# Has Your Company Gone Quiet, or Just Given Up?

Under massive political and geopolitical pressures, companies are quietly stripping the visibility from their social activities. A survey of 400 CSR and ESG executives in both Europe and the USA shows why this silence matters, and what it costs companies now and in the future.

*Jason Miklian, University of Oslo; John E. Katsos, American University of Sharjah; Harry J. Van Buren III, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Angelika Rettberg, Universidad de los Andes; Sarah Cechvala, University of Oslo*

STAKES Brief 01. Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo. CC BY 4.0.
Full text: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/full-text/
PDF: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/report.pdf

## Idea in Brief

The finding. A survey of 400 senior executives at large US and European firms operating in high-risk and crisis-affected markets finds the corporate social and environmental agenda intact, but driven underground. Firms are conserving the substance of their commitments while spending down their visibility, mostly under pressure from their own governments.

The risk. Going quiet may be strategic but it carries long-term costs. Stakeholders cannot distinguish between quiet commitment and quiet retreat, while public visibility no longer reinforces internal accountability. Over time, this low-visibility environment can encourage commitments to gradually and quietly erode.

The response. Managers should preserve social substance even when its visibility declines, but also build organizational capabilities for incorporating home-government pressures into risk assessments, capture and scale crisis management know-how, and bring younger employees into frontline decision-making as sensors for emerging social and political risks.

What do the people who run CSR, ESG, compliance, and supply-chain divisions make of the rapid proliferation of political and operational shocks hitting their firms – including conflict, violent populism, reactionary attitudes, and declining trust in institutions – and what are they doing about it? To find out, we asked 400 social impact executives working for large US and European companies operating in fragile and crisis-affected markets.

We found that increasing parts of the corporate social responsibility agenda are moving underground. Firms disagree with and even fear their home governments more than activists or investors, yet align with them anyway. One financial department head gave us her year in a sentence: their policies survived but are now nameless, adjusted “to align with US fed policy.” A vice president at an American manufacturer described the same: “We’ve changed how we describe things on our website and been less vocal…It has not changed our actual efforts, just their communication.”

We call this new pattern the Conservative Turn. The pressure behind it comes mostly, though not only, from conservative governments and political movements. The corporate response is conservative with a small c: in many cases firms are conserving the substance of their commitments while eliminating their visibility in order to avoid public and government backlash.

The big question now: will this quieting eventually lead to a retreat on social activities? In the same way that talk can lead to action, a lack of talk can lead to a lack of action. Talking about DEI, for example, pushes companies to create fairer employment practices – with the same being true in reverse. Six patterns from the data help show what is happening inside firms today.

## 1. Companies are hiding their good works, even the ones that pay off.

Asked whether the political backlash against CSR has changed their company’s approach, 59 percent say it has not. But nearly 20 percent describe a deliberate quieting: toning down language and pulling back on public-facing communications for fear of repercussions, primarily from their home governments. A third of US executives report going quiet, against 11 percent of Europeans, the latter blame American politics for their caution. For example, one European finance executive said his company scaled back its social marketing campaign “to attract less attention.”

**Figure 1. Going quiet: how firms changed their social responsibility communications, US versus Europe.**

Share of executives describing a changed approach to CSR under political backlash, by headquarters region

Note: Q34 responses, n = 184, hand-coded. A further 59 per cent report no influence. Source: STAKES survey of 400 senior executives at large US- and European-headquartered firms, fielded by NewtonX, 6 May to 2 June 2026.

Data: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/data/figure-1.csv

That said, US and European executives remain remarkably aligned on the value and purpose of social responsibility. The two cohorts expressed similar views on 22 of our survey’s 26 attitudinal measures, including on corporate responsibility, ethical trade-offs, and the depth of support for social commitments. Both groups believe in the same corporate responsibility frameworks for their firms, the same claimed willingness to pay for ethics, and the same social implementation machinery. The items that differ all describe different political climates, not differences in corporate conviction.

