In a global context marked by chaos and turbulence, technological advancements, health crises, marketplace alterations, shifting demographics and organizational foolishness, the demand for more adaptive and reflective forms of leadership has become a necessity. Given this context, wisdom can provide a meaningful understanding of “good” leadership to navigate such turbulence and seize the opportunities that come along with it. As such, wisdom constitutes a cornerstone of effective leadership and serves as a key driver of organizational excellence.

How do leaders ‘wise up’?

To put wisdom to good use in leadership, in one of our research pieces, we developed a valid “wise leadership scale”, designed to assess the extent to which leaders and managers demonstrate wisdom within organizations by gathering data in France and Morocco. In a recent research output, we validated the new wise leadership scale using data collected from Canada, China and Morocco. How do we define wise leadership?

Wise leadership is oriented toward enabling others to contribute meaningfully to the flourishing of individuals, organizations, and the wider community.

We conceptualised wise leaders as individuals who enact normatively positive behaviours through four mechanisms:

• Intellectual shrewdness

This involves the ability to recognise, comprehend, and make sound decisions in both predictable and unpredictable situations. It entails quickly detecting subtle cues and underlying dynamics, anticipating potential difficulties, and generating actionable insights, even in ambiguous and uncertain contexts.

Wise leaders grasp what needs to be done and are acutely aware of the repercussions of their decisions and actions. To establish facts and provide deductive explanations without rushing to judgement, they rely on reasoned and circumspect observation. Wise leaders also possess the intellectual abilities required to realise their envisioned future by selecting the appropriate course of action at the right moment, while carefully considering the prevailing circumstances.

A lack of intellectual shrewdness along with sound judgement and foresight among high-ranking executives and engineers resulted in Volkswagen’s Dieselgate scandal in 2015.

The latter was about setting up unauthorised software to evade nitrogen oxide emission regulations. The individuals concerned were intelligent leaders with remarkable engineering and financial abilities. Nonetheless, they exhibited poor judgement and unwise behaviour as they did not adequately assess the potential repercussions or anticipate the harmful consequences for both the company and themselves of tampering with emission tests. The scandal resulted in a colossal loss of over €33 billion in penalties and settlements for Volkswagen.

• Spurring action

This refers to the capacity to inspire and mobilise others around a compelling vision. Wise leaders help subordinates perceive a positive future vision as both meaningful and attainable.

Spurring action involves directing followers toward actions that yield desired outcomes that followers themselves recognise and appreciate as wise. To this end, wise leaders display specific traits and behaviours that enable them to align individual and organizational goals. Wise leaders additionally, actively develop the potential of their followers, elevating them to new levels of performance and growth. On top of this, wise leaders are also able to bring people with varying interests together, even by resorting to power if necessary. Lastly, by fostering a sense of purpose, nurturing trust, building strong human connections, and creating opportunities for organizational members to work collaboratively, wise leaders entice subordinates to achieve positive work outcomes.

When Tadataka Yamada took over as chairman of R&D at Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) in December 2000, his company was one of 39 pharmaceutical companies suing the South African government for violating price protections and patent infringement for AIDS medicines over access to drug therapies for needy patients.

Given the patients’ powerless position to alter the course of the legal process, Yamada opted to be a part of the solution to global health problems, rather than a party to a lawsuit that prevented such treatments from reaching those in desperate need.

In one-on-one meetings with each GSK board member, Yamada emphasised GSK’s moral obligation to relieve human suffering and associated it with the company’s long-term performance. All 39 corporations withdrew their legal action against South Africa in April 2001. GSK’s business strategy in developing countries, stakeholder relations, and reputation were all positively impacted by this decision.

• Moral conduct

This refers to how far morals, values, and principles guide wise leaders’ day-to-day interactions with stakeholders in a consistent, truthful, and ethical manner. Wise leaders avoid excess and greed, uphold high ethical standards and prioritise virtuous outcomes. In practice, wise leaders balance their own interests with those of others, carefully evaluate the moral implications of their decisions and actions, and consistently adhere to their ethical principles. To achieve this, wise leaders rely on a strong moral compass that provides clear behavioural guidelines, ensures consistency between words and deeds, and reinforces their moral commitment. As a result, they serve as role models for their followers; their organizations function harmoniously, grounded in a noble purpose aimed at delivering benefits to the greatest number of people.

