Editorial: Advancing Social Purpose in Organizations: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Abstract

Currently, there are many skeptics questioning the credibility of the Business Roundtables’s pledge and commitment to build and deliver transparent socially responsible corporate governance that delivers value for all stakeholders’ future success in business, communities, and country. Rodríguez-Vilá and Bharadwaj suggest that changing course on a firm’s social purpose is difficult and ill-advised because success depends on the legitimacy of the brand’s claim. Consequently, inconsistent social purpose claims may raise stakeholder doubts about the firm’s integrity or commitment to social purpose. For instance, “social responsibility could be employed for stakeholder social governing power and economic benefits, rather than societal good” (Thiel, p. 1). Alternatively, Donaldson and Walsh propose there is no theory of the firm that can serve us well when we attempt to understand the purpose or place of business in society. The authors develop the beginnings of a theory of business that is both empirical and normative to highlight collective value. Clearly, social purpose in organizations is an underdeveloped topic. This Research Topic aims to advance social purpose in organizations to better understand how to connect the collective value link between the organization and society. The 13 articles in this Research Topic contribute to the literature for advancing social purpose in organizations through research studies from different sectors, industries, countries, and cultures. These studies are expected to deepen interdisciplinary knowledge on social purpose in organizations and lay a foundation for interested scholars to undertake in their future inquiries.