Corporate Consistency Across Markets: New Arabic Ratings

This is a joint letter from 1792 Exchange and the Observatoire du Wokisme. 1792 Exchange is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing corporate neutrality and free enterprise. We examine the publicly available records of companies’ policies and practices and publish those findings. The Observatoire du Wokisme publishes the Index du Wokisme en Entreprise in association with 1792 Exchange. We write because your company appears with a RED / High Risk rating in our U.S. Corporate Bias Ratings database which is also now available in both French and Arabic.

1792 Exchange’s Corporate Bias Ratings database currently features more than 4,500 company profiles. As a company’s reach grows far beyond their U.S. headquarters, we have translated their profile into languages reflecting their presence in foreign markets: first in French through the Index du Wokisme en Entreprise, and now in Arabic. The Arabic site, https://ar.1792exchange.com, launching this month, highlights more than 300 companies, including yours. Using a proprietary ratings system, companies are categorized by the degree to which their publicly documented policies, practices, and affiliations indicate support for politicized initiatives and radical ideological commitments.

When a company receives a RED rating in the database, it indicates that the company almost certainly engages in practices in the United States that are inconsistent with how it presents itself in many Arabic-speaking markets where those same practices would not be tolerated or deemed acceptable. What the Arabic site now makes visible is the same pattern we have already documented elsewhere: one moral or political posture in the United States, and a different, often morally better, posture in other markets, including the Gulf, North Africa, and the broader Arabic-speaking world. The gap is often widest on gender and sexuality issues. Global materials and regional materials appear to describe two entirely different employers. Previously, these markets could only access the data in English where these behaviors may be concealed. That is no longer the case.

Shareholders and customers expect one brand to represent the same values everywhere. Taking a position using marketing language and images or adopting practices in one market that would be incompatible and need to be avoided in another is not a communications problem that “better messaging” will resolve. A company’s commitments should be based on universally accepted principles, in which case they do not need to change in each market. Otherwise, the company is deceptively involving the people in one market to unwittingly accept as a matter of conscience practices and messaging that it must conceal in another. That is moral incoherence. We will be working with allies across these markets to make that incoherence visible where it exists.

We are not asking your company to adopt the social code of any market. To the contrary, we are asking to avoid controversial positions and uphold universal and neutral values everywhere. A consistently neutral company declines to use institutional power in contested ideological campaigns and does not conscript employees or customers into these questions. That is integrity across markets. It ends the appearance of concealment without requiring the company to change a single conviction, and it prevents a potential brand crisis and financial exposure.

You still have an opportunity to bring consistency to all markets. We invite you to review your own record on our Corporate Bias Ratings. Our analysis rests solely on publicly documented information and is open to correction if proven different. If the company has made changes not yet in the public record, or if you believe context is missing, please contact us at [email protected], and we will review the documentation and update the profile accordingly. We also offer confidential, pro bono support to companies that want a clear path back to consistent, market-neutral practice. We would welcome a conversation with you and your colleagues.

Sincerely,