**Figure 2. US and European executives hold the same beliefs; only the political climate differs.**

Agreement by headquarters region across all 26 survey items. US and European answers are statistically indistinguishable on 22; the four exceptions are political.

Note: Bold items differ significantly, a gap of 10 points or more at p < 0.05. Source: STAKES survey of 400 senior executives at large US- and European-headquartered firms, fielded by NewtonX, 6 May to 2 June 2026.

Data: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/data/figure-2.csv

The quieter firms forward a common argument: our communication may have changed, but our commitments remain the same, making statements such as “It has not changed our actual efforts, just their communication,” or “Things that are done CSR-wise are done without fanfare.” We saw similar phrasing across the survey, as firms shift to vocabularies that will not draw fire: compliance, safety, worker protection, core business. Such arguments and language choices suggest they view quietism as a new kind of risk management.

The quieting is part of a larger phenomenon. Sixty-eight percent of executives say their firms undertake social activities that never appear in sustainability or annual reports. For anyone who studies corporate behavior through disclosures, that finding should raise questions about how much activity remains hidden from view as well as how useful corporate reports are for assessing social and environmental performance.

Some of the silence is sincere disbelief about the value of such initiatives, it should be noted. Nearly a quarter of the respondents asked about competitive advantage say their social policies confer none: parity claims (“at par with our peers”), ESG as  “table stakes,” or, from an ESG head in European finance, “a net cost center.” As one US professional-services executive put it, “In those regions we comply with the minimum so there is no advantage.” For these firms there is little to hide because there was never much to showcase.

Asked what gives their firm a competitive advantage, respondents named durable, structural policies: community investment that starts before market entry and “builds trust faster than competitors who engage reactively,” what one UK executive called “my firm’s strongest differentiator.” Yet the same executive also described reducing the visibility of these initiatives to avoid political backlash.

The quietists are far less likely than their peers to claim competitive advantage from social activities. Whether losing faith is what turns protective quiet into abandonment remains a question: “We had them a few years ago and as soon as the commitments expired, they were quietly abandoned,” a US finance executive said of her firm’s commitments. But to outsiders, quiet conviction and total abandonment risk looking identical – which can pose risk to a business’ image and reputation.

## 2. The biggest political risk to social engagement now comes from home.

Executives candidly named who is actually pressuring them. The White House, the Justice Department, and presidential posts on Truth Social appear in 12 distinct accounts, ahead of investors and shareholders (8) and climate and greenwashing campaigners (6). “This is coming directly from the White House,” a senior executive at a US professional-services firm wrote, “and it varies from screeds on Truth Social to Justice Department investigations.” An executive at another American firm described pulling out of a Middle East program” so that we would not risk retaliation.” A third firm took a Department of Homeland Security contract over internal objections because, as our respondent put it, “the CEO wanted to make the White House happy.” The chill reached our own study:  “It makes me even reluctant to participate in this survey.”

**Figure 3. Where executives say the pressure is coming from.**

Backlash sources executives name in free text, and agreement that aligning with the home government is in the company’s interest

Note: Only 4 per cent disagree with alignment, the lowest dissent in the survey. Source: STAKES survey of 400 senior executives at large US- and European-headquartered firms, fielded by NewtonX, 6 May to 2 June 2026.

Data: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/data/figure-3.csv

Yet the most agreed-upon item in the entire survey is alignment with that same state. Eighty-two percent of executives agree it is in their company’s interest to align with their home government’s policy priorities, while 4 percent disagree, the lowest dissent on any question we asked. Among Europeans the figure reaches 90 percent. This upends conventional wisdom regarding the relationship between business and politics, which typically assumes that companies discipline politics, rather than the other way around.

