Corporate Buy-Outs: Pros and Cons?

Recently I posted about the corporate buy-outs of The Body Shop and Tom’s of Maine.

Scatterbox writes about the polarization of corporate reformists. The article discusses the split positions of activists – some who think the buy out of The Body Shop is horrible and others who think it could be a good thing.

it stands to figure that activists are split in their reaction to The Body Shop’s decision to be acquired by L’Oreal.

In one camp are the pragmatists who accept the relationship between The Body Shop’s social welfare ideals and the profit-driven gluttony of shopping malls where the company sells its products…..In the other camp are the outraged ideologues, violently shaken from their convenient rationalization that a $732 million, publicly traded corporation existed primarily to validate their anticorporate beliefs. The UK-based Ethical Consumer threatens to lower The Body Shop’s “ethical rating,” adding the company to a list of activist group boycotts that already includes Microsoft, Bacardi, Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Israel, Maxwell House, Procter and Gamble, Shell, Rolls Royce and the whole country of Canada.

Scatterbox proceeds to ask these questions:

Will this stop The Body Shop from leveraging L’Oreal’s resources to expand as a global, socially responsible brand? Nope. But the villianizing and boycotts will further the polarization between corporate activists who want to get results by working within the market economy – and those who dream of destroying it altogether.

“Is The Body Shop window-dressing, or is it an admission that doing good can actually be good for business?” writes Biggs.[of activist site CorpWatch] “Guess it depends on how cynical you are. Personally, I get irked at progressives who attack other progressives for not being pure enough, for questioning any motives that don’t keep us marginalized. Seems to me there’s a place for open minds and optimism. At least until they are proven to be misplaced.”