Philippa Kaur

The original Rorschach test involves showing a series of ten inkblots to someone, and asking them what images they see. Although the test’s psychological validity is debatable, no one can dispute its wild success as a metaphor: a single object can mean very different things to different people. In business a prime example of Rorschachiness is the corporate jet. Depending on your perspective, it can signal untrammelled greed, rational decision-making, post-pandemic work habits or the fight against climate change. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

For the leaders of America Inc, high inflation is unwelcome. It is also unfamiliar. Warren Buffett, 91, the oldest boss in the s&p 500 index of big firms, last warned about the dangers of rising prices in his annual shareholder letter for 2011. The average chief executive of a company in the index, aged a mere 58, had not started university in 1979 when Paul Volcker, inflation’s enemy-in-chief, became chairman of the Federal Reserve. By the time the average boss started working the rise of globalised capitalism was ushering in an era of low inflation and high profits (see chart 1). Their stock rose between the global financial crisis of 2007-09 and the covid-19 pandemic, a decade of rock-bottom inflation.Inflation will stay high for some time yet. On June 7th the World Bank warned that “several years of above-average inflation and below-average growth now seem likely.” A new study by Marijn Bolhuis, Judd Cramer and Lawrence Summers finds that if you measure inflation consistently, today’s rate is almost as high as it was at the peak in 1980. As the past creeps up on the future, “stagflation” is preoccupying corner offices. Today’s executives may think of themselves as battle-hardened—they have experienced a financial crisis and a pandemic. However, the stagflationary challenge requires a different toolkit that borrows from the past and also involves new tricks. The primary task for any management team is to defend margins and cashflow, which investors favour over revenue growth when things get dicey. That will require fighting harder down in the trenches of the income statement. Although a rise in margins as inflation first picked up last year led politicians to denounce corporate “greedflation”, after-tax profits in fact tend to come down as a share of gdp when price rises persist, based on the experience of all American firms since 1950 (see chart 2). To create shareholder value in this environment companies must increase their cashflows in real terms. That means a combination of cutting expenses and passing on cost inflation on to customers without dampening sales volumes.Cost-cutting will not be easy. The prices of commodities, transport and labour remain elevated and most companies are price-takers in those markets. Supply-chain constraints have begun to ease a bit and may keep easing in the coming months. But disruptions will almost certainly continue. In April Apple lamented that the industry-wide computer-chip shortage is expected to create a $4bn-8bn “constraint” for the iPhone-maker in the current quarter.The input bosses can control most easily is labour. After months of frenzied hiring, companies are looking to protect margins by getting more from their workers—or getting the same amount from fewer of them. The labour market remains drum-tight: in America wages are up by more than 5% year on year and in April layoffs hit a record low. But, in some corners, the pandemic hiring binge to meet pent-up demand is being unwound. American bosses are again demonstrating that they are less squeamish about lay-offs than their European counterparts. In a memo sent to employees this month Elon Musk revealed plans to trim salaried headcount at Tesla, his electric-car company, by 10%. Digital darlings, many of which had boomed during the pandemic, collectively sacked nearly 17,000 workers in May alone. After tempting workers with increased pay and perks, in the latest quarterly earnings calls more American ceos have been talking up automation and labour efficiencies. In the current climate, though, hard-headed (and hard-hearted) cost control won’t be enough to maintain profitability. The remaining cost inflation must be passed on to customers. Many companies are about to learn the difficulty of raising prices without dampening demand. The companies that wield this superpower often share a few attributes: weak competition, customers’ inability to delay or avoid purchase or inflation-linked revenue streams. A strong brand also helps. Starbucks boasted on an earnings call in May that, despite caffeinated price rises for its beverages, it has struggled to keep up with “relentless demand”. But recent data hint at softer consumer sentiment. This makes it riskier for firms to roll out frequent price increases. Amber lights are blinking, from McDonald’s, which has speculated about “increased value