As organisations increasingly articulate a broader societal purpose, questions remain about how such commitments are realised in everyday organisational life. Existing research has largely conceptualised purpose at the level of strategy, governance, or corporate communication, offering limited insight into its enactment in practice. Drawing on five qualitative case studies across diverse organisational forms in the UK, this paper conceptualises business purpose as a multidimensional, practice-based phenomenon. It examines how environmental, social, and workplace dimensions of purpose are configured and sustained through organisational practices integrating meanings, materials, and competences. The findings show that purpose is rarely experienced as a single orientation; rather, it emerges through interdependent practices. Purpose is most consequential where it is embedded in material arrangements, routines, and decision-making processes, and weaker where such alignment is partial or externally constrained. The paper shifts debate from formal statements to the situated practices through which purpose is enacted across people, planet, and profit.
Authors Anna Clover, Bridgette Wessels