From Purpose to Circularity: Unpacking the Strategic and Systemic Role of Corporate Purpose

Organizations face increasing pressures to address climate change, disruptive technologies, resource scarcity, and shifting stakeholder expectations. These factors require them to reassess their strategies, societal roles, and approaches to innovation. At the same time, transitions toward circular economy (CE) models demand systemic changes in how value is created and sustained. In these conditions, high-growth companies and alliances demonstrate how placing purpose at their core enables organizational transformation and value-driven collaborations with stakeholders that can drive circular systemic change. By synthesizing insights from strategic management, system, organizational change, and circular economy literature, this conceptual paper positions purpose as a normative, strategic, and systemic construct and proposes a future research agenda to examine its mechanisms, risks, and transformative potential – with particular attention to its role in accelerating circular economy transitions on the organizational level.