Making Purpose the Core Work of Business Leadership: A Guiding Framework

Responsible leadership is a systemic, integrative, and collaborative process of value generation through the responsible use of resources. Building on the notion of ‘Good Dividends’, this chapter seeks to show how positive social impact can become the heart of a company's model by encouraging busines leaders to build a metaphorical purpose-driven organizational house. The ‘House model’ aligns purpose, vision, stories, and values (i.e. ‘the blue steps’) with strategy, action, and measurement (‘the red steps’). Four cornerstones of this House must be established in order to realize purpose-led good dividends: (#1) Appreciating the grand challenges that face humanity to stimulate moral outrage for leadership purpose; (#2) A (re)framing of capitalism to fully serve the fiduciary duty of business leaders to shareowners; (#3) Pursuing responsible leadership to realize the fiduciary duty; and (#4) Cultivating a desire for virtue practices that are aligned with meaningful work. An illustrative example is provided of an SME owner manager's development of his own business as a House. The chapter concludes with a call for collaborative action between researchers and organizational leaders to develop four key outputs: a strong evidence base; the development of illuminating and instructive case studies; provide collective support to finally leave behind yesterday's assumptions of the great neo-liberal trade-off; and finally, to make positive social impact a cornerstone of every business model.