Seeing Beyond the Here and Now: How Corporate Purpose Combats Corporate Myopia

Ju Young Lee (), Pratima Bansal () and Alice Mascena Barbosa ()
Additional contact information
Ju Young Lee: Ivey Business School, Western University, London, Ontario N6G 0N1, Canada
Pratima Bansal: Ivey Business School, Western University, London, Ontario N6G 0N1, Canada
Alice Mascena Barbosa: Ivey Business School, Western University, London, Ontario N6G 0N1, Canada

Strategy Science, 2023, vol. 8, issue 2, 302-310

Abstract: Corporations are currently confronting major, interlocking crises, including climate change, biodiversity loss, inequalities, and social isolation. When under threat, executives tend to focus inward and on the short term. This is particularly unfortunate because it is in such crises that executives need to see beyond the here and now in order to ride the storms. In this paper, we argue that corporate purpose helps organizations fight such myopia and offer four mechanisms through which this works: exposing new insights, seeing issues holistically, helping to sustain focus, and bringing unity and direction.

Keywords: corporate purpose; attentional myopia; short-termism; egocentrism; complexity; systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2023.0183 (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:302-310

Access Statistics for this article

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