From Purpose to Circularity: Unpacking the Strategic and Systemic Role of Corporate Purpose

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Bibliographic information

Cover of Volume: Swiss Journal of Business Volume 79 (2025), Issue 3
Open Access Full access

Swiss Journal of Business

Volume 79 (2025), Issue 3

Authors:
Publisher
Nomos, Baden-Baden
Copyright Year
2025
ISSN-Online
2944-3741
ISSN-Print
2944-3741

Chapter information

Open Access Full access

Volume 79 (2025), Issue 3

From Purpose to Circularity: Unpacking the Strategic and Systemic Role of Corporate Purpose

Authors:
ISSN-Print
2944-3741
ISSN-Online
2944-3741
Preview:

Organizations face increasing pressures to address climate change, disruptive technologies, resource scarcity, and shifting stakeholder expectations. These factors require them to reassess their strategies, societal roles, and approaches to innovation. At the same time, transitions toward circular economy (CE) models demand systemic changes in how value is created and sustained. In these conditions, high-growth companies and alliances demonstrate how placing purpose at their core enables organizational transformation and value-driven collaborations with stakeholders that can drive circular systemic change. By synthesizing insights from strategic management, system, organizational change, and circular economy literature, this conceptual paper positions purpose as a normative, strategic, and systemic construct and proposes a future research agenda to examine its mechanisms, risks, and transformative potential – with particular attention to its role in accelerating circular economy transitions on the organizational level.

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