How McKinsey has helped raise the stature of authoritarian governments
I think this is an example that shows many corporations have their own interests at heart.  They care about making money.  They do not care about the national interests of their home country.<p>To be honest, it's difficult for multinational corporations to satisfy all sides.  If they want to chase profits and growth (which their shareholders demand as a foundational requirement to agree to not vote to change the Board of Directors and CEO), they need to seek growth where it exists.  If they don't, their share price will suffer.  The incentives point them in this direction.  I'm not justifying it, I'm saying the system sucks.<p>So culture matters at a company.  A strong culture can help keep a company's values to be true to itself.  Employees matter.  That's why stories like employee pushback at Google against Project Maven and Project Dragonfly are interesting.  But those examples are probably few and far between.  Ultimately, the incentives for profits and growth trump all else.  These examples are probably more common.<p><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ciscos-latest-attempt-dodge-responsibility-facilitating-human-rights-abuses-export" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ciscos-latest-attempt-...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust</a><p>It's easy to complain when corporations do things you don't morally agree with.  But where there's an opportunity for money to be made, that problem will not disappear.  Western nations need to decide whether they care more about their values (and put their money where their mouth is for which stocks their people buy, as well as enact laws that prevent economic activity that they believe should be prevented) or economic growth (these corporations do employ a lot of people and do in fact create a lot of economic value).<p>Can't have your cake and eat it too.  Google employees are lucky in that they serve a market where they can afford to stand up for what they believe is right.  McKinsey, I honestly don't know how much they have to grow without completely changing themselves.  They may not have the freedom that Google has to stand for what they believe is right, besides facing the temptation of money.<p>edit:  Actually, I think Chinese companies do care about their home country (especially given government involvement and partial ownership in some of them).  If I think about it, they look like they have a patriotic feeling similar to how American companies probably had a patriotic feeling back in the 1950s.  But in the 1950s, American companies were not yet multinational enough to face a lot of conflicting incentives.  It would be interesting to see if Chinese companies also lose their patriotic feeling as they grow more multinational over the next 70 years.