How Middle Managers Bring Corporate Purpose to Life  Pauline Asmar Transcript generated by an AI tool and lightly edited for clarity. Hello and welcome to your Monthly Breakthroughs podcast, devoted to the research emerging from HEC Paris. I'm the school's chief editor Daniel Brown. Today's breakthroughs puts the spotlight on the work of this scholar. I'm Pauline Asmar. I'm a fifth year Pauline Asmar is entering her. Final year of doctoral studies here at HEC. Yet already she's published a strategy paper revealing how company teams are more committed, cooperative, and proud when their leaders share their firm's purpose. But she's not talking about the CEOs and top brass running these firms. No, it's the middlemen, the managers with direct and daily contact to the workers that interested her. Under the supervision of Professor Rodolphe Durand, Pauline worked with almost 60,000 individual observations in close to 500 companies across 31 industries. That's a lot of figures, but it makes her findings both credible and easy to generalize. Pauline's work shows how enhancing consensus on the employee's task leads to higher team commitment objectives. A point underlined in companies on both sides of the Atlantic. -: Working with others can be a valuable thing, especially for smaller companies. I have a lot more fellow travelers than I might've. Been able to figure out on my own. I don't see myself as a traditional leader. I see myself as someone that collaborates and works amongst people and walks behind people to lift them up as well, because I think that having people collaborate together is more important than having a hierarchical approach to change. I've worked for two different types. The type that gives instruction, direction and guidance. And I have worked for people that want to understand, they wanna get involved. Teach me, show me, let's do this together. Let's go out in the field together. They ask for guidance, they ask for feedback, and they learn those things. They absorb those things. People like to do business with people they like. And they'll help people they like as well. So when you ask for somebody at that simple thing, you, I need help with this. You're getting that confidence over the course to go and ask for that help. So you're not afraid to ask that question. We met Pauline recently for a wide ranging exchange on communication around a firm's purpose, and I first asked Boin to describe what purpose dialogue is exactly. So when we talk about purpose dialogue, we are talking about a different level of communication. It's more internal. So the statement of corporate. Purpose can be done for internal and external audiences. Although the main audience would remain the internal audience, so the employees, however, for corporate purpose, for the dialogue, the level of the audience is different because it's at the team level. So it is between the team leader and the employees. It is mainly internal and it's also very much personalized, mainly for the team itself because it talks about how the team's direction kinda. Goes well with the firm's direction, how the team is working towards goals that would also help the company accomplish its goals. And it takes into consideration the opinion of the employees whether, for example, the direction of the firm talks to them and they think that it is interesting for them and that it kinda inspires them versus just talking about the opinion of any employee. Another difference would be who is speaking? So for corporate purpose statements, it's mainly the top management teams. Meanwhile here, it's the direct manager for the employees that is starting this dialogue. Now you are doing your PhD here at HEC Paris that has a purposeful leadership chair, and many researchers and professors are focused on this idea of purpose. What does HEC and what do you put in this word purpose in terms of. Corporate responsibility in terms of corporate realities and the world of industry. So corporate purpose is different from corporate social responsibility, although both of them can go within the same direction. Corporate social responsibility is somewhat more ferial. It can speak to the needs at a certain time for the stakeholders. So if a particular society is, needs a certain support for a particular problem, now, it may not need it in 10 years, and basically the corporate social responsibility, the small goals that it has will change the. Content of corporate social responsibility will change. However, for corporate purpose, it's more about the firm itself, how it's gonna be serving the society in general. What are the values of this company? And these are very long term. Also, if we're gonna talk about it in terms of just general social goals. Not every company necessarily would have social goals as corporate purpose because they might not be very explicit about it. But they do want to have a presence in society and for their different audiences that is beyond just. Being a money making machine, and this is really about what corporate purpose kinda explains. It tells the audience, okay, so why does this company exist? Is it just making money or are we offering something that goes beyond that? Which means that if I am a car company, am I just making these cards to make money or am I making these cards to help people go from one place to another? Safely offering them products that will last for a long time. So all of these also allow the audience, the external audience, which is the customer and the employees as an internal audience, understand that we're not just making anything to make money. We're actually making products and services that have bigger reach than just making money. I guess if you want people to do well at work, you need them enjoying themselves because they're enjoying themselves. They'll be more motivated. If they're more motivated, they'll be more productive. And that will equate to more revenue, sales success for the business. And that's what you want as a business owner. As a manager, you want your team delivering for you because they make you look good. But to do that, you need people to be enjoying themselves. And that's why I spend so much time calling out terrible behaviors. Obviously it's because they're all terrible people, but actually it's more importantly is that's how you grow a business. That's how you become successful. Let's come to your research in this paper, which is coming out in the second half of 2025, which is called, is Team Commitment Related to Dialogue About Corporate Purpose? How much