Sucking up to the boss is no longer so much about complimenting someone's tie or volunteering to stay late for that meeting. These days, getting ahead in the corporate world often depends on proving how woke you are. A new paper from Baylor University and the Copenhagen Business School says middle managers are using wokeness to keep their jobs and advance in the increasingly political world of business. "If you want to move up in corporate America, you have to be part of the woke agenda," says Luke Macias, conservative political commentator. "You have to use your position to promote these Marxist ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion."
Diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI is certainly all the rage in the corporate world these days. U.S. companies spent more than $9 billion on DEI programs last year, and that number is projected to surpass $15 billion by 2026, according to the consulting firm StrategyR. With that kind of focus, it's becoming more difficult for rank-and-file employees or middle managers to escape the politics of their company. "For these companies, this is just a way of imposing these leftist ideas on their employees' behavior and their worldview," says Macias.
Macias tells KTRH these woke policies not only create unfair advantages in the workplace, but they have a chilling effect on employees' freedom of speech. "On a weekly basis, I and others I know talk to people in corporate America who say they just have to be quiet, follow along, and not put their head up in order to continue to progress and get the next job they're looking for," he says.
Despite polls showing most of the public doesn't want companies getting political, many have failed to grasp the concept of 'Go Woke, Go Broke.' "Corporate America is only going to realize that, when the right half of the country starts to actually shop other places," says Macias. "I think you'll see that happening more as people feel like corporate America is actually attacking their values and ideas."
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