Corporate purpose: a social judgement perspective

We apply the lens of social value-judgement theory to understand the recent turn to corporate purpose in popular and management discourse. We address two questions; why has the shift from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism occurred now and what are the implications for competition amongst corporations in the future. Our analysis suggests that the shift to stakeholder capitalism is triggered by extreme inequality and a concomitant sentiment of collective nostalgia. Our social value-judgement analysis suggests that the basis of competition will shift from legitimacy based competition to competition based on authenticity. We explore the implications of authenticity based competition.