Management in crisis: without purpose there is no future
Article dedicated to the theme of Purpose, published in Sviluppo&associazione, n. 319-2025
Stefania ContesiniPhilosophy & Business Unit Coordinator, Vita-Salute San Raffaele UniversityFederico FrattiniDean, Polimi Graduate School of ManagementJosip KotlarFull Professor of Strategy, Innovation and Family Business, Polytechnic of MilanRoberto MordacciFull Professor of Moral Philosophy, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University
In an era marked by growing uncertainty, multiple crises and constant volatility, both in society and in markets, businesses are facing unprecedented challenges. Global economic crises, geopolitical tensions, health emergencies and rapid technological advances have made the competitive context extremely unstable and complex. Innovation dynamics accelerate, traditional business models are questioned and stakeholder expectations change rapidly. In this turbulent scenario, companies can no longer rely exclusively on strategies based on linear forecasts, short-term objectives and rigid planning systems. The volatility of the markets and the complexity of the challenges require a greater ability to adapt and a deeper, more critical and aware vision of one's activities. It therefore becomes essential for companies to refocus on the why of their actions, i.e. on the meaning that guides their actions and decisions.
At the same time, the crisis is not only related to the external, social or market context. The depth of this crisis also leads to a rediscussion of the management theories and models that have guided business strategies in recent decades and which seem to have entered into crisis. However, some dogmas still persist, resulting from schools of thought and scientific contexts that are in many cases outdated, which lead companies to unreflectively and uncritically embrace certain objectives and lines of action. These dogmas manifest themselves in managerial practices focused exclusively on short-medium term profit maximization, exasperated internal competition, rigid organizational structures and hierarchical decision-making systems. The persistence of these beliefs hinders the evolution of companies, preventing them from adapting effectively to new market realities.
It therefore becomes fundamental today to bring out these dogmas and analyze them in light of the contradictions they have produced, guided by a critical-constructive thought capable of indicating the way to overcoming them. This approach allows us to question the basic assumptions that have guided managerial practices so far, paving the way for new perspectives and models more suited to the current context.
Management philosophy is in crisis
Every practice, and therefore also that of management, has its own philosophy, that is, it is based on a construct of knowledge, theories, models and ways of proceeding oriented towards goals. This philosophy, as well as its aims, often remains implicit, but this does not mean it ceases to be active in producing results, actions and discourses. It is precisely this implicit philosophy that determines how an organization interprets its role in the world, how it makes decisions and how it interacts with its stakeholders.
Bringing this philosophy to light means recognizing that there is a need to raise the issue againpurposeof corporate action, i.e. its meaning and value. The implicit generative power ofpurposecan represent a key to formulating and experimenting with new management and business models.
The concept ofpurpose, as observed by Professor Claudine Gartenberg, has deep roots in organizational theory, emerging already at the beginning of the 20th century with Mary Parker Follett, who described it as the "invisible leader" of organizations. This thought was then further developed by scholars such as Chester Barnard and Philip Selznick, who considered thepurposea fundamental mechanism for overcoming collective action problems and defining organizational success. In recent decades, however, it has been relegated to the margins of discussions in the organizational field, while paradigms centered on economic objectives and rigorous and rational decision-making approaches prevailed. Only recently, thanks to the growing emphasis placed on the importance of intangible assets, such as human and relational capital, has thepurposehas regained centrality, being recognized as a critical factor for the competitiveness of businesses and their social impact.
Today, thepurposeis a topic of great interest and, at the same time, highly controversial. On the one hand, numerous empirical studies show that apurposewell-defined and authentically implemented can improve the economic-financial performance of an organization, especially when accompanied by clarity and consistency in management. On the other hand, the debate is made complex by the criticisms that are seen in thepurposea concept often exploited to justify the failure to achieve economic objectives, as highlighted in recent attacks on business models that emphasize thepurposeto the detriment of the growth of economic results.
This tension reflects a broader cultural shift, well described by Roy Suddaby, according to which corporate legitimacy is increasingly judged on the basis of authenticity and consistency with commitments to stakeholders, rather than on exclusive adherence to traditional economic standards. Therefore, thepurposeis not just a question of corporate communication, but a fundamental dimension that intersects strategy, governance and sustainability, and which requires critical attention from both scholars and managers. Recognize the generative power ofpurposein the formulation of new management models it means understanding that companies are not simply machines for generating profit, but social actors with a responsibility towards the community and towards history. Thepurposethus becomes the fulcrum around which to build strategies, processes and organizational cultures.