research has been done on this Purpose Dialogue, which is at the heart of your paper until now? To be fair, I think we're the first people to work on it 'cause it's a very new concept. The majority of corporate purpose literature has mainly focused on top management because they are the main source. Of corporate purpose and there's somewhat this understanding that well, what is at the top level is gonna be resonating at the bottom level. So there wasn't really a lot of conversations about, okay, but what is going on at different levels of the company? And so the purpose dialogue is more about why we also need managers to help. So is it just because they need to repeat, like parrots what the top management saying? Or do they actually have a role? So purpose Dialogue actually shows that within the same. Company, you can actually have different purpose dialogues because not every leader is repeating and talking about corporate purpose the same way and is trying to engage the employees of the team in the same way, which kinda shows that within the same firm you may have different teams that perform differently just because they see that their work towards this corporate purpose is kinda aligned or misaligned, depending on how much. This is being communicated to them and how much they are invited to discuss how they feel about it and whether they feel that their work is actually doing something beyond just the basic tasks that are required for them to get a salary. So I think it's a, it's very important to look at what is going on inside companies and what is making one company do better than the other, but also what is making one team within the same company perform. Better than other teams. So on a more personal level, what brought you towards this research? Was it to fill this gap, which it seems will help in terms of absenteeism the wellbeing, personal wellbeings of employees the efficiency of the company, or were there other reasons? So one of the reasons was trying to understand why employees in certain companies are so engaged versus. Other companies suffering from employees, maybe leaving faster than others, having low less loyalty. I guess also the concept of quite quitting which is mainly just doing your job and leaving. So that was one side. The other side for me was also trying to understand is it a real thing? Because there's a lot of skepticism around, is even corporate purpose. Interesting and important to study, or is it just another fate that is gonna come in and then come out? And this is understandable because we see that a lot of companies say that they'll be responsible, that they are doing important things, but at the same time, it's not true. So I wanted to understand does it do anything beyond looking good on the website and sounding nice for the employees when they are applying to the company? And yeah, I also wanted to see if the companies were hypocrites or they were actually genuine and what, yeah. Hypocrites. Yeah, exactly. And then making, trying to make the difference between what actually allows corporate purpose to work and what does not. So yeah. Kind of purpose washing or not. If we can invent this or coin this term, Paulina, you, as I said in the introduction to the program, you've worked with this massive data set. Just a reminder, almost. 60,000 observations across not far from 500 firms from different countries. So what kinds of questions can we answer with that level of detail that we couldn't before? The main thing would be understanding what is going on at the level of the firm with this much detail, because as I said, it's sometimes very difficult to understand why two companies that from the outside look so similar. Are not performing the same way. So they could have close corporate purpose. They could have maybe they are the same size. They work in the same industry. They have very similar products, but they do not have the same performance. And of course there are. Many things that that can be different. They could have different incentives. They could have a different way to approach human resource management or as we now say, the human capital management, however, corporate purpose, how it is being communicated inside the company. It also is a very important element because. It not only reflects corporate purpose, but also other types of communication around the values of the firm. And when you are able to access data at the level of teams and individuals rather than just seeing them at the level of the firm, you can see how there is actually this. Heterogeneity between one team and another one employee and another, and it allows you to understand what is actually making these companies different. If I have more employees that are more positive about, about their company that feel more committed to their teams and therefore to their company this is not gonna be easily observable at the level of the firm in terms of data. Also, it kinda allows us to see if there are any differences between one team and another and like small variations. So even sometimes the data at the level of the team alone is not enough to just see what is the variation between one individual and another within the, within teams that are very similar. Breakthroughs and knowledge At HC Podcast, I never wanna have that kind of an experience. I wanna be a part of a company where I genuinely feel like I wanna be there where I'm making an impact and making a difference. So that stuff matters. The second thing is also seeing whether what the company is saying at the top level is actually being applied in different levels of the firm. Because you can say something as top leader and not really embedded within the company. However, if there is a communication at all levels. Just shows that the company is more serious about having corporate purpose actually applied and considered when any employee is making choices. So if my company just says something, but me as an employee, there is no pressure or there is no pushing, or there is no encouragement for me to consider corporate purpose when making a decision, I can easily make decisions that make good sense financially. But do not make sense when compared to the corporate purpose. And I think that makes a lot of difference. So the CEO cannot control everything and like it cannot do everything. We actually need to look at the people who do the majority of the chores and whether they follow corporate purpose and they think that corporate purpose is a part of of their decision making. So we can see that it's not just a