The increasing institutionalization of corporate Purpose by the role of a Chief Purpose Officer signifies a pivotal transition in corporate priorities, emphasizing the imperative of Purpose-driven management. While the extant literature underscores the critical role of strategy in embedding Purpose in organizational frameworks, knowledge about the strategic practice of linking Purpose and strategy is scarce, and empirical studies are missing. Based on 44 in-depth interviews with a global sample across various industries and company sizes, our study is the first empirical investigation into the strategic practice of Purpose officers, predominantly Chief Purpose Officers. Grounded in the Strategy-as-Practice tradition, we address an inconsistency of current knowledge on strategifying work by considering the flat ontology perspective. We examine the strategic micro-foundations and identified four interrelated types of strategifying work: Cognitive Coupling, Relational Coupling, Material Coupling, and Cultural Coupling. The contributions of our study are threefold. First, we contribute to Strategy-as-Practice research by revealing the interdependence of different types of strategifying work and emphasizing their overlap and mutual influence. Second, we introduce a new type, cultural coupling, critical to facilitating the integration of Purpose as a fundamental component of the corporate ethos, the shared understanding of doing business. Third, we contribute to the emerging purpose literature by theorizing an incremental Purposefying framework and demonstrate how the role of a Purpose officer shapes the boundaries of organizational strategy. We discuss implications for research and practice.