Purpose as a new philosophy for management
The proposal of a new management philosophy revolves around the notion ofpurpose. This is a notion that, in recent years, has attracted growing attention and raised profound questions, particularly among those organizations that do not consider the company an exclusively economic actor aimed solely at generating profit, but experience it first and foremost as a social actor with significant responsibilities towards a broader audience of stakeholders. A crucial moment in this debate was the announcement of the Business roundtable in 2019, which redefined thepurposeof the company, moving it from the mere maximization of shareholder value towards a broader commitment to promoting an economy that serves the interests of all stakeholders. The notion ofpurpose, which we can translate as "sense", actually has roots not only in the recent debate on management, but above all in a broader cultural framework. In philosophy, the idea oftèlos, that is, of purpose which is not only objective but also value, is the cornerstone of Aristotle's philosophy. In fact, it is precisely in Aristotelian philosophy that the idea that guided the entire scientific and cultural development of the West was developed, that is, the thesis according to which having a purpose means aiming to achieve a value. Only by recovering the profound truth of this thesis can the economic and industrial culture of the West relaunch its competitive capabilities and provide a qualitatively unique contribution to global development.
The good, says Aristotle in the first book ofNicomachean Ethics, is "that towards which everything tends": the very definition of what has value is given by the fact that reality - that is, people, living beings, entities, communities - is in tension towards what makes it happen, that is, what gives meaning to its dynamism. In the action itself what is the reason, the motive and the meaning is written. Thus, for example, offering a consultancy service is an activity whose reason is the fact that people may not have all the skills necessary to carry out a certain type of complex activity, which requires additional skills. Consultancy is offered because one of the purposes of human action is to act in concert, that is - as Hannah Arendt claimed - to acquire the power to do things that we are only able to do through non-competitive collaboration. It's not just about achieving objectives, it's about being able to do as best as possible what was deemed important to do and which has value first and foremost for those who do it. There is no good defined before or outside the action. Good is what defines the action itself, its 'reason for being' and its 'meaning', precisely. The meaning thus defined is also the placement of the action performed within the framework of human existence, its value compared to other practices, its meaning in the complex network of human activities. This places it on the horizon not only of economic action, but also of history, culture and politics.
The guiding principle of human activity
The complex notion ofpurpose, precisely because it is not at all reducible toaim, goal, mission or vision, tries to capture this profound meaning of organizational action: it is not the objectives - achieved or not - that define the value of what is done, but the fact that that activity expresses the human ability to transform the world and to define oneself through this transformation.
Of course, the objectives constitute the test of how we have tried to achieve a value, but if the activity is in itself relevant for human beings, it does not depend exclusively on the objectives to make sense. Medicine is not defined by the outcome of healing. If this were the case, patients would be abandoned when the therapies to cure them are not available. Thepurpose, that is, the meaning of medicine is care, that is, a relationship that expresses the mutual interest of humans, solidarity with suffering and the offer of solid skills in the attempt to heal and - regardless of the latter - in the promise not to abandon, to take care, precisely. The treatment does not always obtain 'results', but this does not mean it loses its meaning. And Medicine, like other professional and productive practices, has general human meaning because it responds to radical and unavoidable needs. It has history and makes history because it is part ofpurposecaring for each other is human. If at thatpurposeis replaced - as happens too often - with the measurement of exclusively economic, performance or management objectives, the meaning of medical practice is bent to logics different from what defines it. The objectives, including economic ones, take on meaning and are measured in relation to the overall meaning of a practice. Isolated, they have no value.
Thus, every productive activity and every service offering has, in its specific object, the meaning of its own doing. The exclusively economic interpretation of the concept of work, and therefore of productive activity, is challenged at its roots by the introduction of the idea ofpurpose. And this challenge does not come from outside, for example from philosophy, but from a search for meaning that has made its way into management, in practice as well as in theory. Thepurposerecords a crisis in the very conception of productive activity and, at the same time, offers an opening towards deeper dimensions of 'value', it asks a question about the meaning of every single organizational activity in relation to the existence of each one, inside and outside the organisation.
Every phase of a process, every step, every planned and measured activity, is not just a means to an external end. It is an end in itself, as long as it is placed in a rational way in relation to the whole and as long as its value and importance are clearly present to those who carry it out. If there is no sharing not only of the overall meaning, but also of the meaning of each fraction of the common activity, it is not possible to find meaning in one's work activity. Connecting a portion of a complex activity with the meaning of human history may seem like an impossible task or a sterile theoretical exercise, but it is unavoidable if we do not want to empty the existence of those who carry it out of meaning and value.