The European reading of alignment helps explain the transatlantic quietism gap: Brussels regulation is a useful shield for firms to continue social responsibility. The US anti-ESG wave “does not influence our strategy, as the European market operated on a fundamentally different paradigm,” a German manufacturing manager wrote. American alignment reads warier, however. A quarter of US executives now decline to endorse ESG, and a German respondent reported his firm is now “more careful about engaging with American companies” as a result, potentially constituting a new barrier to transatlantic trade based on clashing values rather than government policy choices.

## 3. Executives will admit almost anything except harm, but the ones who do are the most engaged.

Seventy-four percent claim a greater responsibility to contribute socially in places they consider to be “high-risk” than in stable areas. Eighty-two percent say their social efforts are integrated into strategy. Sixty-four percent claim that their firm frequently pursues socially responsible action at the expense of profit. But when asked if “Our operational presence can contribute to worsening social or conflict dynamics in some areas where we operate,” only 29 percent agree. Asking whether local affected populations would describe outcomes as harmful even where the firm would not, agreement rises only to 32 percent. This contrasts with historical evidence of social harm caused by some firms, for example as described in Harvard Business Review’s “Cold Call” podcast (https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/07/the-controversial-history-of-united-fruit).

**Figure 4. What executives will and will not concede.**

Share agreeing with statements about their firm’s conduct in high-risk environments

Note: Starred items on the revised-instrument basis, n = 350; others n = 400. Source: STAKES survey of 400 senior executives at large US- and European-headquartered firms, fielded by NewtonX, 6 May to 2 June 2026.

Data: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/data/figure-4.csv

Asked to name a business decision they personally disagreed with, 54 percent of respondents could. Asked for a case where the firm chose commercial considerations over ethical ones, 40 percent gave at least one. But when asked for a concrete instance of harm to a community, only 12 percent gave examples. And the harms that do get named are mostly harms associated with withdrawal instead of overt damage to communities: of 20 admissions, 16 involve jobs cut, products withdrawn, or programs ended.

One US manufacturing director narrated it as a trade-off, reformulating products away from high-risk ingredients “reduced uncertainty in the supply chain and led to predictable price and supply,” but “reducing ingredient purchases from high-risk environments led to job loss there,” reflecting the broader complexity of working in high-risk environments with competing interests and responsibilities.

Some respondents refused the possibility of harm altogether: “We have due diligence frameworks in place so this isn’t relevant to us.” another argued that proof would require “sanctions from EU or any other international organization.” Most of those who could not name a harm offered only reactive standards, media coverage, or protest, the kind of evidence that surfaces only when someone outside raises it. One European manufacturing manager captured the problem: “Even if they happened, the company usually is very good in hiding those.”

The executives who concede harm are rarer, but substantially more engaged. Respondents who concede harm are roughly 30 points more likely to credit the EU’s due-diligence directive with improving their activities, 23 points more likely to report expanded social engagement, and 18 points more likely to say investor demands shape strategy. Moreover, those who work most extensively in high-risk settings are the most willing to challenge their company’s feel-good stories about its impact.

## 4. When executives do confess harm, it is almost always environmental.

Environmental impacts were a notable exception. While many respondents struggled to identify social harms linked to their operations, several readily described negative environmental incidents. A director at a US manufacturer cited “carbon monoxide from my company’s factories in EU harmed communities in the region.” Another US manufacturing director described a facility that “was burned to the ground while the community was exposed to…fumes.” A manager at a French manufacturing firm reported that  “Due to maintenance delay, air pollution would occur with some impact on the population,” while a US services manager pointed to supplier complaints about water use and waste.

Even executives who did not report any operational harms often framed hypothetical harms in environmental terms. When asked what evidence would convince them that harm had occurred one respondent explained, “public health data directly linking the company emissions, waste etc. to local environmental degradation.” A US director made the underlying logic more explicit: any harm from his/her company “would most likely be environmental or people damage caused by employees not following policies.” Environmental harm is an easy admission to make because both problem and solution are generally observable and technical. Instruments measure it, auditors certify it, and blame lands on a process, not a person.

