The micro-foundations of corporate purpose: Performance management in dynamic environments
通过实地研究一家意大利食品集团，探讨绩效管理系统如何帮助管理者在动态环境中将企业目的落实到具体行动和决策中。
This paper examines the micro-foundations of ‘corporate purpose’, that is the enduring reason for being of a corporation in relation to society. While the relevance of corporate purpose has been widely recognized, its practical enactment by managers at the operating level remains problematic, particularly in dynamic environments. By relying upon the field study of a leading Italian group in the food industry, and the literature on the micro-foundations of institutions, we explore the role of a performance management system (PMS) in mobilizing corporate purpose in specific practical situations at the management level, while the organization faces the demands coming from the external environment. We show that the PMS can be drawn upon by managers as a set of tools and practices through which purpose is situated at the micro-level into actions, decisions, and material artefacts that come together in a ‘social situation’. Here, the PMS enables managers to recognize a ‘situation’ for enacting different aspects of purpose through interactions, filling it with evolving meanings, while sustaining its connections with global development needs.