sensitivity” among burger-munchers, to Verizon, which detected customer “slowness” in the most recent quarter. The ability to push through price increases as customers tighten their belts requires careful management. Unlike in the last high-inflation era, managers can use real-time algorithmic price setting, constantly experimenting and adjusting as consumers respond. Nonetheless, all firms will still have to take a longer-term view on how long fast prices will last and the limits of what their customers will tolerate. That is finger-in-the-wind stuff. Even if they keep revenues and costs under control, ceos are discovering what their predecessors knew all too well: inflation plays havoc on the balance-sheet. That requires even tighter control of working capital (the value of inventories and what is owed by customers minus what is owed to suppliers). Many firms have misjudged demand for their products. Walmart lost almost a fifth of its market value, or around $80bn, in mid-May, after it reported a cashflow squeeze caused by an excess build-up of inventories, which rose by a third year on year. On June 7th its smaller retailing rival, Target, issued a warning that its operating margin will fall from 5.3% last quarter to 2% in the current one, as it discounts goods to clear its excess inventories. Payment cycles—when a firm pays suppliers and is paid by customers—become more important, too, as the purchasing power of cash delivered tomorrow withers in inflation’s heat.All this makes a business’s performance more difficult to assess. For example, calculations of return on capital look more impressive with an inflated numerator (present returns) and the denominator (capital invested in the past) in old dollars. Between 1979 and 1986, during the last bout of high inflation, American firms were required by law to present income statements that were adjusted for rising prices. This edict is unlikely to be revived. But even as bosses boast of higher nominal revenue growth, investment and compensation decisions should account for such artificial tailwinds. Just ask Mr Buffett. In his letter to shareholders for 1980 he reminded them that profits must rise in proportion to increases in the price level without an increase in capital employed, lest the firm starts “chewing up” investors’ capital. His missive to investors in 2023 may need to carry the same message. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More

In his penthouse suite in London’s Old Street, under the watchful gaze of a small stone statue of a mushroom god, Christian Angermayer recalls a life-changing experience with psychedelic drugs. It was many years ago, on a tiny island in the Caribbean. The trip was so meaningful for the investor that he decided to back biotech firms using psychedelics to treat depression, anxiety, addiction and other mental-health conditions. Such startups are increasingly catering to corporate clients. A growing number of firms want to offer psychedelics to staff, either for the sake of mental health or to organise a mind-bending corporate retreat. This surge in interest is being driven by the growing evidence of psychedelics’ safety and efficacy, when consumed in controlled settings. Ketamine is already legally available, both as an anaesthetic and to treat depression in clinics across America and Europe. Psilocybin (which gives magic to mushrooms) is available legally in Amsterdam and will become legal in Oregon next year. And America’s drugs regulator is soon expected to decide whether to approve mdma (ecstasy) for use in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.In February Dr Bronner, an American soapmaker that has long supported efforts to loosen laws around the use of psychedelics and cannabis, added therapy that combines ketamine and counselling to its employee mental-health-care plans. Daniel Poneman of Beyond Athlete Management, a sports agency, says he has seen psychedelic medicine be extremely effective in helping clients struggling with performance anxiety, pressure and isolation from constant travel. Robert Levy, boss of Field Trip, a provider of psychedelic experiences in Amsterdam, tells of nba basketball players who were about to quit and were put back on their career path. Psychedelics have corporate uses beyond improving workers’ mental health. Anne Philippi, boss of The New Health Club, a German psychedelic-retreat outfit, says some firms are also experimenting with such drugs to make executives more empathetic, enhance team bonding, boost creativity or change company culture. Field Trip offers a weekend retreat for “leaders” to allow them to experience “a heightened level of consciousness”.Care is needed to avoid misuse. Psychedelics are not suitable for some mental-health problems, such as schizophrenia. As with after-work drinks, not everyone wants to, or can, take part. An asset manager at a big family office reports battling with whether or not to accept an invitation from a firm in her portfolio to an (illegal) Ayahuasca retreat at a villa in California, with a shaman flown in for the occasion. And a mind-bending experience can lead workers to question everything—including capitalism and the nature of work. Keith Ferrazzi, an executive coach, knows of several business founders who quit after a trip. As trippy options expand faster than the mind of a ceo on acid, companies would be wise to make any decisions about their business use with a clear head. ■ More

