The Authenticity of Purpose Claims: Firm Capacity and Job Seeker Responses to Recruitment Efforts

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03931

References

  • Almandoz JJ (2023) Inside-out and outside-in perspectives on corporate purpose. Strategy Sci. 8(2):139–148.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Andreoni J, Vesterlund L (2001) Which is the fair sex? Gender differences in altruism. Quart. J. Econom. 116(1):293–312.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Banks GC, Woznyj HM, Wesslen RS, Frear KA, Berka G, Heggestad ED, Gordon HL (2019) Strategic recruitment across borders: An investigation of multinational enterprises. J. Management 45(2):476–509.Google Scholar
  • Barnard CI (1938) The Functions of the Executive (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA).Google Scholar
  • Barney J (2010) Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage, 4th ed. (Pearson, Upper Saddle River, NJ).Google Scholar
  • Bartlett CA, Ghoshal S (1994) Changing the role of top management: Beyond strategy to purpose. Harvard Bus. Rev. 72(6):79–88.Google Scholar
  • Besharov M, Mitzinneck B (2023) The multiple facets of corporate purpose: An analytical typology. Strategy Sci. 8(2):233–244.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Bhattacharya CB, Sen S, Edinger-Schons LM, Neureiter M (2022) Corporate purpose and employee sustainability behaviors. J. Bus. Ethics 183:963–981.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Bidwell M, Won S, Barbulescu R, Mollick E (2015) I used to work at Goldman Sachs! How firms benefit from organizational status in the market for human capital. Strategic Management J. 36(8):1164–1173.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Bischof JM, Airoldi EM (2012) Summarizing topical content with word frequency and exclusivity. Proc. 29th Internat. Conf. Machine Learn. (Omnipress, Madison, WI), 9–16.Google Scholar
  • Boyd RL, Ashokkumar A, Seraj S, Pennebaker JW (2022) The development and psychometric properties of LIWC-22. Report, University of Texas at Austin, Austin.Google Scholar
  • Breiman L (2001) Random forests. Machine Learn. 45:5–32.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Burbano VC (2016) Social responsibility messages and worker wage requirements: Field experimental evidence from online labor marketplaces. Organ. Sci. 27(4):1010–1028.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Burbano V, Padilla N, Meier S (2024) Gender differences in preferences for meaning at work. Amer. Econom. J. 16(3):61–94.Google Scholar
  • Chang J, Gerrish S, Wang C, Boyd-Graber J, Blei D (2009) Reading tea leaves: How humans interpret topic models. Bengio Y, Schuurmans D, Lafferty JD, Williams CKI, Culotta A, eds. NIPS’09: Proc. 23rd Internat. Conf. Neural Inform. Processing Systems (Curran Associates Inc., Red Hook, NY), 288–296.Google Scholar
  • CR Magazine (2017) CR’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens — 2017 Edition. 3BL Media. Accesed October 16, 2025, https://100best.3blmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2017.pdf.Google Scholar
  • Crawford VP, Sobel J (1982) Strategic information transmission. Econometrica 50(6):1431–1451.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Deloitte (2021) Global human capital trends: Special report. Technical report, Deloitte, New York.Google Scholar
  • Dhingra N, Samo A, Schaninger B, Schrimper M (2021) Help your employees find purpose—Or watch them leave. McKinsey (April 5), https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/help-your-employees-find-purpose-or-watch-them-leave.Google Scholar
  • DiMaggio P, Nag M, Blei D (2013) Exploiting affinities between topic modeling and the sociological perspective on culture: Application to newspaper coverage of U.S. government arts funding. Poetics 41(6):570–606.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Durand R (2023) From the boardroom: Making purpose research relevant for practice. Strategy Sci. 8(2):149–158.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Durand R, Gouvard P (2022) An audience-based theory of firms’ purposefulness. Lockwood C, Soublière JF, eds. Research in the Sociology of Organizations (Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, UK), 193–216.Google Scholar
  • Eagly AH (2009) The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of gender. Amer. Psych. 64(8):644–658.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Eyal P, David R, Andrew G, Zak E, Ekaterina D (2021) Data quality of platforms and panels for online behavioral research. Behav. Res. Methods 54:1643–1662.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Farrell J (1987) Cheap talk, coordination, and entry. RAND J. Econom. 18(1):34–39.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Farrell J, Rabin M (1996) Cheap talk. J. Econom. Perspect. 10(3):103–118.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Findlay S, Moran M (2019) Purpose-washing of impact investing funds: Motivations, occurrence and prevention. Soc. Responsibility J. 15(7):853–873.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Frake J (2016) Selling out: The inauthenticity discount in the craft beer industry. Management Sci. 63(11):3930–3943.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Gartenberg C (2022) Purpose-driven companies and sustainability. George G, Haas MR, Joshi H, McGahan AM, Tracey P, eds. Handbook on the Business of Sustainability: The Organization, Implementation, and Practice of Sustainable Growth (Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK), 24–42.Google Scholar
