Universities must follow business and place ‘purpose’ front and centre

In the time that it takes the typical university student to complete their studies, profound change of an almost unimaginable scale will need to sweep through all sectors of society, not least universities. But are our institutions up to this extraordinary challenge?

Probably not, according to a recent interdisciplinary special issue of the journal Frontiers in Sustainability focused on the topic Re-purposing Universities for Sustainable Human Progress, which we edited with Stephen Sterling. With planetary-scale breakdown looming, the papers in the volume describe a global academic sector that, despite pockets of inspiring action, is collectively slow and slumbering, wedded to outdated siloed thinking and complicit in promoting high-carbon, consumptive living.

According to one contributor, Alison Green of the campaign group Scientists Without Warning, “academic institutions are failing in their overarching mission to humanity and the planet, and are increasingly part of the problem, not the solution”.

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So, how can universities legitimately become socially embedded catalysts for the transformational change needed? For many, it demands a profound, root-and-branch reimagining of their fundamental academic mission – their existential reason to exist. Their purpose.

We use “purpose” here in the way the business world is embracing the term: the primary, meaningful reason for an organisation to exist is its optimal strategic contribution to long-term well-being for all.

For business, purpose is the serious response to unsustainability that has sprung forth from what some might think is the unlikeliest of places. In 2018, Larry Fink, CEO of the world’s largest and most powerful financial asset manager, BlackRock, asserted to all firms in which they invest that “society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose”.

A year later, the bastion of free-market economic thinking, the US Business Roundtable, declared that the purpose of business was no longer to maximise profits for shareholders but promote an economy that serves all. Meanwhile, the British Academy’s 2019 report into the “future of the corporation” concluded that “the purpose of business is to solve the problems of people and planet profitably – and not profit from causing problems”.

Cheap energy, and the unleashing of financial self-interest spurred the “Great Acceleration” in economic growth, material consumption and massive improvements in well-being. At the same time it drove rampant degradation of the basis of that well-being.

A century of “development” is set to be undone in a decade and hardship locked in. Recognising this, and spurred by a few financial crises, business – or, at least, an enlightened section of it – is going through a very deep and necessary identity crisis. And “purpose” is what’s emerging from it.

Reflected in the macro-level “well-being economy”, more and more businesses are shifting from the short-term myopia of financial self-interest to an enduring, aspirational reason to exist that works to create long-term well-being for all (i.e. sustainability).

This hands-on repurposing of business to directly address the spectre of impending unsustainability provides a potential road map for universities. After all, a common lament among many in higher education is that universities are becoming too “business-like”, adopting economic models that rely on the commodification and marketisation of the academic product – be that campus services, student courses, research findings or technological innovation.

The solution for many is for academia to unshackle itself from its new entrepreneurial mission servicing the economy and for university leaders to distance themselves from business thinking. But is the new-frontier business thinking – purpose-driven business thinking – exactly what universities need to follow to change fast and at scale?

In our paper, Re-purposing Universities: The Path to Purpose, we explore the parallels between the business and university response to unsustainability and what a quality response – a purpose-driven university – might look like. We draw on the experiences of businesses that have started down that same path and offer insights on the organisational drivers that will impel it.

Foremost, university leaders – governors and executive managers – must set out their institution’s unique contribution to the long-term global well-being agenda and ensure clarity about the value they intend to create (and protect) to get there. Strategic objectives, strategy, KPIs, investment decisions and reward strategies all need to be aligned.

However, even with that level of direction, purpose needs to permeate the entire organisational culture – both its intangible cultural software (such as assumptions and patterns of behaviour) and its tangible cultural hardware (such as structures, processes and artefacts), with the purpose providing a reference frame for short-, medium- and long-term decision-making. Therefore, the key leadership task needs to be recognised as no less than creating a whole-organisational, purpose-driven system that works for all faculties, departments and professional services and requires the involvement of all stakeholders, staff and students.

Any meaningful purpose, in the context of systemic threats to collective, long-term well-being, will probably be highly complex, meaning that narrow disciplinary interests have less use, and the blurring, blending and eliminating of long-standing departmental boundaries, disciplinary norms and profit-seeking intermediaries is likely. This is something that innovations such as the DeSci movement are already facilitating.

Additionally, the sharpened responsibility for addressing acute matters of societal concern, where solutions will often hinge on or need to be defined by those facing them, will mean academics co-creating enduring research relationships with the communities they serve and those stakeholders that they rely on to help them do so.

Hence, within such a repurposed academic culture, research practices would become, as a consequence of being purpose-driven, consciously interdisciplinary, participatory, reflexive, innovative and ethical. This means each academic can help the institution on its journey by considering how they break down the assumptions and structures that are locking in narrow research concerns and insulated thinking.

Ultimately, as society clarifies its expectations for all organisations to prove their real worth, in the shadow of a cliff edge for humanity, the success of universities will be gauged by their ability to plan and deliver their purpose – and be transparently accountable to this. Yes, sound financial management will be a core means to this and finance-based KPIs will still be vital – but only in service to delivering meaningful, measurable and durable well-being gains for society and nature at large.

In the closing window of opportunity for change, is anything less than purpose just window dressing?

Victoria Hurth is a visiting fellow of the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, fellow of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and co-convenor of the ISO Governance of Organisations Working Group.

Iain Stewart holds the El Hassan bin Talal research chair in sustainability at the Royal Scientific Society in Amman, Jordan, is co-director of the Centre for Climate Change & Sustainability at Ashoka University, India, and is professor of geoscience communication at the Sustainable Earth Institute, University of Plymouth, UK.

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