Executives with lingering doubts about the importance of sociopolitical issues to business will surely be convinced by this year's eye-catching McKinsey Quarterly survey on the topic. It's not just that an overwhelming majority of the respondents acknowledged a wider role for corporations than just maximizing investor returns, though this finding is remarkable in itself. More striking still is the way participants in our online poll saw environmental concerns, the offshoring debate, data protection, and other sensitive matters as potential threats to the creation of value and frankly conceded that their companies handled these issues poorly.

Although lobbying—often behind closed doors—is as old as business itself, high-level and concerted corporate activism in the social and political arena has been conspicuous by its absence. That deficiency, executives tell us, is the result of short-term financial pressures, a lack of familiarity with the issues, and the sense that specialists in the public-affairs and legal departments handle this sort of thing.

Such thinking, we believe, is dangerous and wrong headed. Business leaders must become involved in sociopolitical debate not only because their companies have so much to add but also because they have a strategic interest in doing so. Social and political forces, after...