Toward a Sustainable Paradigm: Redefining Corporate Purpose in the EU Context

Recent societal transformations have intensified debates on corporate purpose, yet empirical evidence linking these debates to measurable sustainability outcomes remains fragmented. This study advances the literature by conceptualizing corporate purpose as a country-level sustainability orientation and empirically examining how European Union (EU) member states align with distinct corporate purpose models. Using cluster analysis and artificial neural networks applied to data from the Candriam Sovereign Sustainability Report and the Sustainable Development Report, this study identifies three dominant national-level corporate purpose models—traditional, goal-based, and duty-based. The findings reveal a systematic shift toward a sustainability-oriented corporate purpose model, in which social, human, and natural capital play a more decisive role than economic capital alone. Moreover, countries aligned with the duty-based model exhibit significantly higher Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) index scores, providing novel empirical evidence that national sustainability orientations are closely associated with progress toward the SDGs. By linking corporate purpose models to macro-level sustainability outcomes, this research offers a new quantitative framework for understanding how institutional and policy contexts shape contemporary interpretations of corporate purpose and their relevance for sustainable development.