Abstract
Method for operationalizing organizational purpose in the gap between the current state and ambition.
Excerpt from the journal
Moving an organization beyond profit-making into positively and measurably adding value to society helps such organizations to grow in many aspects: the advantages of purpose have been widely documented. To gauge how organizations plan to implement purpose, we surveyed 96 respondents–all responsible for purpose in their organizations–in 61 different Dutch organizations on their actual situation regarding such implementation and their ambition to further operationalize it in the near term. A K-means clustering of the respondents showed five clusters for the actual situation that neatly showed progression from starting with a purpose to implementing that fully. However, we saw a dichotomy between rather conservative and very aspiring ambitions when clustering the respondents' ambitions. There was no clear direction in the middle, let alone a clear migration path for implementation.