Ben & Shareholder’s? by Jill Veerman

I have a great dad, so it means a lot when I say that Ben and Jerry are probably two of the most consistent male figures in my life. I often convinced my parents to buy their ice cream by citing the brand’s dedication to activism and social entrepreneurship. That’s why it unsettled me to see Jerry Greenfield resign through a statement sharing that he had been “silenced and sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power.” As a European witnessing troublesome discourse on First Amendment rights in the US, this development made me think about the values companies are prioritising and what we are losing as consumers in a market that seems to be bending dangerously towards shareholder power and profits, and away from ethics.

As I'm writing this, I realise that “ethics” and “company” are not words that to me naturally coalesce. So maybe Ben & Jerry’s was already an exception. Still, Jerry’s resignation feels like a pall over an already fickle beacon of hope. “We believe that ice cream can change the world.” The company has maintained an identity of corporate social responsibility by supporting social causes like racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights. For example, they refused to serve a double scoop of the same flavour in Australia until same-sex marriage was legalised, while donating 7.5% of their pre-tax profits to NGO grassroots organisations. The tipping point for the brand’s parent company, Unilever, was the decision to stop supplying ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories in the West Bank, which led them to sell their portion of Ben & Jerry’s licence. In protest, Jerry resigned.

Initially, Ben & Jerry’s had struck a unique contract with Unilever, which allowed them to direct their own social activism policy. But when stock prices worsened, Unilever shifted its priorities to maximising profits. But what does this mean? Is the recipe for success to keep politics out of business, to sideline ideology for profit? I feel like on a day-to-day basis, being selective about the brands that we buy is a small way to make a difference. Demand drives production, and we can steer production by demanding goods from brands that align with our ideas of a better world, or even just not a worse one. But how can we do this when social responsibility creates corporate tension?

Simply put, companies maximise profits when they please the most consumers. If we expand the idea of consumer utility to include resonance with a company’s social policies, then boycotting becomes a powerful tool for steering corporate behaviour. Just this week, Jimmy Kimmel was “uncancelled” after ABC and Disney lost billions in revenue. As Democratic politician Qasim Rashid stated, “Boycott is the only language corporate greed understands.” Yet even values-driven firms can be pulled back into profit-first logic: unless companies are structurally insulated from shareholder demands, as Ben & Jerry’s once attempted, corporate social policy risks becoming performative. This raises an uncomfortable question: can moral corporate policy really exist in a market driven by shareholder primacy?