Sustainability, but for whom?
EDJI (“edgy”) commodification of people
By Khampha Stempel | February 20, 2023
This post is part two of a two-part series. Read part one, published in December, 2022.
One summer I worked on a project with a team of financial leaders for a sustainability-driven financial institution. As part of this project, I was given the objective to define what a successful Equity, Diversity, Justice, and Inclusion (EDJI, pronounced “edgey”) program in publicly traded corporations might look like.
Over the past decade, public companies have used Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) frameworks and metrics to articulate company performance as it relates to internal EDJI programs. I relied mostly on the information articulated in annual ESG/sustainability reports as part of the project’s analysis.
In the middle of a conversation with the financial leaders, I said something like:
“Public companies heavily emphasize performance and exposure to risks that might challenge a company’s financial performance. I am noticing a misalignment between justice scholarship and activism that define how people and organizations might adequately address systems of oppression and how companies articulate success as it relates to EDJI programs.”
One of the financial leaders responded saying:
“Khampha… I think you are missing a key point. You need to view [EDJI] as an asset and explain the value EDJI brings to a company. The literature doesn’t talk about systems of oppression––it talks about value creation and risk mitigation.”
I think about this conversation often and how it highlighted a broader pattern to commodify EDJI to enhance company performance.
What is EDJI? Why is it relevant to sustainability?
In my previous blog post, I asked: “How might sustainability change if we think of its actions and processes as a human right?” This question challenges who and what is being sustained in sustainability processes. Equity, Diversity, Justice, and Inclusion (EDJI) programs have become a means to engage social sustainability principles.
Alphabet Soup!!
Local to global organizations and institutions have adopted similar frameworks under many different acronyms like JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion), JEB (Justice, Equity, and Belonging), DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), among a plethora of others. No, frameworks like JEDI are not intended to be used as an explanation of the mystical warrior’s member order in Star Wars1.
Here, I use EDJI because I like its comparable sound to the word “edgy.” Replace my acronym with whatever acronym you prefer, but know that I am referring to programs and initiatives that aim to address social identity in the workplace.
EDJI and Risk Management through ESG
In the project at the financial institution, a lot of my time was dedicated to reading ESG and sustainability reports that companies publish on an annual basis2.
ESG risk management tools are used by corporations to measure the risks associated with corporate impacts on environments, society, and company governance structures. These metrics are typically reviewed by potential investors and can drive investment decisions.
ESG’s Relationship to Financial Performance
I’ve thought about why that financial leader told me that EDJI, and the people impacted by these programs, should be viewed as assets.
Since the 1930s, public companies have been required to publish comprehensive reports on the company’s business operations performance in the preceding year3. Like ESG reports, these reports are typically read and used by potential and current investors to make financial investment decisions (i.e. divesting, initial investments, investing more).
These annual reports include quantitative information, like consolidated income statements and balance sheets, and qualitative information, like descriptions of the corporation’s operations and exposure to significant risk factors. Traditionally, annual and quarterly financial reports typically did not include a company’s exposure to environmental, social, and governance risks.
It is debated when public companies truly began to integrate sustainability and justice-driven values and behaviors into their operations4. However, we can trace some of these initiatives as far back as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 that forced U.S. public corporations to begin implementing the basic principles of sustainability and justice.
Though companies have begun reporting on some EDJI metrics, the corporate articulation of equity, diversity, justice, and inclusion, remains disconnected from social and political systems of oppression. Annual sustainability reports and discourse on EDJI erase both the historical and contemporary social contexts that are experienced by real people. Racialized, colonized, gendered, and sexualized people become commodities. Employees, customers, stakeholders, and society become assets, things, and objects to achieve an ambiguous corporate mission detached from larger societal goals.
Commodifying EDJI
In annual sustainability reports, (i.e. Unilever, Apple, Amazon) readers will see statistics and informatics like:
“ Our LGBTQI+ employee network has increased to over 1,000 members, and we're continuing to expand it to increase advocacy for human rights and safe havens for this community” (p. 19, Unilever Annual Report and Accounts 2021)
“13% Open U.S. leadership roles filled by Black candidates” (p. 24, Apple’s 2022 ESG Report)
“30% [i]ncrease the number of women at Level 8 and Level 10 positions in tech and science roles by 30% year over year.” (p. 53, Delivering Progress Every Day: Amazon’s 2021 Sustainability Report)
EDJI program performance is intended to not just measure a company’s exposure to financial risk, but also to consider the impacts of environmental, social, and governance risk factors. A major non-profit organization, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), oversees a major ESG framework and has drastically shaped ESG narratives.