The new management philosophy arises from the appropriation of this profound challenge: that of investigating, for every human activity, the particular meaning in relation to a possible general, if not even universal, value.
The directions of change
Directly linked to the notion ofpurposethere are some organizational concepts and themes that constitute the main guidelines through which it is possible to reconfigure the new management philosophy. We have identified four: values, meaning, time/space and innovation, which we consider important also by virtue of their mutual reference and qualification of each other. This is, however, an evidently open list.
Value, values
If thepurposeis to be understood as intrinsic to the practice of each company - its why, its reason for being - then the values, or 'what is worthy of commitment, what is worth pursuing' represent the privileged path through which it is expressed in organizational practices.
Companies have been committed to values for some time. The first reflections on sustainability date back to the 1970s, with the Club of Rome Report, Edward Freeman published the stakeholder theory in the mid-1980s, but it was from the 1990s that the trend of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) established itself. However, if we want to be effective, the way we relate to values must be rethought.
First of all, it is necessary to review the custom that identifies value, in the singular, as a purely economic value (profit, capital), distinct - but it would be better to say opposed - to values, in the plural, to be understood as ethical values, external to the heart of the economic enterprise. The latter, even today, are too often considered the weapon - blunt from the start, if used in this sense - to keep the animal spirits of capitalism in check. The idea that CSR, and with it all its subsequent declinations, is not so much the implementation of actions and tools (with the related costs) aimed at containing illicit or non-optimal behavior for the life of the company, but rather a global vision of management and value generation and an opportunity to innovate, is struggling to take hold.
A similar criticism has also been leveled at the concept of shared value proposed by Porter and Kramer (2011): this, although it is proposed as overcoming the trade-off between economic values and social values, would still be based on an instrumental logic. According to this criticism, in fact, profit maximization, which Corporate Shared Value (CSV) apparently left behind, continues to be the only normative criterion for doing business, while social needs remain the means for economic success (Berschorner and Hajduck, 2017).
It is therefore necessary to overturn this conception and be convinced that the generation of value, in the singular, or the production of economic, social and cultural well-being for the community, can only be achieved with the competition, mutual integration and co-belonging of a plurality of values. This plurality includes, in addition to economic values, productive values, i.e. those that make goods and services quality products, aesthetically appreciable and transparent (as the ancients would say, made to perfection). But it's not enough. To give shape to the overall value that a company founded onpurposecan achieve, it is necessary that what is produced and the profitability to which one aspires, the economic and productive goods, are also done 'well', that is, in compliance with those values that we call ethical: responsibility, trust, authenticity, care and integrity (Contesini and Mordacci, 2018).
It is clear that this approach excludes that way of relating to values which, on the one hand, considers them abstract ideals, good but almost unattainable, and on the other interprets them as mere information to be communicated or, in the best of cases, to be transformed into behavioral instructions to be given to one's collaborators. We forget that the instructions are only valid in the case of technical and operational procedures, while values require something else to be embraced.
First of all, they ask to be understood in their cultural and practical meanings, so that people can grasp their virtues, but also the possible contradictions, keeping in mind the commitment required to achieve them. Because fromlogosbecomeethos, that is, for values to be alive in practices, they must 'seduce' us on a cognitive level, with good reasons, and, on an affective level, thanks to the emotions and desire that they can arouse (in this regard we could speak of an erotics of value). In fact, when values are only mentioned or understood superficially, there is no obligation for them to function or a legal sanction to be imposed, as happens with other rules. Acting on value, ultimately, is left to the free choice of the individual and his judgment regarding when, how and why in a given situation it is appropriate to be responsible, to trust, to be transparent, and so on. Understanding the need to consider values in their plurality, as well as knowing how to recognize the best ways for them to be realized, is an essential skill for mature management of a company that wants to be founded onpurpose.
Sense and meaning
Recognizing and acting on values constitutes privileged access to meaning, or to the second of the facilitating conditions for creating a new management philosophy. But what do we mean by meaning? It is repeated in many quarters that people, beyond the role they play, need meaning, they want to find meaning in what they do. The data onengagementand well-being (it would be better to say updisengagementand malaise) just published in the new Gallup 2024 report, continue to be disheartening: “In 2023, global employee engagement remained stagnant and overall employee well-being declined.” Managers seem to suffer from this condition the most. Faced with a growing demand for meaning, the responses implemented by companies often do not seem to address the problem at its root. According to data emerging from the Purpose in action Observatory of the Polytechnic of Milan, only one company in three has formalized apurposeclear and integrated into its strategies. This highlights a significant discrepancy between the importance attributed to the concept and its concrete implementation. One of the reasons for this gap is the difficulty of grasping the multiple facets of a concept that appears as evident as it is elusive, requiring an approach to address the topic that is not only strategic, but also cultural and humanistic.
