You are right that everything is about money in a for profit enterprise, however that does not preclude organizational values. Those things are profitable too,

You are right that everything is about money in a for profit enterprise, however that does not preclude organizational values. Those things are profitable too, by generating goodwill (which is accounted for in GAAP), positive brand influence or simply by reducing liability from suits and settlements The impact is real and tangible in measurable things like hiring to retention to sales to pricing and so on . B2B orgs like SAP would have more difficulty (pay more) in hiring and retaining talent when culture is more toxic and does not basic values people would like to see in a workspace. It is also important while frustrating to most people that those values are soft and don’t alienate any significant part of stakeholders. In the long run DEI, values and other initiatives is cheaper and therefore profitable. Tesla is good example of why shareholders loose when the CEO has strong political leanings. Matt Levine take that everything is securities fraud is basically the same view point from a shareholder perspective. The caveat is, it only has to feel those things matter not that they actually do, it is much harder to fake it over the long run though. Apple for example makes the consumer feel their phones are Eco-friendly with all the recycling pitch they do. A sincere approach to ESG here would be to design phones that are repairable with replaceable parts like the fairphone tries and give the consumer the right to do fix their own devices. Apple cannot do that without hurting profits so they will not . We will get local optima like this without external help, Apple after all is eco-friendly compared to most other devices on the market after all. To push them over is where regulation and government intervention when done right works