The Moralizing Corporation: The Rise and Fall of Corporate Carewashing

Over the past two decades corporations have increasingly used crises to portray themselves as institutions that fundamentally care about people and the planet, not just private wealth. Deploying ‘carewashing’ to moralize operations, they seek to obscure the social, political and environmental damage they cause.

Now such carewashing is under fire - from the left and the right. Attacks on ‘woke capitalism’, corporate philanthropy, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and sustainability have...