**Figure 5. The environmental tilt in admitted harm and in social programs.**

Verbatim responses to the same prompt: describe a specific instance when your firm’s operations in a high-risk environment contributed to harm to a community.

Note: Q35 responses, n = 185, hand-coded. Spelling intact. Of the harms confessed, nearly every harm of commission was environmental. Source: STAKES survey of 400 senior executives at large US- and European-headquartered firms, fielded by NewtonX, 6 May to 2 June 2026.

Data: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/data/figure-5.csv

Two in five executives, asked what their firms do for vulnerable people, put environmental programs in the social portfolio citing for example: emissions cuts, recycling infrastructure, reforestation, and water stewardship. Yet many of these same executives reported that environmental commitments are being scaled back. A UK manufacturer approved “the use of coloured PET which was previously not the case due to recycling constraints,” a decision “made to enable us to be competitive.” A German manager flipped ocean freight to air, which “multiplies cost and pollution, but necessary to keep up to customer expectations.” A French retail director skips green transport “if the cost is higher than classical ones.”

Government pressure both real and perceived emerged as a common driver of retrenchment. A manufacturer killed its EV line “due to social concerns from the US government” and accepted an unprofitable year; a US bank shelved environmental education abroad rather than irritate a host government. European regulatory regimes have also been cut. A German executive built her firm’s nature-risk practice, then watched Brussels deregulate it out from under her: “from [the] omnibus and de-regulation in the EU, there was no driver any more and the priorities shifted.”

The environment has become the one safe corner of the corporate conscience. At one German manufacturer, “gender equality agendas were dropped with the arrival of Trump”; what survived was environmental initiatives like “water sources and waste management,” activities with a measurable financial payoff. Unlike other issues such as DEI, environmental responsibility is seen as less controversial and more core to widely shared expectations across different political ideologies.

A few years ago the promise was that investors would reward companies for doing well by doing good. The advice these firms hear now has narrowed: responsibility should shrink to whatever is financially material, a recalibration investors themselves are driving. Companies are reading that as permission to keep the cheap, measurable program and quietly shed the rest.

## 5. A Generational Gap is Emerging on Ethics and Impact

Among executives aged 25 to 34, 51 percent concede that their firm’s presence can worsen conditions where it operates, double every older band. Among those who endorse this premise, 75% of the under-35s admit harm, against 40 percent of the 35-44 band and 35 percent of the 45-54 core. The trifecta of beliefs over impact (greater responsibility plus profit sacrifice plus no harm done) is rarest among the youngest, peaking at three in ten in mid-career, halved again past 55. Belief in the firm’s harmlessness rises through one’s career and peaks in their primes, perhaps a reflection of desirability bias in wanting to believe that one’s firm is indeed one of the “good guys.”

When asked for a real example of commercial considerations beating ethical ones, under-35s name one at triple the rate of their most senior colleagues. Denial of harm climbs with age on every hardened question: from 7 to 40 percent by ascending band on the trade-off question, 5 to 30 on personal disagreement:

**Figure 6. Conceding harm, by age band.**

Share of each age band. The three candor measures fall after 35; the composite self-portrait (greater responsibility + profit sacrifice + no harm) is the mirror image, peaking in mid-career.

Note: Trade-off question on the revised-instrument basis, n = 350. Age bands n = 40/147/161/52; intervals on the 25–34 band are wide. Source: STAKES survey of 400 senior executives at large US- and European-headquartered firms, fielded by NewtonX, 6 May to 2 June 2026.

Data: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/data/figure-6.csv

Quieting is also a young experience, reported by roughly twice the share of under-35s as of any older band, and the European shield from the second pattern is an older-European story. Of 44 EU respondents aged 45 and over, not one reports quieting; among younger Europeans it is one in five. “We are now doing less and ignoring the elephant in the room”, a Millennial director at a Dutch professional-services firm wrote. This age group also trust different machinery: pre-set exit thresholds at 86 percent and community grievance channels at 53, both near-mirror images of their elders.