In 1999 timemagazine put three heavyweights from America’s Federal Reserve and Treasury Department on its cover, calling them “The Committee to Save the World”. They were Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Their accomplishment was stopping economic upheavals from Russia to Brazil causing mayhem in the global financial system. Big stuff, for sure. But nothing compared with the task facing those who today could be called “The Committee to Save the Planet”. They are Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, Larry Fink, boss of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm, and Jamie Dimon, ceo of JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank.Their aims are no less than to stop global warming and create a fairer, more enlightened form of capitalism. In just a few years they have marshalled to the cause more than 100 central banks, tens of trillions of dollars of investors’ cash and bank finance, and the bosses of America’s biggest firms. Their ambitions are not just big. They are epochal. So why are they suddenly figures of mockery in the war on “woke” capitalism?Mr Carney was the first global policy wonk to raise his cufflinked fist. In 2015 he focused attention on the systemic risks to banks and insurance companies as a result of climate change. In doing so, he set in motion a blitzkrieg of regulatory activity to press companies and their lenders to disclose their exposure to the risks of global warming. But he has also stirred a backlash. During a polemical presentation last month Stuart Kirk, hsbc Asset Management’s head of responsible investment, attacked the “unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings” about the risks a changing climate pose to financial markets. There was no mistaking the target of the dig: it was Mr Carney. Conservatives, including the Wall Street Journal, smelled red meat. They ridiculed central bankers’ focus on the long-term effects of climate change while missing more immediate risks such as inflation. Mr Fink has brought big money to Mr Carney’s climate crusade—and done well out of it, too. BlackRock, with $9trn of client assets, is a big force behind a surge in environmental, social and governance (esg) investing in recent years, with which it has wooed investors. For asset managers esg has been a high-fee gravy train. But it is an unholy muddle for investors. Returns have been shrivelling as tech stocks, a favourite of esg funds, swoon, and oil stocks soar. Since the war in Ukraine, the sustainability mantra has switched from shunning oil and defence stocks to embracing them. There is an emerging whiff of scandal. Last month dws, Deutsche Bank’s asset-management arm, was raided by German police over esg “greenwashing” allegations, which it has denied. And esg finds itself in the trenches of America’s culture wars. Ted Cruz, a senator, talks of a “Larry Fink surcharge” when people fill up their petrol tanks. Texas, which he represents, threatens to keep state money from funds that boycott oil and gas. No wonder Mr Fink now says: “I don’t want to be the environmental police.” Mr Dimon is the architect of the corporate corollary to this financial do-goodery. As chair in 2019 of the Business Roundtable, a ceo lobby group, he led efforts to change its creed from prioritising the interests of shareholders to putting them alongside those of customers, employees and others. Stakeholder capitalism has given rise to the activist ceo, speaking out on issues ranging from voting laws to education on sexual orientation. Questions about whether such concerns are relevant to a company’s bottom line, or agreed upon by all stakeholders, are mostly brushed aside. It may be tested if rising interest rates choke off the economic recovery, leading firms to fire some of the stakeholders whose interests they claim to serve. It is already costly. JPMorgan has been largely excluded from the Texas municipal-bond market since last September, when a law was passed stopping the state from doing business with companies that have anti-gun policies. And it is widely misunderstood. “I am a red-blooded free-market capitalist and I’m not woke,” Mr Dimon said in a defiant outburst this month.For all the pushback, the triumvirate can point to a few genuine reasons for using the bully pulpit. Governments are abjectly failing to take steps, such as high and co-ordinated carbon taxes, to tackle climate change. Companies