Therefore, an effective response from companies must necessarily involve a radical reflection on the theme of meaning. First of all, we must be careful not to overlap it with the equally important concept of well-being, understood as the satisfaction of individual, material and symbolic preferences, from the economic benefit to the yoga course. In fact, if we keep the concept of the as our compasspurposeand values as inscribed in organizational practices, then the meaning must be found, or rather produced, within those same actions and their purposes and not projected into collateral activities. We must be able to live it in what we do, in the potential foreseen by our role and in the relationships that accompany this doing. Not that the outside doesn't matter, in fact for a long time work represented above all a tool for satisfying needs and desires external to the work itself. A function that still remains valid, although reduced in its possibilities of being satisfied, but which if considered as the only lever is not sufficient to give meaning to work and, indeed, risks transforming it into a routine from which to escape as soon as possible.
For there to be meaning, an essential condition must first be met: what we do must refer to something that has value not only for the individual, but for an extended 'us'. By need for meaning we mean, in fact, the typically human need to insert individual existence into a broader context than the immediate sphere of action. What I do must be able to be connected, directly or indirectly, with the general purpose of the organization and society, as responses to the needs that impose themselves on human existence as such. Every operation of meaning entails that the meaning is given at the same time in the here and now of the action and in its elsewhere, as if there were threads that connect it to something that transcends it and that connects each person to each other. In general, asking ourselves the question of meaning therefore consists in dealing with what is important, with questions that have a personal and collective existential value, in seeking a profound understanding of things and in being able to act towards their realization by making the best use of our abilities.
It is true that the last word in finding sensible or senseless what one does belongs to the individual, as the hierarchy of values and purposes that everyone places as relevant for themselves represents a free choice based on their individual life projects. On the other hand, there are objective/enabling conditions that the organization can create to encourage a greater perception of meaning, to which management must be sensitive and prepare the conditions so that everyone can perceive meaning in their work. Among these are: attention to not making work useless and useless due to blindness and bureaucratic nonsense; offering clarity regarding tasks and responsibilities; allowing autonomy and discretion in the interpretation and management of the role and in the important decisions connected to it; being put in a position to receive (and give) recognition; avoiding continuous and disorienting practices of reorganization and restructuring motivated solely by performance and profit objectives.
Still others could follow, but none of these are sufficient if, at the base, and even before that, those necessary conditions that make a job dignified are not respected (contract, fair salary, guarantees for safety and so on) and without which it is not even necessary to ask the question of meaning.
Time and space
Twined with the idea ofpurpose, value and meaning, is the question of managing time and space. The latter constitute the framework within which organizational practices are defined, they represent the formal and material conditions thanks to which the activity of a company, its processes, objectives and purposes make sense. Knowing how to think and therefore organize space and time, giving rise to virtuous models of behavior within the work community, must become, like the ability to affirm values and meanings, an indispensable managerial skill.
There are many examples that show the performative value of the way of conceiving time on the policies and strategic choices of companies. Certainly the best known, and to be rethought, are the short time horizon of financial reporting, as well as the short-term roles of top managers: both have a strong impact on the quality of decisions and the definition of priorities. On the work side, one of the conditions that has a decisive impact on disaffection is the perception of not being able to carry out quality work due to lack of time. This is time that is taken away in the name of greater productivity, in compliance with cost cuts or, at best, in response to the imperative of transparency and control. Incidentally, if we lose sight of the limits of the concept of transparency, multiplying the requests for accountability and reporting, we end up producing inefficiency, opacity and discontent. Added to this is the phenomenon of the so-called 'time acceleration' (Rosa, 2014) which has had a strong boost in the last three decades (globalisation, digital, today Artificial Intelligence), transforming our way of organizing space and time, in individual, social and working life. To the extent that acceleration ceases to be a means to address urgent issues and becomes an end in itself (we accelerate only to accelerate, not to do better or even more), it gives people the sensation of proceeding without direction, without the possibility of glimpsing real development and above all without the time to realize what is really being done. We need to be critical of this phenomenon, that is, stop considering it something natural, indispensable and therefore not subject to revision when conditions require it. This critical-constructive attitude would also see a positive impact on the reduction of increasingly pervasive renewed forms of alienation in people.