Whether professionals grow into the self-portrait as their tenure deepens, or this generation carries its candor upward remains to be seen, but the pattern holds inside its gender, seniority, and regional breakdown. Whichever reading wins, the no-harm story is held most firmly by the layer running today’s operations and least by the people who will replace them.

## 6. The Danger of Thinking Social Quieting Can Last

One reassuring reading of all this is could be that nothing real has changed. Companies are lowering their voices, the work continues quietly, and the noise will pass with the political season. Our data partially supports that view. The substance mostly survives, and most of what looks like retreat is a decision about communication rather than commitment. But three things in the survey show that this underlying strength is under strain or perhaps even an illusion.

First, the silence is hostage to the political environment that produced it. A commitment switched off to please one administration can be switched off again, and a program a firm has trained itself to hide is one it is learning not to defend. But the greater concern is how long firms can be quiet without the foundations of social responsibility crumbling. After all, few firms will continue to undertake activities that can’t be discussed, and the quiet may simply be the first stage of withdrawal away from social initiatives altogether unless they fulfill a regulatory aim.

Second, from outside the firm, quiet conviction and quiet abandonment look eerily similar. When the only signal that investors, affected communities, and the public receive is strategic silence, companies that continue work become indistinguishable from those that have walked away from it or have never done anything at all. And the possibility is not hypothetical. Throughout the survey respondents described commitments that had  “expired” or been  “quietly abandoned.”

Third, within the firm, belief in the social value of the firm is eroding in the cohort most dedicated to its continued success. The quietists are the least likely group in the survey to describe social initiatives as a source of competitive advantage, and a conviction no longer stated will likely have a short shelf life. Going quiet is easier than going dark; the question is how long a firm can remain quiet before the lights go out for good.

Social commitment is increasingly living in the fearful shadow of the state. What changes between firms is their exposure to the consequences. Among firms with long fragile-market histories, 39 percent changed nothing after this spring’s US-Israel-Iran conflict, against 17 percent of those facing their first war; the veterans had rehearsed on Ukraine in 2022 and treated 2026 as a rerun. Industry sorts the same way: transportation and logistics, which the conflict physically disrupted, lead the survey, while not one retailer reports quieting, because the pressure has not found them yet.

**Figure 7. Experience, not the war itself: how much firms changed, veterans versus newcomers.**

Reported policy response to the US-Israel-Iran conflict, by prior exposure to fragile-market risk

Note: Q28 responses from all 400 respondents, hand-coded. Source: STAKES survey of 400 senior executives at large US- and European-headquartered firms, fielded by NewtonX, 6 May to 2 June 2026.

Data: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/data/figure-7.csv

**Figure 8. Industry as exposure: which sectors feel the risks.**

What industry changes is contact with events: the share whose firm tightened rules or acted after the US-Israel-Iran conflict.

Note: Mining and extraction is drawn hollow because it rests on twelve responses. Source: STAKES survey of 400 senior executives at large US- and European-headquartered firms, fielded by NewtonX, 6 May to 2 June 2026.

Data: https://stakesproject.org/outputs/has-your-company-gone-quiet/data/figure-8.csv

## What These Results Mean for Managers

Separate substance from visibility. The practitioner consensus in our data favors embedded commitment: programs anchored in operations, supplier contracts, and product design rather than in campaigns. Manage and fund the work separately from its communication. But remember what visibility does. It attracts talent, makes commitments harder to abandon quietly, and signals organizational values and priorities. If you choose to go quiet, you must replicate those functions in other ways or risk hollowing the very commitments and values you seek to enact and protect. The quietists in our survey were also the least likely to view this work as a source of competitive advantage, and that fading belief is the cheapest early warning you will get.