have got away for too long without taking account of—or paying for—their externalities, especially their impact on the natural world. Consumers, employees and investors are increasingly motivated by threats to the environment, as well as to social welfare, and gravitate towards firms that want to make a difference.Missionary creep Yet there is a ring of truth to some of the criticisms, too. Take the accusations of mission creep. In tackling climate change, Mr Carney has urged central banks out of their comfort zones, though so far with little evidence that financial systems are being destabilised by the costs of the energy transition. Though Messrs Fink and Dimon are bound by fiduciary constraints to serve the interests of their asset-owners and shareholders, esg and stakeholder capitalism make such duties harder to define. The second valid criticism concerns the tendency towards sanctimony. Until recently the private sector was a sanctuary from political partisanship and moral crusades. Bosses should speak out when events occur that materially impact their businesses, rather than pontificate about all manner of extra-curricular concerns. Third, critics have a point when they note that it is governments’ responsibility to solve societal problems. This may be a world bereft of inspiring political leadership. But that is something voters must fix at the ballot box, not billionaires smuggling in their political views via the backdoor at annual general meetings. Saving the planet is one thing. Saving it by committee smacks of plutocratic overreach. Sadly, that appears to be part of the future Messrs Carney, Fink and Dimon have in mind. ■ More

“Can i keep the monitor and mouse?” a fired tech worker recently asked on Blind, an anonymous social-media platform where techies go to compare notes on employers. The questions used to be about how much Meta was paying or what perks Apple offered. As America’s technology giants contend with supply-chain uncertainties, a looming recession and sliding share prices, many users are instead asking if the sizzling market for tech jobs is cooling. The first sign of trouble came on April 28th. In a quarterly earnings call Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, said that the e-commerce titan’s warehouses were overstaffed, costing about $2bn (9% of operating profit) in the past year. A memo leaked a week later from Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said the firm was putting a freeze on new hires in most teams. Other big tech names, including Microsoft, Nvidia, Snap and Uber, have made similar noises. So far this year listed tech firms worth a combined $3.4trn have announced hiring freezes or firings. The commotion comes after a prolonged boom in tech jobs. During the 2010s the number of positions in America’s tech industry increased by 4.4% a year on average, triple the rate of the overall economy, according to a study by the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. The pandemic turbocharged the trend. Work, leisure and shopping shifted online, boosting demand for digital services. Last year listings for tech jobs increased by over 80% compared with 2020, observes Amit Bhatia, co-founder of datapeople.io, a research firm. Demand for tech skills also surged outside the sector as companies uploaded their operations to the cloud and boosted cyber-security, making the market even tighter. The number of applications for each tech-industry opening fell by a quarter in 2021. Much of the jobs growth came from startups and newly listed companies. But the tech giants, too, were adding plenty of employees. Between 2020 and 2021 Amazon, Meta and Netflix all increased their full-time staff by over a fifth. The ranks at Microsoft and Alphabet swelled by 11% and 16%, respectively. That compares with a median of 3% for firms in the s&p 500 index of America’s largest companies.So far redundancies, rather than just hiring freezes, have been largely confined to startups, such as Getir, a Turkish grocery-delivery app, and newly public firms such as Peloton, a maker of web-connected exercise bikes. Sackings at established tech companies have been modest. On May 17th Netflix, a video-streamer, laid off 150 staff. The following week news broke that PayPal, a payments firm, was cutting 80 or so jobs. In both cases that was roughly 1% of their respective workforces.Strategically important teams are protected from the measures. Microsoft’s hiring slowdown applies to its software units, such as Windows and Teams, but not its fast-growing cloud business. PayPal’s lay-offs affected staff researching emerging technologies, such as quantum computing, while sparing core functions. Many of the sacked Netflixers worked in marketing rather than on shows. Demand for the most prized skills, such as understanding of advanced data science, is so high that people who possess them will be sought out even in a downturn. At the big tech