Corporate Purpose: A Social Judgement Perspective

Roy Suddaby (), Luca Manelli () and Ziyun Fan ()
Additional contact information
Roy Suddaby: Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8P 5C2, Canada; Carson College of Business, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99163; Liverpool University Management School, Liverpool University, Liverpool L3 5TR, United Kingdom; IAE Business School, Universidad Austral, Pilar, Argentina B1629WWA
Luca Manelli: School of Management, Politecnico di Milano, 20156 Milano, Italy
Ziyun Fan: School for Business & Society, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom

Strategy Science, 2023, vol. 8, issue 2, 202-211

Abstract: We apply the lens of social judgement theory to understand the causes and consequences of the growing debate about the purpose of the corporation. Our historical analysis suggests that the debate about corporate purpose is not new and that it tends to arise during periods of growing economic inequality. Our analysis also suggests that the discursive shift from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism will trigger a new standard of social evaluation of corporations in which we no longer judge corporate behavior based on standards of legitimacy but rather on standards of authenticity. We explore what this change in social evaluation will mean for corporate competition.

Keywords: corporate purpose; social value judgements; authenticity; legitimacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2023.0185 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orstsc:v:8:y:2023:i:2:p:202-211

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Strategy Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().