Back in the day, the day being sometime circa Mad Men, Corporate America’s vocabulary didn’t include this title phrase. They knew who they were and they knew how to represent themselves to the public. The American Public had a solid picture of Corporate America as a bunch of suits sitting at a far-reaching, polished mahogany table, smoking cigars and nodding at the chart showing the upward grade the company’s sales were taking. Now, smoking is prohibited in most boardrooms, and cutbacks hit the upkeep of mahogany early on, making the table’s surface less reflective. Perhaps, this foggier visage looking up at them at board meetings, beyond being symbolic, is part of the current identity crisis affecting Corporate America.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a stalwart old-establishment trade group and one of the most powerful business lobbies in Washington, opposes legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and has even suggested that global warming, now regarded as a significant problem by most scientists who have studied it, doesn’t exist. The chamber probably feels it is fulfilling its historic mission to keep government out of business’s way. But not so fast, USS U.S. Chamber of Commerce there are some pretty prominent icons of big business jumping ship, and there are those that are staying on board only to potentially cause a mutiny.

Apple and three big utilities, Exelon, PNM Resources, and PG&E, have resigned from the chamber in protest of its stance on global warming. Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, and Nike have said the chamber doesn’t represent their views on the issue either, though they’ve remained as members. It’s certainly true that from time to time individual firms with particular constituencies break ranks with industry at large. But Apple, J&J, GE, and Nike are weather-vane firms that reflect broader societal trends, and this feels like a pivotal shift, not a passing parochial moment. The Mad Men running the Chamber of Commerce are stuck in a time warp.

Navigating through the storm of climate change is tricky enough, but added to this trial big business is also faced with the Scylla and Charybdis of Healthcare and Financial Reform. The central question on healthcare reform isn’t whether we need it. It’s who will pay for it, and businesses don’t want to. Industry groups like the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Federation of Independent Business will only allow a tepid support of healthcare reform. They acknowledge the obvious problem of backbreaking costs, and support only reforms that will unambiguously benefit their member companies—like better information technology or more competition among insurance companies—while fighting measures that would impose costs, like a tax on the most generous insurance plans or a requirement that businesses provide health insurance. So they’ve become marginalized players mainly fighting against the most important proposals in Congress—the ones that would come up with ways to cover more people and eventually drive down costs.

Corporate leaders are just as tortured about how to fix the cratered financial system. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups fiercely oppose the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency that President Obama has proposed. The banking industry—intact thanks only to billions in taxpayer loans—is fighting pay caps, tougher regulations, and other fixes meant to rein in the banker-barons and prevent another financial collapse.

A few corporate bosses see the folly of telling politicians and their laid-off constituents, “Don’t worry; trust us.” Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein pulled his head out of the corporate sand recently to endorse some limits on bankers’ pay. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has called for the elimination of golden parachutes and other excessive perks, along with a few other reforms. But Blankfein and Dimon—smart cookies whose firms were among the first to return federal bailout money—know that they’re likely to get whacked with new rules no matter what, and accepting modest reforms might be a way to pre-empt more onerous ones. Many of their colleagues are less enlightened, and the stage is set for a huge battle between politicians out for blood (and headlines) and bankers who believe with religious zeal that government intrusion will wreck their industry and bring Western civilization to a screeching halt.

Dissension is sometimes mistakenly viewed as a bad thing. It often indicates progress. The ’60s were a messy time, but out of the froth came the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Head Start, and the Clean Water Act of 1972, all of which faced bitter opposition at some point but are generally viewed years later as key moments of progress.

The splintering of corporate politics today could likewise indicate that important watershed moments lie ahead. Big business has logrolled many environmental initiatives over the years, but at some point it will simply be good business to line up with public sentiment and support change. Opposition to a public healthcare option or other reforms controversial now could end up looking as retrograde as opposition to the initial concept for Medicare (by groups as august as the American Medical Association, which ultimately changed its view). And it’s stunning that anybody on Wall Street has the gall to oppose reforms after institutionalized greed wrecked the entire economy. But a herd mentality shifts only when a few rogues start to move in a different direction and a few others follow them. That’s happening now.

This article was inspired and includes portions of Corporate America’s Identity Crisis by Rick Newman which appeared on U.S. News and World Report online, 10.07.2009