companies talented employees who hint that they want to jump ship are still receiving generous counter-offers, says Greg Selker of Stanton Chase, an executive-search firm. On May 16th Microsoft said it was raising its budget for salary increases for certain workers, in an attempt to stop talent from fleeing. Amazon did something similar a few months earlier. Tech-focused recruiters say business is perky. Indeed, the number of listings for technology-industry jobs in May and April was far higher than at the same time last year, notes Mr Bhatia. Some analysts argue the tech industry is bigger, more mature and stable than in the go-go 1990s, which may shield its workers from the pain of previous busts. Others note that after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, tech work began disappearing only a year after the stockmarket crash. One thing is certain: the anxiety level of posts on Blind will stay high for a while. ■For exclusive insight and reading recommendations from our correspondents in America, sign up to Checks and Balance, our weekly newsletter. More

“Your kind is headed for extinction!” barks a senior officer to Tom Cruise’s hero in “Top Gun: Maverick”, a supersonic action flick released by Paramount last week. “Maybe so, sir,” replies Maverick. “But not today.”Cinema owners are feeling similarly defiant. Worldwide box-office receipts fell by 72% in 2020, when the pandemic forced film buffs to say goodbye to the silver screen and hello to their sofa. After ticket sales recovered only partially in 2021, many predicted curtains for theatres. Yet “Top Gun”, a sequel to a classic of the genre from 1986, raked in $248m on its opening weekend, the biggest-ever debut for a film starring Mr Cruise. Its domestic haul of $156m over the long weekend broke the Memorial Day record set by one of Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” films in 2007.Theatre owners hope that “Top Gun” heralds the beginning of a broader recovery. It is only the fourth-biggest opener of the pandemic era (see chart 2). However, the other big hits—Sony’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” last December, Marvel’s “Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” in May, and Warner Bros’ “The Batman” in March—have all been superhero flicks, with young fans. “Top Gun”, by contrast, sold 55% of tickets to over-35s. This suggests that viewers old enough to harbour fond memories of Mr Cruise’s original turn as Maverick 36 years ago are now ready to come back to the movies, too.The recovery is far from complete. This year’s worldwide box office will be only about three-quarters of 2019’s, forecasts Gower Street Analytics, a research firm. China, which these days rivals America as the biggest cinema market, is still locked down and in any case increasingly hostile to Hollywood (“Top Gun” has no Chinese release date). Russia is also off-limits since its invasion of Ukraine. Above all, studios are focusing attention and resources on their streaming platforms, releasing fewer films in cinemas, for shorter runs.The summer release slate is promising: June will see “Jurassic World: Dominion” from Universal and “Lightyear”, the latest in Disney’s “Toy Story” series. “Thor: Love and Thunder”, the next Marvel movie, is out in July. Yet there will be strong reasons to stay at home, too. On the day that “Top Gun” was released, Netflix unveiled its latest season of “Stranger Things” and Disney+ launched a “Star Wars” spin-off, “Obi-Wan Kenobi”. In August Warner Bros Discovery will start a new “Game of Thrones” saga, before Amazon releases a “Lord of the Rings” series in September. This latest adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic is the most expensive piece of television ever made, with a budget around three times that of “Top Gun”. ■For exclusive insight and reading recommendations from our correspondents in America, sign up to Checks and Balance, our weekly newsletter. More

Annual general meetings (agms) of shareholders used to be dull affairs. A company’s owners would gather to elect board members or, after the global financial crisis of 2007-09 exposed the gulf between fat-cat bosses and their workers, cast (mostly non-binding) votes on executive compensation. In the past few years, though, they have turned into corporate confessionals, with nothing short of a company’s soul at stake. Motions are proliferating on decarbonisation and diversity targets, political donations, workers’ rights and much else besides. A record 592 environmental and social proposals were filed in America ahead of this year’s agm season, which spans May and June. In the 20 years from Amazon’s initial public offering in 1997, the e-empire’s shareholders voted on 22 resolutions brought by fellow investors. At the latest agm on May 25th they were asked to weigh in on 14. How can the harried fund manager keep track? Enter proxy-advisory firms, hired by investors to sift through