Companies that fail to mandate the jab risk ‘delegitimising’ vaccine

Business leaders need to mandate the Covid-19 vaccine in order to normalise the process in the broader society.

Coronavirus vaccines need to be seen as the social norm.

Now that the US Food and Drug Administration has fully approved Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine and President Joe Biden has urged companies to require vaccination, many American leaders will grapple with what to do. In making their decisions, there’s a larger societal calculation they should consider: the role their organisation can play in normalising or delegitimising getting vaccinated.

Vaccine hesitancy is a growing social problem. In 2019, the World Health Organisation declared it a top 10 threat to global health, with clear economic implications. What business leaders decide about Covid-19 vaccine mandates will go a long way towards fostering the social norms that can mitigate or exacerbate this pandemic.

This power that leaders have is missing from the debate about vaccine mandates.

Both proponents and opponents seem stuck on the legalistic view that mandates compel people to get vac­cinated. But this ignores the potent symbolic value that mandates provide, especially in times of intense societal flux.

We face a novel disease, and we’re armed with a new vaccine created using a novel approach. With Covid-19 surging around the world and new variants emerging, we also face unprecedented uncertainty. This combination of novelty and uncertainty means societal understandings of what we are or should be doing are up for grabs. Therefore, the faster we firmly establish social norms that uphold public health (for example, getting vaccinated), the faster they become taken-for-granted ways to behave, and the faster we bring the pandemic under control.

Here’s how company vaccine mandates can play a forceful norm-setting role.

The social problem we face is what social scientists call social mobilisation. Social mobilisation involves getting large numbers of people to perform a behaviour that is beneficial only when done by the vast majority of people.

Recycling is a quintessential example. If only one person recycles, their efforts are negligible. But if millions of people recycle, there are tremendous environmental benefits. The same logic holds for vaccination – the real benefit occurs only when the overwhelming majority of the population is vaccinated. To address a range of social problems, the task is to get a significant number of people to engage in certain behaviours.

Research shows that social norms play a critical role in social mobilisation. This is because social norms contain “normative information” about what people are or ought to be doing.

When people see certain behaviours (for example, getting vaccinated) as commonplace, they then believe there is widespread agreement that the behaviour is the good or right thing to do and they are likelier to act in accordance with the social norm.

And here’s where mandates come in. Mandates and laws not have only a legal function (“you are required to do X”) but also a symbolic function (signalling that “doing X is a natural thing to do”).

What keeps most of us from committing crimes is not constantly thinking about the rules and the punishments we may suffer for breaking them.

Rather, we automatically do things that feel normal. Take seat belts; most of us wear them not because we’re afraid of being punished for violating the law but because doing so has become natural. As sociological research has documented, laws and regulations help create social norms and shared understanding because it’s societal institutions – governments, schools and businesses – that collectively construct the world we take for granted.

In essence, through their policies, approaches and procedures, social institutions help create a world where certain things become unquestioned.

When a company mandates vaccinations, the normative information they provide is that these vaccinations are safe and effective, and that getting vaccinated is widely accepted and done. As more companies mandate vaccines, across time this becomes the shared understanding, and getting vaccinated becomes the default choice for employees and customers. Conversely, when companies don’t mandate vaccination, it delegitimises the vac­cines by suggesting the science is unsettled and that waiting is prudent.

When companies such as Southwest and American Airlines do not mandate vaccination, it signals an institutional lack of confidence in the vaccines. In turn, this stance fuels vaccine hesitancy among the 30 per cent of unvaccinated adults in the US, preventing the social mobilisation needed to bring the pandemic under control. These companies become part of the problem.

Some leaders may be hesitant to enter the fray on vaccination, viewing it as a political issue. Yet companies have long led on important social issues, collectively constructing social norms through their policies and actions.

For example, the early adoption of domestic partner benefits by corporations helped to normalise same-sex marriage. Companies have taken stances on climate change and opposing voter suppression efforts in the US state of Georgia.

These stances reinforce and uphold important norms such as protecting the environment and supporting human rights. Indeed, the notion of “apolitical” management is a myth that has been widely discredited.The truth is that the politicisation of our time requires leaders to take stances because failing to do so will allow anti-science and anti-democratic efforts to spread.

To bring the pandemic under control, almost everyone needs to see getting vaccinated as the unquestioned, right thing to do for themselves and for others. By establishing and diffusing social norms that uphold science, vaccine mandates can help do that.

Marianne Cooper is a senior research scholar, VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab, Stanford University. Maxim Voronov is a professor of organisation studies, Schulich School of Business, York University.

Copyright 2021 Harvard Business Review/Distributed by NYTimes Syndicate