  • Gartenberg C (2023) The contingent relationship between purpose and profits. Strategy Sci. 8(2):256–269.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Gartenberg C, Zenger T (2023) The firm as a subsociety: Purpose, justice, and the theory of the firm. Organ. Sci. 34(5):1965–1980.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Gartenberg C, Prat A, Serafeim G (2019) Corporate purpose and financial performance. Organ. Sci. 30(1):1–18.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • George G, Haas MR, McGahan AM, Schillebeeckx SJD, Tracey P (2023) Purpose in the for-profit firm: A review and framework for management research. J. Management 49(6):1841–1869.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Gulati R (2022) Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies (HarperCollins Publishers, New York).Google Scholar
  • Gulati R, Wohlgezogen F (2023) Can purpose foster stakeholder trust in corporations? Strategy Sci. 8(2):270–287.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Gully SM, Phillips JM, Castellano WG, Han K, Kim A (2013) A mediated moderation model of recruiting socially and environmentally responsible job applicants. Personality Psych. 66(4):935–973.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Gupta N, Rigotti L, Wilson A (2021) The experimenters’ dilemma: Inferential preferences over populations. Preprint, submitted July 11, https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.05064.Google Scholar
  • Hahl O (2016) Turning back the clock in baseball: The increased prominence of extrinsic rewards and demand for authenticity. Organ. Sci. 27(4):929–953.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Hahl O, Ha J (2020) Committed diversification: Why authenticity insulates against penalties for diversification. Organ. Sci. 31(1):1–22.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Hahl O, Kim M, Zuckerman Sivan EW (2018) The authentic appeal of the lying demagogue: Proclaiming the deeper truth about political illegitimacy. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 83(1):1–33.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hannigan T, Haans RFJ, Vakili K, Tchalian H, Glaser V, Wang M, Kaplan S, Jennings PD (2019) Topic modeling in management research: Rendering new theory from textual data. Acad. Management Ann. 13(2):586–632.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Henderson R, Van den Steen E (2015) Why do firms have “purpose”? The firm’s role as a carrier of identity and reputation. Amer. Econom. Rev. 105(5):326–330.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Henisz WJ (2023) The value of organizational purpose. Strategy Sci. 8(2):159–169.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Henry E (2008) Are investors influenced by how earnings press releases are written? J. Bus. Comm. 45(4):363–407.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hillman AJ, Keim GD, Schuler D (2004) Corporate political activity: A review and research agenda. J. Management 30(6):837–857.Google Scholar
  • Hovland CI, Janis IL, Kelley HH (1953) Communication and Persuasion: Psychological Studies of Opinion Change (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT).Google Scholar
  • Jones DA, Willness CR, Madey S (2014) Why are job seekers attracted by corporate social performance? Experimental and field tests of three signal-based mechanisms. Acad. Management J. 57(2):383–404.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Josefy M, Kuban S, Ireland RD, Hitt MA (2015) All things great and small: Organizational size, boundaries of the firm, and a changing environment. Acad. Management Ann. 9(1):715–802.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Kershaw D, Schuster EP (2022) The purposive transformation of corporate law. Amer. J. Comparative Law 69(3):478–538.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Lepisto D (2015) Reason for being: Exploring the formation and members ’ acceptance of organizational purpose in an athletic footwear and apparel company. Unpublished PhD thesis, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA.Google Scholar
