Michael Pratt

Accounts and Accountability: Understanding Organizational Purpose by Exploring Its Links to Identity and Meaningful Work

11:24:46 meetings, fellow purpose scholars my name is Mike Pratt. i'm ready to talk about my P.

11:24:52 With Luke heading with the doctoral student here at Boston College, as you can see from the title page.

11:24:57 We're going to look at a content accountability and looking to really understand better the relationship between organizational purpose organizational identity and related constructs, and being able to work before we get there.

11:25:09 I might as well start with a little bit little bit of a controversy.

11:25:12 Perhaps is how important is is purpose to our field. So this is kind of we kind of throw this out in the beginning of paper.

11:25:19 We tend to think the purpose at least could be a very, very much of a root construct just like organizational identity. A re contract is something that's, you know, fundamental to the organizing process.

11:25:32 However, if you look at organization identity research you'll Mind that the research is there is is deep well connected, you know, well implanted in our field, very difficult to dislodge. research.

11:25:46 We think at present, as we would call more about fibrous root system.

11:25:50 Wide lot of connections, but easily uprooted.

11:25:55 So I wanna be, maybe get a chance to talk a little bit about the role of purpose in the broader field of the conference.

11:26:00 But moving on from that I want to get to what the purpose of the paper is, and they'll put an intended Perhaps it was.

11:26:06 We're gonna take a fourfold approach here? first we're gonna talk about what purpose is we're gonna suggest a very broad definition.

11:26:12 I'm gonna go back to barnard in that process

11:26:17 Secondly, we're going to build from our definition to I said, really link organizational purpose to both organizational identity related constructs which are image reputation as well as to meaningful work and it looking at purpose

11:26:32 in relationship to identity and in relationship to meaningful work, we can actually induce 2 very core functions of organizational purpose.

11:26:42 They were going to build from these core purposes to discuss 2 major pitfalls as well as major challenges with implementing organizational purpose.

11:26:49 And then we hope to conclude with some discussion about where to go from.

11:26:53 Here so beginning. What is purpose the table didn't really translate that ball to the powerpoint slide.

11:27:01 But we're gonna go through a lot of different definitions here.

11:27:06 And really gonna to the most important thing is we're going to go to Bernard Barnard said that organizational purpose was really associated with Monday.

11:27:15 Things like organizational goals as well as more aspirational ones.

11:27:20 Even moral ones as corporate purpose organizational purpose we're just gonna say purpose when the you know just to be concise here.

11:27:29 I purposes of involved it really has either taken on a purpose, is a goal or a common goal, which is very mundane.

11:27:37 Some people talk about purposes simply what the organization does more recently, though we've seen that you know shift in track my purpose is something more aspirational, more value based, brad rather than looking at purposes and either or

11:27:53 we're gonna be like to think of purpose, as something that bridges both the mundane and organization, such as the schools and the more moral, which is its values, aspirations, visions, etc., we're gonna look at organizational purposes and

11:28:05 our paper as an organizational claim. for Why, the work done in an organization is worth doing, and by looking into what what the organization does.

11:28:16 We're gonna link this organizational identity we're gonna argue that what organization does is both central to purpose and to identity, even though identity purpose of different constraints by looking at you work work doing

11:28:28 we're going to relate it to meaningful work in other words, why individuals find their work important or significant.

11:28:38 If you look at organizations organizational purpose in relation to other cost trucks.

11:28:44 As I said, just a little while ago, we started with what we do. As an organization, we can both derive an organizational purpose, which is why we exist, An organizational identity which is who we are These 2.

11:28:58 Cost. Trucks, we see is our coin can join, perhaps co-created, but certainly very much related to each other.

11:29:05 As well as we're organization or purpose. is tightly related to the meaningfulness of people find in the work that they do, or at least it can be.

11:29:15 There's a external identity whoever doesn't act independently.

11:29:21 In its relationship to purpose, his organizations will we'll talk about who we are and what we do, and they will relate to people outside the organization stakeholders and shareholders.

