336: Making Sense of Corporate Purpose: Charting New Conversations and Perspectives (20092)

Saturday, August 10, 2024

11:00 – 14:30 CT (GMT-5/UTC-5)

Location: Fairmont: International Ballroom

Session Number: 336
PDW (workshop)
Orientation: International,Theme,Research
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/yKQ6rB

Organizer(s)

RF

Ricardo Gabriel Flores

U. of Victoria, Canada
LM

Luca Manelli

Politecnico di Milano, Italy
DC

David Chandler

U. of Colorado Denver, United States

Panelist(s)

MK

Matthew Kraatz

U. of Illinois, United States
JA

Juan Almandoz

IESE Business School
MB

Marya Besharov

Oxford U., Saïd Business School, United Kingdom
CM

Claudine Madras Gartenberg

The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania, United States
DC

David Chandler

U. of Colorado Denver, United States
RD

Rodolphe Durand

HEC Paris, France

This workshop seeks to use the momentum generated by a recent special issue on corporate purpose (Ocasio, Kraatz, & Chandler, 2023) to spur new ideas around this concept and phenomenon. In particular, the goal is to explore ideas at the intersection of two interrelated analytical perspectives on corporate purpose: inside-out (io), the meaningful, value-laden reason for being of a specific corporation, and outside-in (oi), the externally-imposed expectations bestowed upon corporations by society and stakeholders (Almandoz, 2023). Despite the widespread use and leveraging of corporate purpose among practitioners, the body of conceptual and empirical research to understand this phenomenon remains emerging at best. In response, the proposed PDW assumes the inherent tensions between the io/oi perspectives as a starting point for discussion. Then, it seeks to build on it to provide fresh new theoretical insights that can form the foundation for impactful research on corporate purpose at the intersection of organization theory and strategy. To do this, most of this PDW will be dedicated to roundtable sessions where junior scholars and doctoral students will present their emerging research on purpose and have the chance to receive feedback from eminent scholars in the field.