Treat harm acknowledgment as an asset. Your internal reporting likely understates harm. Candor in our data falls from 54 percent to 12 percent as the questions approach the firm, and exits feel costless because harms of absence look like nobody’s fault. To counter this, add an affected-population test into risk reviews: would the people living beside your operations call them harmful, even if you would not? That simple reframing prompted acknowledgments from senior executives that the firm’s own perspective did not. And recalibrate what dissent signals, because the people who concede harm are disproportionately your most engaged operators.

Map home-government exposure with host-country discipline. Alignment with the home state is a near-universal strategy. It is rational, and it carries a cost that belongs on the books. Scenario-test the portfolio the way veterans test conflict exposure: do this by asking yourself which commitments would survive an administration change or a regulator’s attention, or one viral post. Renaming initiatives, relocating responsibilities, and reframing commitments as compliance efforts may buy time, but they are not substitutes for resilience. Know which of your commitments depend on those tactics before someone else finds out.

Buy the veteran playbook before you need it. The firms that treated 2026 as a drill had rehearsed in 2022. If fragile-market exposure is new to your company, what you lack is institutional memory. However, such memory can be built in advance by codifying exit thresholds (claimed by only 60 percent of this senior cohort, the softest machinery item in the survey), naming evacuation triggers, rerouting plans, and pre-negotiating insurance. The next escalation will write your crisis playbook for you if you have not written it first.

Tap your under-35s as sensors. Your youngest professionals run the affected-population test natively, concede harm at twice the senior rate, and report the quieting most often: they realize the need for social engagement and perhaps more importantly recognize its concealment. Route them explicitly into harm reviews and audits while their candor is available. They are also part of what the visible commitment used to attract and keep, so a firm that goes silent should expect its sharpest sensors to read the silence too. Their ability to pinpoint skepticism about grievance channels, from the generation nearest the operational ground, is essential knowledge for any firm.

As one US executive said: “All companies say and do the same things. The difference comes in what is said versus what is done. “In 2026 the firms that manage that gap deliberately, rather than discovering it under pressure, will hold the advantage everyone else has stopped advertising.

Most firms in our survey are not abandoning their commitments. They are trying to protect them by lowering their visibility. Whether that strategy succeeds will depend less on what companies say publicly than on whether they can sustain the internal beliefs, routines, and capabilities that public commitments once reinforced.

## Key numbers

- Say the political backlash has not changed their firm's approach: 59% (section 1)
- Describe a deliberate quieting of public communication: ~20% (section 1)
- US executives reporting quieting, against 11% of Europeans: 33% (section 1)
- Of 26 attitudinal measures where US and European answers agree: 22 (section 1)
- Run social activities that never appear in sustainability or annual reports: 68% (section 1)
- Agree it is in the firm's interest to align with home-government priorities: 82% (section 2)
- Disagree with that alignment, the lowest dissent in the survey: 4% (section 2)
- European agreement with alignment: 90% (section 2)
- Claim greater social responsibility in high-risk places: 74% (section 3)
- Say the firm pursues social responsibility at the expense of profit: 64% (section 3)
- Agree their presence can worsen social or conflict dynamics: 29% (section 3)
- Could name a business decision they personally disagreed with: 54% (section 3)
- Could name a concrete instance of harm to a community: 12% (section 3)
- Of executives aged 25 to 34 concede their firm can worsen conditions: 51% (section 5)
- Longstanding operators who changed nothing after the 2026 conflict, against 17% of firms new to these risks: 39% (section 6)
- Claim pre-set exit thresholds, the softest machinery item in the survey: 60% (section 7)

## Methodology

Methodology. The survey was fielded by NewtonX from 6 May to 2 June 2026 among 400 senior professionals in CSR/ESG, compliance, legal, risk, and supply-chain functions at companies with 1,000 or more employees, headquartered in the United States (201) and Western Europe (199), all engaged with social or ethical issues in operations they class as fragile, insecure, or conflict-affected. Twenty-six Likert items; free-text of roughly 2,800 responses. Quotations are verbatim.