The Culture Dispatch: Woke Capitalism in 2023? | The Arts Club Dubai

Wokeness is a buzzword which found prominence in the mid-2010s in the form of a mass campaign to raise awareness for significant social issues. Soon thereafter it was used and arguably abused by mainstream media for marketing campaigns designed to appeal to millennials. It wasn’t long until it revived a corporate framework first introduced in 2004 called ESG - Environmental, Social and Governance. ESG is a set of investment standards that look at how a company safeguards the Environment, how it manages relationships with employees, suppliers, customers, and how a company deals with leadership, executive pay, audits and internal controls. This year ESG was on everyone’s lips at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos and was highly criticised for being too broad and too naïve in times of economic unrest.  Can the corporate world ignore the powerful push from customers, employees, and investors for organizations to stand for more than just financial targets? Can we achieve capitalism and sincere social conscientiousness at the same time? Discussions about climate change, inequality and ethical business relationships aren’t going away, so what is in store for 2023?