question of the scale of the data that you have, but there's also more nuanced approaches which involve team demographics, age the size, even age differences between the leader and the team, which you bring up. What were some of the unusual results or the ones that for you were really important that you put forward in your paper? I guess the majority of them were not that surprising, maybe. I was kinda hoping that they wouldn't be as salient as I thought they, they were. But for example, having a younger team leader would not be as good as having an older team leader. The, some sort of the hemophilia factor in teams. So when comparing the leader to the team members, if they are closer, so in terms of gender, in terms of age, they're more likely to agree and to to collaborate better with each other. So this is maybe. The surprising part would be okay. So it's not always just having someone that is much older with more experience that just works well, but also having a team that is closer in terms of age and even gender for the members. So I guess it kinda reinforces the idea of, okay, I agree more with people that look like me, which is a bit disappointing because it also shows that we still have these sort of biases, but it also. Gives good insights on how people work and how they think, and to whom they do listen when they're on ptl. I absolutely love this. I was very fortunate. I worked with my best friend Chris for so many years, and it just makes work so much better. But it does feed into the wider point, right? If you want people to do well at work, you need them enjoying themselves because they're enjoying themselves. They'll be more motivated. If they're more motivated, they'll be more productive. And that will equate to more revenue, sales success for the business. And that's what you want as a business. Putting smart. When you say the word success and differences between similar or identical companies, what are we talking about? Do you have any figures about identical companies that have a 20% better productivity or less leaving, greater fidelity amongst the employees? Greater happiness and well wellbeing. Is there a quantifiable approach to your research as well? So if we look at the data in my paper, we can see that certain teams so work because the data that I study is within the same firm mainly. So the main results are within the same firm, and we see that in certain teams they are less likely to leave and they are more committed to their team. And that shows that if we have that. A kind of behavior that is more general within all of the company. Then at the level of the company, if I compare to another one that does not have this kind of team commitment and does not have this kind of team cohesion, then the employees are basically more likely to leave. They would be less loyalty towards the company, and that will eventually affect the performance of of the firm overall. When you have a lot of employees that leave, it's gonna cost you money, but it's gonna cost you very valuable talent that you're losing. One finding is that autonomy and teams that have six to 10 members or younger profiles only reinforces the power of purpose dialogue for you Pauline, why might this be the case if you can answer that? There is always this concept that you need to also have an optimal number of people working with each other. So if the team is way too small, it might not be big differences because, it's a small team. These people might get along or not. Depends, but they also usually work like very selected jobs, so they're not working on huge projects, and the number kind of represents that. It also shows that if you go into very large teams, there is something that is lost. So these people, they are losing the information that's being communicated to them. They are also less likely to have cohesion with each other just because there are so many people, and you can only have good, relationships with a certain amount of people. We all know about, okay, so how many friends do you have? How many good friends do you have, and how many acquaintances do you have? So at some point you're like, okay, if the team is way too. Big, then you're just losing this sort of communication that they need to have in order to work efficiently. In terms of the younger ones, I guess they're still more hopeful and we also have a younger generation that value of firms and the ethics of firms more than older generations, which could be the result of. People having lived through so much stress about the environment seeing so many, so much corruption being exposed, learning more about what is going on in, in companies rather than before this, these companies being more of a closed box and being less scrutinized. So I do think that younger generations are somewhat different. And this is why we can see that they also care a bit more about corporate purpose and the results slightly change when they are younger. Pauline, you explore a leader member exchange which is abbreviated LMX variation and how it shapes purpose, dialogue and drives commitments. Let's say I'm a middle manager listening to this podcast. What should I do differently tomorrow morning? If I want to foster more team commitment through purpose dialogue. So I think the main thing would be seeing if the employees actually care about it, discuss with them corporate purpose. Sometimes employees don't even know because they're not gonna be just watching all the time. What the CEO is saying, what the top management team is saying. What is nice on the website, they, a lot of them are blue collar workers. They come early in the morning, they work super hard. Once they are leaving, they just want to leave and rest. They're not gonna be following the news about the company. So maybe as a middle manager, let's start by looking am I, are my employees aware of what the company has in terms of corporate purpose? Do they care about it and how? The, this manager can actually link the jobs that are being done by this team to the corporate purpose. So if I am in a, in the department of Accounting, I may not really know how my work is contributing to the corporate purpose of a company that's sells, let's say medical products. It will just say I'm making the numbers. How am I contributing to the company saving lives? I probably don't. They need me unnecessary, but am I really making a difference? And this is really the role of the manager to tell them, yes, you are making a difference. This is how you're contributing to what the company says. It's. It's