Like time, the organization of space is also crucial for defining the sustainability of business and working practices (Dale and Burrell, 2008; Taylor and Spicer, 2007). The organization of space can encourage, on the one hand, inclusive and respectful behavior between people belonging to different hierarchical levels, or, on the contrary, emphasize asymmetry and thus underline the difference in power between subjects, favoring the emergence of uncomfortable situations and perpetuating attitudes of subjection. In onerespectful organization, the spaces are distributed so that they can be accepted independently by anyone, based on the role, function, authority and recognized leadership.
Added to this is the fact that space and time contribute to the definition of our being relational individuals. Marc Augé, a sociologist who has long reflected on the category of space, reminds us that man is a symbiotic animal who needs relationships inscribed in space and time, he needs to live places in which his individual identity is built through contact and thanks to the recognition of others. Hence the need to balance the management of spaces in person and remotely. Taking care, on the one hand, to reconcile private life and professional life, enhancing the earnings that Smart working has made possible; on the other, to create the conditions so that people can meet physically, encouraging the construction of that symbolic space and that communicative background that makes the relationship more fluid and encourages creativity.
Innovation
The last of the factors we have selected to formulate the proposal for a new management philosophy is innovation. It naturally has a privileged relationship with time and in particular with its acceleration. Innovation, at least technological innovation (which, it is worth remembering, does not exhaust the entire spectrum of innovation), always appears ahead of us, we find ourselves chasing it so as not to be left behind, we often suffer it and, in suffering it, we do not govern it. Governing innovation means implementing long-term, critical and systemic thinking that knows how to preventively consider its ability to respond to our real needs and those of the community, evaluating its positive and negative impacts, trying to prevent them. It is above all with respect to innovation that it is necessary to strongly underline the need for a close link with the theme ofpurpose, of values and meaning. This means that its government must depend less on economic-contractual mechanisms and more on social motivations oriented towards high goals, favorable to integral human development. Going in this direction is not merely an ethical question, but also responds to the need to produce quality innovation. Not just an incremental innovation, the one we most often experience, but an architectural one, more sodisruptive, unfortunately rarer. If in the immediate future we outsource innovation to Artificial Intelligence, giving ever more space to algorithms in the search for creative solutions, we will be destined to perpetuate this imbalance towards what has already been seen, towards mere accumulation. In fact, algorithmic processes tend to carry out rationalization operations to eliminate errors and, in this way, perfect themselves in always doing the same things, while in innovation the error, understood as making mistakes and exploring new paths, is indispensable. If new routes are not explored, many possible innovations remain unexplored.
We are therefore talking about responsible innovation, not only in view of the aims it pursues, but also of its methods of implementation, because means and ends must be able to be coherent with each other. In fact, responsible innovation is one that is based on the collaboration of a multiplicity of actors and their stakeholders during all phases of the research and development process, so that the results are aligned as much as possible with the values, needs and expectations of society, i.e. with the overall sense of doingenterprise(1). The only way to face choices that will increasingly have a pervasive impact on humans and their environment is to create the conditions for co-creation, which involves a plurality of internal and external, public and private actors, economic and cultural entities, capable of generating new possibilities and in the meantime activating mutual control mechanisms, remembering that the decisive factors in choices are not just technical.
(1) On the topic of responsible innovation, we welcomed the ideas and ideas that emerged from the speech by Roberto Villa, director of the IBM Foundation during the workshop.
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The article is the result of the collaboration between the Philosophy and Business Unit of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University and Polimi Graduate School of Management and the outcome of a series of workshops held between 2024 and 2025 which saw the presence of scholars and managers from various companies. The aim of the workshops was to experiment with an original and innovative format to address frontier issues for the evolution of management, through the concrete application of suggestions and skills offered by philosophy in dialogue with other forms of knowledge. From the insights and discussions carried out during the workshops, important ideas emerged which converged in the drafting of this article, which aims to represent a concrete trace of what is believed to be a cultural change capable of moving the entrepreneurial reality.
We would like to thank, in particular, those who participated more assiduously in the meetings, offering important contributions and stimuli to the discussion: Lucia Borini, Head of Group Academy, Reale Group; Emiliano Boschetto, Senior Manager, EFM; Anna Deambrosis, Head of Change Management, Reale Group; Myriam Finocchiaro, Comunication External Relation and CSR Manager, Granarolo; Marco Lazzoni, Senior Advisor; Iacopo Meghini, CEO Metalmont; Claudia Percivalle, Senior Learning Specialist Academy, Reale Group; Roberto Villa, Director of the IBM Foundation.