11:29:30 We refer to these as organizational images. These images influence, but perhaps not totally determined how other people see the organization which is organization, reputation, as we think about organizational purpose in relation to identity images, and reputation.

11:29:47 We start to see that one function of organizational purpose is accountability.

11:29:51 First internal accountability, the beauty which employees say, see an alignment between who we are and why we exist.

11:30:01 But this also has to be seen there an alignment between who we are, why we exist, and what a reputation is so!

11:30:09 Images, identity and purpose, and reputation, all need to be aligned, or those outside your organization to see a purpose as legitimate.

11:30:18 And just see it as authentic for lock of a better term.

11:30:25 Do we take these together as a whole? We can see that 1 one one core function, organization of purpose is accountability.

11:30:33 And just briefly, we're gonna use 2 examples in the paper a lot of mechanism where the organizational identity and reputation was in alignment and allowed them to move forward.

11:30:46 Strategy. i'm gonna look at something more like purpose washing where you know, mcdonald's comes out with the Mcplant the we project this at the organizational image and the organization sustainable But that doesn't really align with the

11:31:01 reputation. and so, people are unhappy.

11:31:04 So, but in both cases people are using purpose as a metric for which to a hold an organizational accountable.

11:31:12 Another function of organizational purpose is to provide accounts to people.

11:31:16 Why is your work worth doing? and a great paper by Drew Carton.

11:31:21 He looks at Nasa and looks at how people and Nasa were able to essentially link a core exploration for understanding the solar system down to very mundane tasks. like What a janitor does So the famous interview

11:31:35 with a Nasa gender during the moon watch, saying, You know what you know.

11:31:39 What is, What do you do with nasa and he says I'm putting a man on the month?

11:31:44 So second function, i'm envisioned to a accountability is to provide accounts as you move from accounts and accountability as function, we can see that something to go wrong, and the provision of these functions The first thing that could happen

11:31:59 is, they call the cynicism it's nickel with his cynicism happens when there is a failure to achieve accountability.

11:32:07 From your shareholders and stakeholders.

11:32:10 And this happens when reputation, image, identity, and purpose are not aligned.

11:32:16 So. in other words, You're saying stuff that we don't really believe Yes, or you may say that Mcdonald's Mcdonald's may may may claim that our purposes to be Sustainable but we've

11:32:26 seen you waste paper for years. Your reputation not very good

11:32:31 So therefore we're cynical another Pitfall and trying to implement a organization.

11:32:38 All organizational purposes employed disillusionment and the solution.

11:32:42 We could actually happen for 2 different reasons. One is that, similar to a equal to cynicism?

11:32:48 There could be a misalignment between who we are as an organization.

11:32:52 And what we do. So employees may not see that link between the stated purpose.

11:32:58 And who who do you think you organization is? How where there could also be a disconnect between what the organization's purpose is Well, how about?

11:33:07 I see my own personal task is Yes, I may be you may be an accountant person that may say accounting firm is all about ending apartheid when you look at your daily task, and say yeah I don't really see how what

11:33:21 i'm doing has any relationship to anything beyond or anything that grant is what your organization says.

11:33:26 We don't implementing and an acting purpose is made even more difficult because of 2 kind of core challenges that exist outside your organization.

11:33:39 And the first is just. a general lack of is institutional accountability in the broader institutional environment.

11:33:46 Because of that because we're people don't trust organizations in general.

11:33:51 It makes. it makes having an organization of purpose and and talking about organization of purpose difficult.

11:33:59 At least we're difficult for people to believe the second thing second challenge is it's just a broader sense of lack of standards, that and meaningful work literature.

11:34:11 We we talk a lot about the fact that it's really hard to know what makes work.

11:34:15 We're doing just briefly think about your day you're going home to your kids , there's partners, and they ask you do you have a good day and you have fraction it's like i'm not really

11:34:28 sure, because it's hard to know what makes the good work versus not and that, of course, is gonna make it more difficult for organization to provide a are really motivated or a strong account that allows people to justify where their work is working