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As brands progressively become instruments for consumers to advocate for social change, many feel pressure to engage in social purpose branding (SPB) through addressing social issues. In a rush to remain socially relevant, brands have approached SPB differently; some genuinely intend to advance the social issue, while some intend to capitalise on social movements to mobilise the brand. This paper aims to explain these differences by theoretically outlining various approaches to SPB.

This mixed method paper draws on theory, interviews with marketing practitioners, and practical exemplars to present a typology of SPB approaches. 

Using institutional logics theory, SPB is categorised into four approaches: social purpose-driving, social purpose-driven, social purpose-aligning and social purpose-washing.

The typological framework for SPB advances this domain to outline effective and ineffective ways for brands to engage with social issues. A detailed agenda for further research is provided to guide ongoing SPB research. 

The typology presented reduces complexity and helps marketers understand the different approaches to engaging with a social issue. Given the growing intertwinement of brands and social issues, this research is essential for brands seeking to advance a social issue and remain relevant.

This paper offers a novel conceptualisation of SPB by defining it, identifying a framework of its characteristics, and detailing four SPB approaches. 

This paper aims to examine the congruency effects of physically embodied robots in service encounters, which addressed a significant research gap concerning the synthesis of robot design elements (e.g., appearance and voice) and their service purposes.

Grounded in congruity theory and human-robot interaction literature, this study conducted a pretest and two experimental studies revealing the need to view robot design holistically and recognizing the pivotal role of congruity in shaping consumers’ service robot adoption. The moderating role of service purposes (utilitarian vs hedonic) was also investigated in terms of robot design and consumer reactions.

Consumers generally tend to favor robots with congruent designs, particularly for utilitarian service purposes. The serial mediation through perceived congruence and perceived intelligence explains such a favorite tendency.

This study advances service robot design research by highlighting the critical role of congruity in enhancing consumer engagement. It supports the use of comprehensive, congruent designs for services with utilitarian purposes and recommends adaptable designs for hedonic settings.

This study addressed the research gap by examining service robot design from a holistic perspective. The research findings highlight the importance of congruency effects in service robot design and deployment and provide valuable insights and guidelines to industry practitioners for optimal investment in service robots.

“Shared purpose,” understood as a widely shared commitment to the organization’s fundamental raison d’être, can be a powerful driver of organizational performance by providing both motivation and direction for members’ joint problem-solving efforts. So far, however, we understand little about the organization design that can support shared purpose in the context of large, complex business enterprises. Building on the work of Selznick and Weber, we argue that such contexts require a new organizational form, one that we call collaborative. The collaborative organizational form is grounded in Weber’s value-rational type of social action, but overcomes the scale limitations of the collegial form of organization that is conventionally associated with value-rational action. We identify four organizational principles that characterize this collaborative form and a range of managerial policies that can implement those principles.

In recent years, the field of comparative and international education (CIE) has experienced an outburst of self-reflective papers wherein comparativists study the nature of the field and map its content. This study contributes to this trend by drawing attention to a previously unstudied aspect of CIE: its purpose. Using Arnove’s dimensions as a starting point to create five new purpose categories, four prominent CIE journals are surveyed to test whether the pragmatic history of CIE is evident in its current body of research. In this process, a complete and clear genetic mapping of the journals is created, which explores their similarities and differences, as well as the changes in their content over time. Findings indicate that the pragmatic purpose of CIE dominates, though it is primarily emancipatory and transformative in its prescription. Furthermore, articles rooted in specific situational contexts were more prominent than expected considering the comparative and international nature of the field.

One way of looking at the association between ethics and stakeholder theory – of examining the idea that stakeholder theory has a strong moral foundation – is to consider how the stakeholder approach might in fact be directly driven by and guided by the moral obligations of business. An alternative perspective we offer is that stakeholder theory only indirectly derives from the moral obligations of business, with business purpose serving as a mediating factor. We work through the fairly straightforward logic behind that alternative perspective in this chapter. We argue that it is a better way to think about the association between ethics and stakeholder theory, particularly because it allows for a theoretical and practical distinction between corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theory. Stakeholder theory can thereby continue developing as a theory of strategic management, even as it brings morals to the fore in ways that other approaches to strategic management do not.