Organizational Purpose and the Governance of Philanthropic Foundations

Le résumé fourni par la source

Organizations increasingly adopt purpose that goes beyond shareholder-wealth maximization and addresses a broader common good. At the same time there is growing recognition that purpose can mean different things to different actors. Existing research stresses the importance of governance to effectively deploy purpose. However, our understanding of how organizations accomplish this is limited. We study purpose in philanthropic foundations – a prominent, yet hard-to-access type of purpose-driven organizations –, applying a non-normative, meta-contractual perspective to organizational governance. We conducted a multiple case study drawing on interviews, archival documentation, and workshops from 6 European philanthropic foundations. We show how core dimensions of meta-contractual governance – deliberation, speech acts and functional actions –, shape decision makers’ perceptions of purpose. Our primary contribution is to the literature of organizational purpose, by showing how governance practices facilitate or impede good governance from a value-neutral perspective.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.