  • Locke EA, Shaw KN, Saari LM, Latham GP (1981) Goal setting and task performance: 1969–1980. Psych. Bull. 90(1):125–152.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Marquis C, Qian C (2014) Corporate social responsibility reporting in China: Symbol or substance? Organ. Sci. 25(1):127–148.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • McGahan AM (2023) The new stakeholder theory on organizational purpose. Strategy Sci. 8(2):245–255.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • McKenny AF, Short JC, Payne GT (2013) Using computer-aided text analysis to elevate constructs: An illustration using psychological capital. Organ. Res. Methods 16(1):152–184.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Morrison AD, Mota R (2023) A theory of organizational purpose. Acad. Management Rev. 48(2):203–219.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Moss TW, Renko M, Block E, Meyskens M (2018) Funding the story of hybrid ventures: Crowdfunder lending preferences and linguistic hybridity. J. Bus. Venturing 33(5):643–659.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Nardi L (2022) The corporate social responsibility price premium as an enabler of substantive CSR. Acad. Management Rev. 47(2):282–308.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Palan S, Schitter C (2018) Prolific.ac—A subject pool for online experiments. J. Behav. Experiment. Finance 17:22–27.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Payne GT, Brigham KH, Broberg JC, Moss TW, Short JC (2011) Organizational virtue orientation and family firms. Bus. Ethics Quart. 21(2):257–285.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Phillips JM, Gully SM (1997) Role of goal orientation, ability, need for achievement, and locus of control in the self-efficacy and goal–setting process. J. Appl. Psych. 82(5):792–802.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Phillips DJ, Turco CJ, Zuckerman EW (2013) Betrayal as market barrier: Identity-based limits to diversification among high-status corporate law firms. Amer. J. Sociol. 118(4):1023–1054.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Pratt MG, Hedden LN (2023) Accounts and accountability: On organizational purpose, organizational identity, and meaningful work. Strategy Sci. 8(2):182–192.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Quinn KM, Monroe BL, Colaresi M, Crespin MH, Radev DR (2010) How to analyze political attention with minimal assumptions and costs. Amer. J. Political Sci. 54(1):209–228.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Radoynovska N, Ruttan R (2021) A matter of transition: Authenticity judgments and attracting employees to hybridized organizations. Organ. Sci. 34(6):2373–2391.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Reputation Institute (2017) 2017 Global CSR RepTrak: Reputation and corporate social responsibility. Technical report, RepTrak, Boston.Google Scholar
  • Rider CI, Tan D (2015) Labor market advantages of organizational status: A study of lateral partner hiring by large U.S. law firms. Organ. Sci. 26(2):356–372.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Rindova VP, Martins LL (2023) Moral imagination, the collective desirable, and strategic purpose. Strategy Sci. 8(2):170–181.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Rosso BD, Dekas KH, Wrzesniewski A (2010) On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review. Res. Organ. Behav. 30:91–127.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Selznick P (1948) Foundations of the theory of organization. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 13(1):25–35.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Sievert C, Shirley K (2014) LDAvis: A method for visualizing and interpreting topics. Chuang J, Green S, Hearst M, Heer J, Koehn P, eds. Proc. Workshop Interactive Language Learn. Visualization Interfaces (Association for Computational Linguistics, East Stroudsburg, PA), 63–70.Google Scholar
  • Strauss K (2017) America’s most reputable companies in 2017: Amazon knocked out of the top spot. Forbes (March 28), https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2017/03/28/americas-most-reputable-companies-in-2017-amazon-knocked-out-of-the-top-spot/.Google Scholar
  • Suddaby R, Manelli L, Fan Z (2023) Corporate purpose: A social judgement perspective. Strategy Sci. 8(2):202–211.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Taddy M (2012) On estimation and selection for topic models. Proc. 15th Internat. Conf. Artificial Intelligence Statist. vol. 22 (PMLR, New York), 1184–1193.Google Scholar
  • Vault (2017) Best places to work. Accessed October 16, 2025, https://vault.com/careers/rankings.Google Scholar
  • Verhaal JC, Hahl O, Fandl KJ (2022) Authenticity-based connections as organizational constraints and the paradox of authenticity in the market for Cuban cigars. Organ. Sci. 34(6):2487–2507.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Westphal JD (2023) Systemic symbolic management, corporate social responsibility, and corporate purpose: A cautionary tale. Strategy Sci. 8(2):221–232.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Zenger TR, Felin T, Bigelow L (2011) Theories of the firm–market boundary. Acad. Management Ann. 5(1):89–133.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
INFORMS site uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some are essential to make our site work; Others help us improve the user experience. By using this site, you consent to the placement of these cookies. Please read our Privacy Statement to learn more.