If a fortune-teller told 19-year-old Debbie Haski-Leventhal that she would one day become a professor of CSR, purpose, and impact, she would have asked for a refund. A tragedy led her family to the Kabballah Centre – years before Madonna, Britney Spears, and other celebs joined it – where she grew up in a cult-like atmosphere until she managed to escape a minute before an arranged marriage.
Higher education and volunteering transformed Debbie’s life, and she has since devoted her entire career to studying the pro-social behaviour of individuals (volunteering) and companies (CSR and social impact). Today, Debbie is an awarded and well-published professor of business management and the MBA Director at Macquarie University, Australia. With over sixty academic articles, five books and a TED talk, she dedicates her teaching, research, and knowledge to creating impact and enabling others to find meaningfulness and purpose. Her recent book, Make it Meaningful, was published by Simon & Schuster.
In this workshop, Professor Debbie Haski-Leventhal will explore the ideas of purpose, meaning, and impact. It will provide participants with tools and insights to help them ask about their personal purpose and that of universities, business schools, and corporations. As many of the conference participants are interested in the role of business and business schools in the world, this workshop will equip them with solid questions, ideas, and frameworks to do this work and help others, students and practitioners alike, to do the same. Furthermore, we will discuss how to weave purpose and impact into our teaching.
Purpose is the reason for which something was created or exists. ‘Something’ could be an object, product, or company. Many companies are founded to create profits by selling products or services, but the ones that stand out were established to make a positive impact. This workshop will predominantly build on the idea developed by Debbie Haski-Leventhal – impact purpose. Here, we develop a sense of mattering by making a difference in other people’s lives, the community, and the world, thus leading to meaningfulness and purposefulness (Haski-Leventhal, 2023).
Why is this important? Because a robust impact purpose can help people, companies, universities, and business schools become a force for good, making a genuine difference in the world. Some organisations do not aim to be the best in the world, outdoing all their competitors, but to be the best for the world, creating value for all stakeholders. Patagonia was built to save the planet and show how businesses can be holistically sustainable. Ben & Jerry’s says, ‘We are a company with a social mission. We just happen to make ice cream’. The Australian social enterprise Thankyou was created to first address the issue of clean water in the developing world and, years later, to elevate poverty. It sells excellent products, but it is not defined by them. As Simon Sinek (2009) asserts, people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. These companies and many others have a strong why and impact purpose, inspiring, engaging, and creating meaningful change. Moreover, they provide their stakeholders with a sense of meaning in life and work.
By meaning, we refer to a sense of mattering that makes people feel that their lives are worth living and their work is worth doing. Research on meaning in life and work shows that contributing to others, making a difference, and creating social impact contribute significantly to meaningfulness (Steger & Dik, 2009). People who work in a job that helps to save lives often report on such a sense of meaning, but it can also be found in almost every job, as long as the people performing it have a sense of impact.
Social impact is the measurable and intended change people, and organisations make to people’s and communities’ quality of life, well-being, and resilience. It shifts from focusing on philanthropy and inputs to exploring the long-term macro-level change individuals and organisations can make using their resources and assets (Vanclay, 2020).
To this end, the workshop will present the new definition of Strategic CSR (Haski-Leventhal, in press):
Strategic CSR is a holistic and long-term approach to creating a net positive social impact based on brand alignment, stakeholder integration and ethical behaviour.
Furthermore, our time and society’s most significant challenges require a different kind of business leadership. The world needs leaders who are responsible, conscious, and authentic and who deliver a vision to better humanity (Mackey & Sisodia, 2014). We have already shifted from profit-driven leadership to purpose-driven leadership (Zu, 2019). The next step is to transform purpose-driven leaders into purpose-enabling ones.
The workshop will discuss these elements and how creating a net-positive impact via a holistic approach can provide the company and its stakeholders with a profound sense of purpose. It will begin with Debbie’s powerful story of finding meaning and creating impact after adversity. It will then discuss the ideas of purpose and impact purpose, offering the TIP model – tying talent, impact, and passion. Further, we will discuss organisational purpose and apply it to businesses while discussing Strategic CSR. Finally, the workshop will discuss how these ideas can change why and how we teach business management and how we can teach with purpose and enable our students to lead with it.
Timeline (a readable table is attached)
- Welcome and mutual acquaintance, 10 minutes, Discussion (Depending on the group size. If it is too large, we will go very quickly through the room)
- Finding meaning and purpose: Debbie’s story, 10 minutes, Talk
- What purpose is finding your purpose, 10 minutes, Tool development (Exploring what we mean by purpose, impact, impact, purpose, etc)
- TIP model exercise, 20 minutes, Reflection and application, Small group work (People will work individually on their TIP model and then share it in small groups)
- Purpose in organisations, businesses and universities. 15 minutes. Tool development, Reflection and application, Discussion. (Exploring the organisational purpose model, we will reflect on how it can be used in business (including CSR) and universities. What changes do we need to make in our organisations to apply it?)
- Purpose in business education, 20 minutes, Deep conversation. (How can we apply everything we learned in business education and teaching? What do people do to integrate purpose and impact into their teaching? What else can we do?)
- Closing, 5 minutes
Total: 90 minutes
About the facilitator:
Debbie Haski-Leventhal is a Professor of Management at Macquarie Business School and the MBA Director. She is an expert on corporate social responsibility (CSR), purpose, and impact. Professor Haski-Leventhal is a TED and public speaker on purpose and social responsibility. She has published over 60 academic papers and five books, including Strategic CSR, The Purpose-Driven University and Make it Meaningful. Her work was often covered by the media, including The New York Times and Forbes Magazine.
References
Haski-Leventhal, D. (2023). Make it Meaningful: How to find purpose in life and work. Simon and Schuster.
Haski-Leventhal, D. (in press). Strategic CSR. SAGE.
Sinek, S. (2009). Start with why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action. Penguin.
Steger, M. F., & Dik, B. J. (2009). If one is looking for meaning in life, does it help to find meaning in work?. Applied Psychology: Health and Well‐Being, 1(3), 303-320.
Vanclay, F. (2020). Reflections on social impact assessment in the 21st century. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 38(2), 126-131.
Zu, L. (2019). Purpose-driven leadership for sustainable business: From the Perspective of Taoism. International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility, 4(1), 1-31.
