How do organisations identify and enact purpose?

How can we drive connection between personal and organisational purpose, meaning and values? And how important are these issues in navigating an increasingly uncertain world?  

Last month the Australian Positive Organisational Scholarship (POS) Community of Practice (Aus POS CoP), hosted by UTS Business School in partnership with The Positivity Institute, held its fifth virtual event to tackle these issues. The ‘Aus POS CoP’ connects leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of Positive Psychology and Positive Organisational Scholarship (PP/POS) to discuss the latest research, teaching and practice in positive organising. 

Joining the annual webinar was internationally recognised expert Professor Emeritus Robert E. Quinn, Co-Founder of the Center for Positive Organizations, University of Michigan, and co-author of the widely acclaimed Harvard Business Review article, Creating a Purpose-Driven Organization (2018); Professor Carl Rhodes, Dean, UTS Business School and Corene Strauss, CEO, Australian Disability Network. Facilitating the conversation was Dr Rosemary Sainty (UTS Business School) and Dr Suzy Green (Positivity Institute). 

A number of timely insights emerged from the discussion. 

As an early proponent of organisational purpose Professor Robert Quinn has witnessed a misplaced assumption by organisational leaders - that people act solely out of self-interest rather than collective purpose. Without a shared sense of purpose, organisational silos or clusters of self-interest form, defaulting to ‘ego goals’ rather than ‘contribution goals’. 

Given the current climate of change and uncertainty in the Higher Education sector and beyond, Quinn believes the key role for organisational leaders is to continually clarify the purpose of the organisation. This is an ongoing project: “Purpose allows you to step into uncertainty, allows you to be an ‘adaptive innovative system’ moving from ego goals to contribution goals and the collective good”. However, this needs to be an authentic commitment lest organisational cynicism takes hold: “the highest purpose of a leader is to continually clarify the purpose.”

Professor Carl Rhodes has overseen a purpose-led strategy at UTS Business School – to become a socially committed business school, where business, education, and research can create a more just society. “There has been an assumption that society is there to serve business rather than business being there to serve society.” In a world where as many as 97% of young business professionals want a career with purpose (Gallup 2019), Rhodes recognises the responsibility business schools have, particularly at a time where there is a loss of trust in business. For example – the major consulting firms currently involved in a senate inquiry into the tax scandal. These are important discussions for the classroom. 

Corene Strauss, with a career in the not-for profit sector, identifies unity in the organisation as key to purpose. 

We co-design everything in our organization. This leads to transformative and collective good. Every day, when there may be a challenge, we remind ourselves that if we can build the confidence of one more Australian to welcome, include as a person with disability in the workplace and as a customer, then we've nailed it. It's one more person, and that is our purpose. That's my lighthouse. 

Quinn sees all this as a moral endeavour. “There's a transformative shift that's necessary where you care enough that you take a risk, begin to see and articulate the collective good - which is the purpose”.  And for Quinn himself: “My purpose is to inspire positive change”.