Business For Purpose Conference To Be Co-hosted At London Business School

London Business School Leadership Institute and Blueprint for Better Business are hosting a key interdisciplinary academic conference on business purpose which is taking place on 16/17th September 2016.

It is a two-day event in which academics from around the world, including economists, neuroscientists and philosophers will explore the latest evidence on how purpose influences business performance, and how businesses serve society.

The conference brings together leading researchers from the worlds top business schools, and also includes academics from other disciplines presenting more philosophical papers which challenge and test commonly held assumptions about the human person and business purpose.

The chair of the academic panel, Prof Rebecca Henderson of Harvard Business School said:

This conference is an important milestone in the growing area of research into business purpose.

“The academic committee were delighted by the response to our call for papers, and we received over 75 submissions from across the world. Blueprint for Better Business’s focus on business practice was instrumental in the inclusion of several conceptual papers, which I think will make for a very rich and thoughtful dialogue – not only on what the latest empirical research tells us, but also as to the fruitfulness and validity of alternative ways of thinking about people and purpose.”

Papers to be presented include:
‘Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance’, from George Serafeim, Harvard Business school, and Claudine Gartenberg, NYU, who will discuss Purpose in Practice.
‘Organizations with purpose; thrive and survive’ from Dr Dana Born, Harvard, who will discuss examples of businesses that have faced purpose-related challenges.
‘Does Long-Term Orientation create value’ from Caroline Flammer, Ivey Business School, who will present new evidence of the causal effects of a long term approach to business on financial performance.

Charles Wookey, CEO of Blueprint for Better Business says: “This conference is a very exciting development. It shows that top business school academics are seriously interested not only in the potential of business purpose to change how business is done, but also in engaging with philosophical questions about the dominant model of business, and testing ideas that challenge the status quo in a radical way. My hope it is the start of a continuing engagement to explore alternative approaches and gain more evidence from business practice which links the quality of human relationships to long term performance and how society is served.”