Which Characteristics of Purpose-driven Organisations Establish a Significant Impact?

Abstract

The increasing awareness and consciousness of today’s society towards a more sustainable and meaningful way of doing business, pressures organisations to rethink their business model. In this context, purpose-driven organisations play an important role as they are a living example of how businesses can be of a sustainable nature with a long-lasting and positive impact. Their relevance and unique characteristics should motivate academic research to further quantify the concept, however the inherent intangibility of corporate purpose poses challenges towards existing research, specifically towards the impacts of purpose-driven organisations on an empirical level. Through a holistic approach this thesis investigates which characteristics of purpose- driven organisations enable a positive impact based on a theoretical analysis. A structural relationship model was developed to be able to link the derived characteristics commitment of co-workers (CC), coherence between purpose and practice (CPP) and commitment of leadership (CL) to the derived impacts of environment and society (ESI) and culture and engagement (CEI). Subsequently, to determine the effects of the characteristics on the impacts of purpose-driven organisations, a multiple regression analysis was conducted. The results of the statistical analysis revealed that three out of the six predicted hypotheses were indicated as significant. Namely, that the characteristic commitment of co-workers has a positive effect on the environmental and societal impact and that the characteristic commitment of leadership and coherence between purpose and practice have positive effects on the cultural and engagement impact of purpose-driven organisations. Overall, the structural relationship model revealed unique relationships that organisations can leverage to their advantage.