the resolutions and make recommendations on which boxes to cross. There may be no monopoly in the market for ideas, but when it comes to proxy advice the market is a cosy duopoly. Institutional Shareholder Services (iss) and Glass Lewis meet more than 90% of the demand for such counsel in America. The pronouncements of these corporate philosopher-kings grew in prominence after 2003, when new rules required American institutional investors to disclose their voting polices. For most investors it is cheaper instead to outsource the task to iss or Glass Lewis. The work is lucrative. In 2021 iss, which has annual revenues in excess of $250m, was bought by Deutsche Börse, a German exchange operator, for $2.3bn. The same year two Canadian public pension funds sold Glass Lewis to a private-equity firm.The duo’s recommendations carry weight. One study identified 114 institutional investors, representing more than $5trn in assets under management, who “robovoted” in lockstep with either iss or Glass Lewis during the 2020 proxy season, mechanically deferring to their recommendations. It is difficult to tell how a shareholder would have voted but for a proxy recommendation. Still, the advisers have almost certainly moved the needle in some important shareholder votes (and in plenty of unimportant ones, too). They have also wielded a softer power, moulding the ever-changing norms of corporate governance through changes in their voting policies and other public displays of wisdom. No press coverage of an important agm is nowadays complete without a nod to their stance, as when the media leapt on iss’s recommendations that dissented from Amazon management’s guidance on nine issues, from executive pay to human-rights due diligence, plastic use and gender and racial pay gaps. As shareholders’ concerns expand from narrow profits to broader “purpose”, you would expect the advisers to be enjoying a golden age. In fact, their proxy power may start to decline, for three reasons. The first is structural. In the past decade share ownership in America has become ever more concentrated in the hands of giant asset managers such as BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard. These behemoths run their own departments of corporate-governance consigliere and so have little need for the proxy advisers’ services. In 2008 the trio between them owned 13.5% of the average company in the s&p 500 index of big American firms, according to Bloomberg, a data firm. They now hold nearly a quarter. In May BlackRock struck a cautionary note on environmental and social resolutions, noting that these were becoming prescriptive to the point of micro-management. Smaller institutional investors may prefer to side with their bigger peers rather than the proxy firms in such matters, especially if the concentration of ownership continues to rise. Second, managements are putting up a fight. This year’s votes are still being tallied, but environmental and social resolutions have not had the knock-out run their backers expected, in part because companies that were caught off guard last year got their act together. On May 27th Twitter went further, announcing in a regulatory filing that it would ignore a shareholder vote which booted Egon Durban, a billionaire tech dealmaker, off the social-media firm’s board, citing the influence of proxy advisers on the result. iss had recommended evicting Mr Durban because he sits on six other public-company boards. That makes him “overboarded” in iss’s eyes. Twitter retorted that Mr Durban is a “highly effective member” with “unparalleled operational knowledge”. Merely sitting on more boards than the iss likes should not automatically disqualify him, the company implied.In 2019, 319 companies signed a letter chastising a lack of transparency and accuracy in proxy advisers’ recommendations and calling for regulatory action. Soon afterwards the Securities and Exchange Commission (sec), which had dithered for years, finally began to rein in the proxy firms—the third challenge to their role. In 2020 the sec adopted new rules requiring increased disclosure of potential conflicts and open channels of communication between proxy advisers and companies. Last November the agency’s current head, Gary Gensler, watered down some of those amended rules, for example removing the requirement that proxy advice be sent to the management allowing it to respond. But they remain less proxy-friendly than in the past.Annual general mayhemClashes pitting the proxy advisers against big investors, management and regulators look poised to intensify—all the more so if, as seems likely, agms continue to be a venue for some investors to push their politics. Asking two opaque firms, supposedly in the name of transparency, in effect to nominate America Inc’s boards of directors was dubious enough. Trusting them to resolve the complex trade-offs at the heart of 21st-century capitalism would be a travesty. ■Read more from Schumpeter, our columnist on global business:BASF’s plan to wean itself off cheap Russian gas comes with pitfalls (May 28th)Why America’s clean-energy industry is stuck (May 21st)Activist investors are becoming tamer (May 14th)For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More

