core activity. And in times of financial crisis, it’s the first thing to go.
Instead, they think companies should address social needs as part of their core business. They might suggest Pornhub try producing and hosting more realistic kinds of pornography as a way to help sexual literacy. It’s a more integral and effective way of making social change.
Pornhub shows us how a clear purpose can prevent contradictory commercial activity. But integrating purpose isn’t an easy fix. It takes holistic, strategic thinking. At Purpose 2016, a conference in Sydney last year, so-called “social change maker” Timothy O’Brien used an insurance company to show why.
An insurance company’s purpose is to help to protect people against unfortunate circumstances. This sounds good and justifies most of their activities. In the case O’Brien discussed, it also highlighted deeper contradictions.
The core business of the company – offering premiums to cover weather events – clearly supports their purpose. What if it invested in unsustainable sources, thus contributing to climate change? Then it is complicit in creating the weather events it is trying to help with. It contributes to the very problem it is trying to solve. Sounds a little like a porn company working on sex education.
Dove’s self-esteem project is a good example of purpose-driven philanthropy. The business aims to make women feel beautiful. The project helps them do so not only by selling products but by reframing social standards of beauty. It aims to build the kind of world Dove envisions rather than bolster their bottom line.
Some may wonder whether businesses would care about any of this. Why should businesses bother re-strategising around purpose? It would be easier to stick with the status quo: make profit, increase shareholder value.
Brown, Nuttall and Stadlen provide the most compelling answer: trust. They quote management consultancy McKinsey & Company managing partner Dominic Barton, who says “capitalism depends on trust for its legitimacy and its very survival”. Purpose-oriented business provides a way for businesses to connect with a society in a valuable way. By providing social and economic value, businesses also build trust.
This should be enough for leaders – not only from business but all walks of life – to sit up and pay attention. The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer reports that for the first time in 17 years, public trust in business, media, government and NGOs is down. But becoming preoccupied with organisational purpose might not be enough to restore trust. Ancient philosophy can explain why.
Aristotle believed the ultimate purpose for anything – animal, vegetable or mineral –was to achieve its telos; its ultimate goal. For Aristotle, ethics was a question of how to arrange your life and activities so you were achieving your telos.
The telos of human beings was to live a flourishing life, including success, physical health, beauty and good reputation. More importantly, the flourishing life requires virtue. A person can’t flourish through success alone, they need to live with wisdom, courage, self-control and the rest.
There’s an analogy here with businesses (which are, after all, made up of people). A business could achieve its purpose but do so in manipulative, irresponsible or short-sighted ways. Consider the range of NGO scandals because of mismanagement of funds or individual wrongdoing, although they aim for a socially conscious purpose. An organisation like this could claim to be fulfilling its purpose but is unlikely to gain trust.
For most people, the values and principles we live by in achieving our goals is as important as the goals we achieve. Edelman’s Barometer found less than 50% trusted institutions to do “what’s right”. That’s not a question of purpose; it’s a question of ethics.
This article was taken from here.