Ruttmann, RobertRobertRuttmann2023-04-132023-04-132021-09-20https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/109948Work is probably one of the most fundamental experiences of human life. Many people derive a sense of meaning and identity from their work. As such, it comes as little surprise that the topic of purpose is increasingly being promoted as a way for companies to catalyze employee engagement. This is relevant on an individual basis but also for organizations because companies with high levels of employee engagement tend to perform better. The primary research question that follows this logic is whether corporate purpose beyond mere profit maximization can influence financial performance (RQ1). Moreover, given the complexity of this dynamic, two secondary research questions are formulated in efforts to better understand the primary research problem. In a first step, the question of whether purpose could influence employee engagement as a mediator for performance is explored (RQ2), and subsequently the question is addressed of whether cultural differences could moderate the perception of purpose (RQ3). To answer these questions, the dissertation runs three separate empirical analyses. In a first step, the project runs four experiments to measure whether people in two separate cultural groups (US and European) respond to a firms corporate purpose and how such a corporate purpose may affect their perceptions of the company and their own work engagement. In a second step, the study looks at whether high-purpose companies outperform their peers in accounting terms. The author runs panel regressions in 11 European countries using an OLS model based on accounting data and employee perception data sourced from Great Place to Work (GPTW) to test the hypothesis that a companys accounting performance depends on the degree to which its employees believe in its corporate purpose. And finally, in a third step, the study uses stock price performance and volatility data to explore whether a relationship might exist between corporate purpose and a companys stock price returns. For the first section, the results suggest that corporate purpose positively influences employees perceptions of their companies and their work engagement (RQ2), with US employees seeming to be even more sensitive than their European peers on questions of purpose (RQ3). The second and third sections find no statistical relationship between purpose and financial performance (RQ1), both on an operational level and with respect to the stock price performance of a company.enZweckEDIS-5142Purposedoctoral thesis