A phrase that first became fashionable a decade ago is everywhere. “Bring your whole self” is one of four values that British Land, a property developer, trumpets on its website. Quartz, a publisher, ran a workshop last year called “How to navigate the whole-self workplace”. “Your whole self is welcome here,” pledges ing, a bank, to prospective employees. (Whole Foods uses the phrase on its global careers site, too, but it has a decent excuse.) There are spin-off selves. Workday, an enterprise-software firm, wants its employees to be their “best selves” at work. Finn, a classified-ads site in Norway, is hiring for a compensation and benefits specialist who loves to bring their “full self” to the office. Key, an American bank, prefers to use the term “authentic self”. The idea that unites these phrases is that employees need not pretend to be someone they aren’t. Instead of having a workplace persona and a non-workplace persona, people can just relax and always be themselves. Behind this thought lies a good intention—or rather lots of good intentions. The notion of the whole self variously captures the idea that people are more engaged in work if they believe in a firm’s purpose; that teams are more effective if colleagues understand each other; that people with different identities should feel comfortable in their own skins; that firms should care about and respond to issues that affect their staff’s well-being, from mental health to child care; and that leaders need to show some of their personal side to be connected with their staff. None of these things is silly. Many are in fact actively desirable. However, any idea that covers so much ground is bound to have holes in it, and this one would make a colander blush.Most obviously, no one should actually bring their whole selves to work. People are a melange of traits, some good and some bad. Many of them should be kept well away from the workplace. Your professional self displays commitment to the job and eats lunch at a desk. Your whole self is planning the next holiday and binges ice cream on the sofa. Your professional self makes presentations to the board and says things like: “Let’s get the analytics team to kick the tyres on this.” Your whole self cannot operate a toaster and says things like: “Has anyone seen my socks?” Pretending to be someone you are not is not a problem; it’s essential. For the same reasons, your employer may say it wants you to bring your whole self to work but doesn’t really mean it. A company is a hierarchy, in which even the most understanding bosses expect people to follow orders rather than their hearts. Say something that causes your firm embarrassment, as a senior hsbc executive did last month by making fun of apocalyptic warnings about climate change, and you will end up being disowned rather than lauded for authenticity. This column is named for a short story by Herman Melville, in which the eponymous character speaks his own truth by saying “I would prefer not to” to every single request made of him by his manager. He ends up dead. Any job that involves a uniform is by definition asking employees to subsume their personalities, not express them. When times are tough or performance is shoddy, an employee is an individual second and a line item in the budget first. If the circumstances require it, he will be asked to leave and take his whole self with him. As a result, the bringing of whole selves is carefully circumscribed. Candidates for jobs typically feel obliged to tell interviewers a few things about themselves in order to show that they are rounded human beings. Without fail those things are along the lines of “I have a dog called Casaubon, run a local food bank and love to go sea kayaking.” They are never “I hate animals, exercise and my fellow humans.” Lots of executives, too, deal in whole-selfery of a very synthetic kind. As a rule of thumb, if you are taking advice on how to be authentic, you are not being authentic. And if you are scheduling meetings in order to display vulnerability, you are mainly showing controlled cunning. One of the attractions of the workplace is that it is a place where there is a shared endeavour. That endeavour is called “work”. You need to be friendly to be a good colleague, but you don’t need to be friends. You need to be capable of empathy, but you don’t need to constantly emote. You have to turn up, try hard and play your part. You have to bring your role self. Read more from Bartleby, our columnist on management and work:The power of small gestures (May 28th)Making brainstorming better (May 21st)The woolliest words in business (May 14th) More