Special Session: Who do we serve? Reconnecting our work with purpose
Tracks
Track 8
| Saturday, June 18, 2022 |
| 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM |
| Conference Room 6 |
Speaker
Professor Hugh Wilson
Professor Of Marketing
Warwick Business School
Who do we serve? Reconnecting our work with purpose
Abstract.
Introduction
A notable trend in corporate sustainability is the concept of business purpose. This encourages organisations to specify one or more social or environmental outcomes as primary goals, with others, including financial targets, being subservient – in theory, at least. Most blue-chips have such a purpose statement: Tesla’s, for example, is to accelerate the world’s transition to renewable energy, while IKEA’s is to create a better everyday life for the many people. When this purpose feels authentic, it can add meaning to employees’ work. Often, though, it seems like window-dressing.
Service research has an important role in sustainability, as the ServCollab initiative exemplifies with its focus on improving well-being. Service scholarship should be able to help in particular with the purpose movement. Often the purpose relates to customers’ lives: “To improve the self-esteem of women” for Dove, for example. Concepts such as value-in-use and customer experience are valuable for focusing on dependent variables wider than profits.
Yet business schools are not immune to the challenge of creating purposeful work. If corporate life can feel like pointless profit-chasing, the tacit purpose of business schools can likewise degenerate into an ultimately futile status game of rankings.
Fortunately, academics have some agency over where to focus and to what end. We can create our own meanings. The concept of purpose can be applied at individual level, too. This session aims to help participants to hone our own purpose, and to reflect on how that purpose can be better lived in the multiple aspects of our working life.
Workshop structure
The workshop has five topics:
1. Honing our purpose using the sustainable development goals.
2. Living our purpose: Research
3. Living our purpose: Teaching
4. Living our purpose: University operations
5. Living our purpose: At home and in community.
A facilitator will introduce each topic in theory and practice. Participants will then discuss in groups how the topic applies to them, using a template derived from the facilitators’ work coaching executives on purpose in careers. The session will end with a plenary discussion.
Facilitators
Hugh Wilson is a professor in Warwick Business School. He researches sustainable marketing and innovation, and teaches business sustainability. He presented at COP26 on sustainable futures and sustainable leadership. In his previous role at Cranfield, he launched a project that has cut the university’s carbon by 34%.
Carol Kelleher is a lecturer at Cork Business School. She previously worked in brand management. She studies co-creation, collective consumption and service design. She has particular interests in family caregiving and access to the arts. In addition to her PhD, she has an MSc in executive coaching.
Ronika Chakrabarti is an associate professor at Trinity College Dublin. She teaches marketing theory, design thinking and consultancy. Her research intersects between marketing, entrepreneurship and market making, notably in bottom-of-the-pyramid and subsistence marketplaces.
Helen Bruce is a lecturer at Lancaster University. She studies consumer groups and their experiences and identities. Examples are consumer vulnerability among military wives, and household conflict around TV watching.
A notable trend in corporate sustainability is the concept of business purpose. This encourages organisations to specify one or more social or environmental outcomes as primary goals, with others, including financial targets, being subservient – in theory, at least. Most blue-chips have such a purpose statement: Tesla’s, for example, is to accelerate the world’s transition to renewable energy, while IKEA’s is to create a better everyday life for the many people. When this purpose feels authentic, it can add meaning to employees’ work. Often, though, it seems like window-dressing.
Service research has an important role in sustainability, as the ServCollab initiative exemplifies with its focus on improving well-being. Service scholarship should be able to help in particular with the purpose movement. Often the purpose relates to customers’ lives: “To improve the self-esteem of women” for Dove, for example. Concepts such as value-in-use and customer experience are valuable for focusing on dependent variables wider than profits.
Yet business schools are not immune to the challenge of creating purposeful work. If corporate life can feel like pointless profit-chasing, the tacit purpose of business schools can likewise degenerate into an ultimately futile status game of rankings.
Fortunately, academics have some agency over where to focus and to what end. We can create our own meanings. The concept of purpose can be applied at individual level, too. This session aims to help participants to hone our own purpose, and to reflect on how that purpose can be better lived in the multiple aspects of our working life.
Workshop structure
The workshop has five topics:
1. Honing our purpose using the sustainable development goals.
2. Living our purpose: Research
3. Living our purpose: Teaching
4. Living our purpose: University operations
5. Living our purpose: At home and in community.
A facilitator will introduce each topic in theory and practice. Participants will then discuss in groups how the topic applies to them, using a template derived from the facilitators’ work coaching executives on purpose in careers. The session will end with a plenary discussion.
Facilitators
Hugh Wilson is a professor in Warwick Business School. He researches sustainable marketing and innovation, and teaches business sustainability. He presented at COP26 on sustainable futures and sustainable leadership. In his previous role at Cranfield, he launched a project that has cut the university’s carbon by 34%.
Carol Kelleher is a lecturer at Cork Business School. She previously worked in brand management. She studies co-creation, collective consumption and service design. She has particular interests in family caregiving and access to the arts. In addition to her PhD, she has an MSc in executive coaching.
Ronika Chakrabarti is an associate professor at Trinity College Dublin. She teaches marketing theory, design thinking and consultancy. Her research intersects between marketing, entrepreneurship and market making, notably in bottom-of-the-pyramid and subsistence marketplaces.
Helen Bruce is a lecturer at Lancaster University. She studies consumer groups and their experiences and identities. Examples are consumer vulnerability among military wives, and household conflict around TV watching.