SASB states its intentions to shape business and investor relationships to sustainability by highlighting information that is financially material to a company’s performance, developing cost-effective reporting standards for companies, and using market-informed evidence-based information to design accounting standards (SASB About)5. It is clear that addressing the systemic roots of social oppression and human rights is not at the forefront of the business and investor capitalist agenda despite intentions to be sustainable.
Oppressive social systems are deemed irrelevant to the mundane daily functions of capitalism. Businesses have made a weak attempt to capitalize on marginalized social identities through EDJI initiatives articulated in annual ESG and sustainability reports in an effort to make capitalism more palatable for the daily eye. Rearticulating capital not just to include traditional assets (i.e. cash, equipment, buildings), but social identities and human labor dehumanizes and commodifies marginalized groups of people.
For example, Apple’s 2022 annual 10-k report states they aim to “build and sustain a more inclusive workforce that is representative of the communities it serves” (Apple 10-K, p. 4). Inclusivity is grossly used as a disguise to detach Apple from a global supply chain that not only enables violence in the workplace, but further separates the company from damaged colonial land relationships, potent racist human relationships, and a disembodied global perspective. Transforming people into assets that are controlled and governed by a corporation leads to a contrary sustainability action: the sustainment of systems of oppression. Hasn’t the United States moved on from exploitative labor practices?
Who is being sustained?
Both sustainability and systems of oppression are not new concepts. However, discussions about socially-oppressive contexts remain absent from contemporary articulations of sustainability. It’s time to fully integrate the two.
Today, oppressive racist and colonial systems pervade the workplace exploiting labor, widening the racial wealth chasm (not gap), and deeming Indigenous peoples and ways of living (lifestyles that are often more sustainable) irrelevant to modern industrialized economic development.
Photo by RODNAE Productions, courtesy of Pexels.
Why EDJI programs now?
Before I conclude I say to readers that are white, settler, and/or lovers of capitalism: if you cannot handle, fathom, and reconcile the historical and contemporary implications of your social identity I refer you to Carol Anderson’s book, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide and Tuck and Yang’s paper, Decolonization is not a Metaphor. If you are confronted with fear from gaining insight from non-White authors who don’t articulate staunch belief in capitalism I refer you to Robin DiAngelo’s book, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,
I hope you have enjoyed the stereotypical corporate images used in this blog post that attempt to prove corporations no longer exist in a colonial and racist society. Look at all the diversity that exists in today’s corporations!
This blog does not address the hard work of people with diverse social identities are doing within the structural bounds of oppressive systems and does not aim to undermine this work. However, EDJI programs have become heavily associated with the risk management metrics used by investors. It is crucial to ask: what is more risky, the potential for financial losses due to ignoring popular discourse about justice and sustainability, or the risks associated with sustaining oppressive systems that have required actions of mass genocide and enslavement?
Corporations, and those who benefit from a corporate economy, have yet to clearly expose how their operations are further manifestations of oppressive systems and re-envision how they can change these operations to become good for all. Conceptions of sustainability over time reveal the ongoing failure to clearly name who and what is being sustained. Even initiatives like EDJI fall short of meeting the societal goals of increasing diversity, equity, justice, and inclusion in corporate America.
It is time for business leaders to ask: “who and what is being sustained in EDJI corporate sustainability practices?”
1 Although, this Scientific American article analyzes the nuance behind associations of justice work being compared to the mystical warriors.
2 Reported ESG measurements are typically grounded in metrics defined by groups like the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
3 All public reports are required under United States Federal Policy’s the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, and the Investment Company Act of 1940, can be found in the United States Securities Exchange Commission’s (US SEC) Electronic, Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval System (EDGAR).
4 Consider Elkington’s 1994 triple bottom line, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and environmental, social, responsibility (ESG) movements.
5 Currently, United States policymakers are considering how to integrate ESG into federal requirements for public company reporting (visit the US SEC’s Climate and ESG Risks and Opportunities page).