a corporate purpose, and I think that you should believe that you are very important in that process. Pauline, when you're talking like this, the images of modern times and Charlie Chaplin tightening the bolts immediately come up and the extreme boredom of a lot of the, unfortunately the blue collar work is fortunately not that extreme anymore. But had Charlie Chaplin seen that those bolts would actually be a. Vital parts of a car that is being built or something, it might change things. So even the smallest tasks need to be emphasized as very important. While I do not really adhere to the Ford system, and I think that employees need to be offered opportunities to grow, and I think most companies nowadays also think that you should not be just taking to turning the bolt, even if you are only turning the bolt. It is important for individuals to understand how they work. Is contributing. And for that, I, there is a paper by Carton in 2017 where he looked at all sorts of communication that happened in nasa from the biggest employee to the smallest employee. And the title is very interesting. It's, it says, I'm not mopping the floor. I'm sending him in on the moon. And this is what they told them. It's like they told even the smallest worker you're not just here mopping the floor of the offices in Nassar. You're helping us by maintaining this office to work in a good place so we can send people on the moon. And if every company just tries to tell people that, yes, maybe your work seems for the outsider as not important, your presence in the company, whether it is, turning a bolt or it is cleaning the floor, you're actually helping us do the work that we need to do in order to achieve this corporate purpose. So I think Charlie Chaplin had a point because. Back then, the companies were just making cars. They didn't really try to translate beyond that. They just said, oh, we're making cars because people wanna buy cars. So we make what the people want and. It just feels that this is mainly limiting the capacity of these employees and also limiting how kinda integrated they feel to the company. They just feel that they are in this blue collar job and this is everything that they do. They don't see how them existing and how them doing this job properly. It's actually allowing the company to, to be pushed forward. And we need to also remember that every small worker is very important. And as people living in France, we should know this very well, one protest by any small work blue collar worker, it's just gonna paralyze the whole country. So yes, I think it's very important for them to know that they're not just bold turners, they're more than that. Section five, give it the limit by 2024. There's never been a more exciting time to work for NASA and to think about the future. Nicholas Lin, technology strategist at NASA explaining how the agency helps engage employees in its greater mission. Ultimately, though, our employees are the ones that are on the leading edge of all this. We hire explorers, we hire people who are curious. They stay at NASA because they can directly attach what they're doing individually in their job to the greater mission of nasa. But some leaders might think, oh great, I'll just talk about purpose more. But your paper actually suggests that's just not enough. And in fact, our exchange, we've seen clearly that's the case. So what are the pitfalls and the dangers of superficial purpose talk corporate purpose? On the outside, it's very nice. It's very beautiful to look at because the company's just saying, oh my God, I don't only exist because I want to make money. I actually want to serve you everyone. So my employees, my customers, my society. However, if it's just shallow, then no actions will come after. And these companies can easily be seen as hypocrites. They can easily be seen as lying to their stakeholders. And just not applying the actions where they say that they want to apply. So there's this conflict between what they are stating and what they are actually doing, and this is why just repeating something just is not enough. I can repeat every day something and just do nothing towards. It doesn't mean anything for the audience, it doesn't mean anything for the employees and actually just discourages them because they will see that we were told that we are doing something important. We're just not seeing it. We don't know if we are actually doing what they are saying that we are doing. We actually, we don't think we, we are doing what they say that we are doing. If there is no application and if they just limit everything to saying that this is the corporate purpose, but they don't actually integrate it in their strategy, and that means that it is actually part of every decision that they make, then they will never really apply it. It'll never be genuine and the company will not be able to advance towards that direction. You mentioned that purpose, communication, and application, as you've just said now could help resolve the polarized debate about purpose between believers and skeptics. Because we tell both of them that you're right. So if you're skeptical about it, you have your good reasons because not all companies that state a corporate purpose may apply a corporate purpose. And for the believers, we tell them you're also right because not a lot of companies also try to apply a corporate purpose in the way that they work. So it's more about. Telling both sides that it's not just corporate purpose as a concept that is right or wrong, it's more how we deal with it, how the company tries to apply it. So within the same firm, when even there's a difference between one team and another, you can imagine between one company and another. And we're telling both of them that. You can, you have the right to be skeptical. You have the right to be a believer because it really depends on what you're looking at. Are you looking at a company that is applying what it's its corporate purpose and it just considers it as an essential part of a strategy? Or is it just a company that. Considers it as a nice title to put on the website and to tell the employees, but in reality, they have not really changed the way that they do their business to reflect what their corporate purpose is. Now, as we're living in an era where there's a kind of purpose fatigue and many employees are cynical about corporate mission statements which you, I think address in your research. Just how much of a struggle is it against this skepticism in the world we're living in at the moment? It