Call for Papers

The purpose of business organizations is attracting the attention of important practitioners and academic organizations such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the World Economic Forum, the US Business Roundtable, and the Academy of Management. We argue that an important reason for this interest is that, beginning with the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, grand challenges such as the COVID-19 health crises, the Ukraine-Russian war, the environmental crises, poverty, and socio-economic inequality have exposed serious flaws in the institutions of modern capitalism in general and the purpose of business organizations in particular (Rocha et al., 2021; Rocha et al., 2022; Suddaby et al., 2023).
 
Perhaps most critically, these crises has inverted the assumptive logic of neoliberalism which places economic interests at the base of our implicit hierarchy of needs and consigns health, related humanitarian needs, and, ultimately, happiness to the secondary status of epiphenomena.
 
These crises fundamentally challenge the prevailing assumptions of corporate market capitalism, that is, profit as the fundamental purpose of business (Friedman, 1970), opportunism as the key feature of managers’ behavior (Jensen & Meckling, 1976), and competition as the key process for reaching prosperity (Porter, 1998). There are more profound ontological 'givens' such as human dignity (Pirson et al., 2016) than the right to earn profits.
 
These challenges hold serious implications for the role of business schools and management education. For some time now, business schools have been subject to considerable criticism for their failure to lead the process of normative change in a context where the ontological assumptions of capitalism have become increasingly suspect. In particular, there has been a growing concern that management education places excessive emphasis on profit maximization at the expense of societal wellbeing and concern for the natural environment (Ghoshal, 2005; Pfeffer, 2005), that prevailing management theories and business school education actually reinforce negative social values of greed and self-interest (Wang & Murnighan, 2011; Rocha & Ghoshal, 2006), and that business schools have been complicit actors in a long list of prominent corporate scandals (Podolny, 2009). Management education appears to have lost its soul and purpose (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005; Khurana, 2007; Murcia et al., 2018).
 
Thus, we see these challenges as an opportunity to create a reflective space to revisit the core assumptions of business organizations, including business schools, and rethink the foundational institutions of capitalism.
 
The aim of this sub-theme is to revisit and re-imaging the purpose of businesses organizations as both a phenomenon and concept. To this aim, we accept papers that explore any of the following questions:

• What might be the foundational values of a market system that works for all citizens? How can we reform the assumptive primacy of economic success over social and humanitarian wellbeing? How does the existence of specific institutional networks such as the UN Global Compact for Businesses, the Principles for Responsible Management Education, and the Responsible Research in Business and Management newtork contribute to more meaningful and more humanitarian organizations? What more can be done to better integrate the whole human being and intermediate organizations with the institutional tools of global capitalism?

• What might be the purpose of business organizations in such a market system? How can companies make the new statement of purpose of the US Business Roundtable a reality beyond rhetoric? How do we make corporations serve the interests of their stakeholders? How can we reform the narrow and essentialist assumptions of human behavior that have driven our models of corporate governance? Should the purpose of the firm go beyond wealth creation?

• What might be the purpose of business schools related to the purpose of business organizations? What is their role in redefining the assumptions of capitalism? How can business schools introduce an ethos of humanitarianism into management education?

• What are the necessary epistemological assumptions for a re-imagined purpose of business organizations (Rohtbart, 1998; Singleton & Strait, 1999; Whetten, 1989)?

• What are the necessary ethical assumptions related to the purpose of business organizations (Laird, 1946; Whetstone, 2001; Arjoon, 2007; Mele, 2019)?

• What are the necessary theoretical assumptions and theories that shed light on the the purpose of business (Christensen et al. 1979; Andrews, 1980; 1989; Porter, 1981)?

References

• Bennis, W. G., & O'Toole, J. (2005). How business schools have lost their way. Harvard Business Review, 83(5), 96-104.

• Friedman, M. (1970). A Friedman doctrine: The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. The New York Times Magazine, 13(1970), 32-33.
• George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., Tihanyi, L. 2016. Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6): 1879-1894.
• Ghoshal, S. (2005). Bad management theories are destroying good management practices. Academy of Management learning & education, 4(1), 75-91.
• Khurana, R. (2007). From higher aims to hired hands: The social transformation of American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession. Princeton University Press.
• Jensen, M. C., & Meckling, W. H. (1976). Agency Costs and the Theory of the Firm. Journal of financial economics, 3(4), 305-360.
• Murcia, M. J., Rocha, H. O., & Birkinshaw, J. (2018). Business schools at the crossroads? A trip back from Sparta to Athens. Journal of Business Ethics, 150(2), 579-591
• Pfeffer, J. (2005). Why do bad management theories persist? A comment on Ghoshal. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4(1), 96-100.
• Pirson, M., Goodpaster, K., & Dierksmeier, C. 2016. Guest Editors’ Introduction: Human Dignity and Business. . Business Ethics Quarterly, 26(4).
• Porter, M. E. (2008). On competition. Harvard Business Press.
• Rocha, H. O., & Ghoshal, S. (2006). Beyond self‐interest revisited. Journal of Management Studies, 43(3), 585-619.
• Rocha, H., Pirson, M., & Suddaby, R. (2021). Business with purpose and the purpose of business schools: Re-imagining capitalism in a post pandemic world: A conversation with Jay Coen Gilbert, Raymond Miles, Christian Felber, Raj Sisodia, Paul Adler, and Charles Wookey. Journal of Management Inquiry, 30(3), 354-367.
• Rocha, HO; Sachs, Jeffrey; Mintzberg, Henry; Suddaby, Roy; Pirson, Michael; Hollensbe, Elaine; Phan, Phil (2022). "The Purpose of Business Organizations and Business Schools Revisited." Academy of Management Proceedings 2022(1): 16378. Academy of Management Symposium 2022.
• Suddaby, R., Manelli, L., & Fan, Z. (2023). Corporate purpose: A social judgement perspective. Strategy Science.
• Wang, L., & Murnighan, J. K. (2011). On greed. Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 279-316.