is a big struggle, I have to admit, because there are multiple sources for it. One of them would be because a lot of companies, especially the large ones, they say that they have a corporate purpose. They just never really change the way that they do their business to reflect it, or the way that they change it is so slow that people think are they even trying? They're not really doing anything that they want or they are trying to cheat their win. And the amount of scandals that we see companies that say, oh, we're becoming more eco-friendly. We want to be a sustainable company that serves the community, but in reality they are not or health healthcare companies that say, oh, we just want to have the medication available for all of the population. But in reality, they engage in price gouging. They see like nobody. Nobody is blind. They see that, okay, they are not doing what they say that they are doing. They're still. Considering that that the profit is the most important thing and as employees that thought that they were making a difference, they just feel a bit cheated. So it's, it is a normal thing and it's just getting harder and harder to, with the amount of information that are mainly negative about these companies. Although it's a good sign for transparency and some accountability taking place, which did not happen before, it's still. Leads to people feeling desperate, are we even trying? But the bright side is that there are companies that started well and are continuing. There are companies that are really trying to change the way that they are doing their business, for example. So Patagonia is a always a very good example. We have also here in France, like they are also working hard. We're just more hoping for companies to change their ways. So there's. Small changes, but I understand when people feel that it's yet not enough because the damage is very big and we just are trying to contain it as as fast as possible and to reverse it as fast as possible. But corporate purpose alone is not gonna make it, it's a good start. It just shows that the company has started considering at least being more present and to show that it has more values than just being cash Cow. But it's not enough for the majority of companies to just say it. We want more actions. Pauline. Another new reality, which is accelerated is remote work. And I'm wondering about the hybrid or remote teams where leaders often have less visibility. Does purpose dialogue become even more important or harder to get it right? So because of the majority of the teams that we worked on, they were. Present because the data is majorly before COVID. It shows that even when the employees are present, there's this sort of heterogeneity. Okay. Or is the leader actually communicating or not? And is he offering this dialogue space or not? So yes, when there is remote work, it's definitely harder, but it's not impossible because we also see that the companies were able to survive and the employees remained in touch. And now we have, more hybrid and more flexibility and employees are still staying and they actually appreciate this possibility of working from home and not having to commute. Maybe being. Closer to the family, being able to more balanced life work. So this is the good side of remote work because if the company says that it cares about the employees, and the employees actually want to have more time with their family, less time on the roads, then this is helping them on the other side. It just makes communication a bit harder because we're more creatures that like face to face. So for the majority of times, the communication when it's done in person, it's way better. And this is one of the kind of pushbacks of companies that don't want fully remote work, is that we need to see you and we need to talk to you in person. And I do agree that it's a challenge, but there's also a lot of ways to communicate. I'm not saying just go crazy on online meetings, but keep touch with the employees. Try to tell them that they are still doing a good job, and how the communicate with them, how their work is helping the company advance. Don't cut that kind of communication just because you cannot see the employees and then I really hope that it's gonna. Compensate to a certain extent the lack of physical presence of the employees in the office. Finally, Paulina Smar. Where would you like this research to go next? What are the questions you're really most excited to explore further in future research? As I said, my research is about corporate purpose, but it's also about for misconduct and irresponsible actions. So what I want to explore further is. The hypocrisy that we spoke about and how employees react to it, how external audiences react to it, where their corporate purpose is not just. Something that does well for the company, but also can have a darker side where if a company promises something and tells that these, this is their set of values, but then they act against it is there any sanctioning for it? And do employees actually care about the company? Just not being the nice. Guy that they thought it is, or the very serving entity that they thought it is. So I think I'm really interested in this kind of opposition between what is said and what is done and these kind of different identities that the company can have between being the good guy and the group that has all of these values this huge organization that can make a difference. And on the other side that. The organization that may try to make more money by going into illegal actions. The company that may break the rules just to make more income or like more money, or the one that, and the one that is not actually capable of applying property the values and is not able to have its employees respect the values that it says it has. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for this amazing kin review. Thank Youma drawing a career research map for the years to come, and also showing us that there's so much more work to be done, which will have, I think, great impact should it be taken and applied in different companies and businesses. That's it for this edition of Breakthroughs. It's been a long and rich academic year, and this season of podcasts has shown just how groundbreaking and varied HCS research is. For more of the same. Tune into our sixth season in September. Meanwhile, keep your letters and comments coming in by writing to Brown D in one word at HC ffr. That's Brown D at HC fr. Until next time round, have a great summer wherever you are.