As an example, Mario Rovirosa, CEO of Ferrer – Spain’s first B corp pharmaceutical company, stresses that the brand’s slogan “Ferrer for good” says it all: it is the company’s purpose to “do good” in society and on the planet, and asserts that Ferrer harnesses its pharmaceutical activity to obtain the required resources to do good.

Rovirosa spearheaded Ferrer to become the first Spanish pharmaceutical laboratory to obtain the B Corp certification that is awarded by B Lab to firms that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

Ferrer takes into account the effects corporate decisions have on their employees, customers, suppliers, community, and the physical environment. Recently, the company conferred more than half of its profits to social and environmental initiatives.

• Cultivating humility

Cultivating humility involves a balanced sense of self-worth that lies between the vices of deficiency and excess. Wise leaders deeply value their expertise and knowledge yet continually subject them to critical scrutiny. They are committed to lifelong learning as they strongly believe that true wisdom also stems from the vast realms of knowledge that remain unexplored. Wise leaders remain open to learning from all sources, including subordinates, and readily acknowledge that they do not know everything.

Moreover, the humility of wise leaders is evident in their willingness to openly admit mistakes and draw valuable lessons from them. Finally, wise leaders willingly adopt the perspectives of others, rather than exclusively rely on self-focused stances. In so doing, they truly guard against intellectual arrogance and ignorance.

When Anne Mulcahy took the reins of Xerox in 2001, it was recommended that she announce the company’s bankruptcy. Xerox was losing 300 million dollars each year. However, she chose not to take the “easy path”. When confronted with daunting obstacles, Mulcahy favoured dialogue over speeches and exhorted staff to share critical viewpoints and even discordant stances, and hence succeeded in accommodating diverse perspectives and expectations.

Mulcahy did what the vast majority of leaders would not do: she approached junior subordinates to mentor her in product development, engineering, and finance. Mulcahy ended up saving Xerox and improving its profitability by slashing both its capital expenditures and total debt in half, and cutting its general and administrative expenses by one third.

The proposed wise leadership model broadens the scope of existing approaches, such as authentic, ethical and transformational leadership, by incorporating the core components of judgement, action, morality, and humility.

This new wise leadership scale can serve as a practical tool to assess the degree of wise leadership demonstrated by current employees and to identify individuals with (un) wise tendencies during leadership recruitment and selection processes.

It also offers a valuable mechanism to design and deliver targeted leadership training and development programmes aimed at fostering wisdom in leaders, which may lead, in turn, to generating positive organizational outcomes.

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The European Academy of Management (EURAM) is a learned society founded in 2001. With over 2,000 members from 60 countries in Europe and beyond, EURAM aims at advancing the academic discipline of management in Europe.

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A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

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Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

At a time when remote work is increasingly up for debate among companies, it remains an often underestimated lever for fostering open innovation. This article examines how initiatives designed to encourage collaborative work outside the workplace can contribute to the development of open innovation.

Open innovation traditionally refers to purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge across firm boundaries. Through various collaborations with external entities, firms will be able to be more innovative and accelerate their product development process whatever their sector. Our latest research explores the reasons why remote working is frequently undervalued as a means of open innovation.

Companies, both large and medium sized, operating in various sectors tend to use co-working spaces and makerspaces to support their open innovation initiatives.

This approach is particularly relevant in cases where co-working spaces and makerspaces function as “open labs”. They offer a physical location that acts as a symbolic totem place, an innovation-driven community, and a set of services (incubators, coaching, etc.) that promote experimentation across a variety of specific subjects.

Some companies send their employees to these open labs, where they become affiliated coworkers within the open lab communities. These affiliated workers spend varying amounts of time there, from a few days a week to regular full week residency over several months or even years. Although affiliated coworkers represent only a small proportion of open lab residents, they have a specific profile, driven by individual motivations such as curiosity and open mindedness, as well as organisational targets set by their employer.

Exploring hubs where innovation thrives

From the firms’ perspective, regularly sending employees to work in open labs reflects the diverse opportunities to foster open innovation strategies.

Remote working in open labs can be divided into three categories that each contribute to the development of firms’ open innovation initiatives in a different way:

1) Remote working for fostering a new innovation culture

Open labs give affiliated workers the opportunity to develop new innovative work practices and workplace behaviours. In open labs, people interact on the basis of reciprocity mechanisms, use various creative methods, and engage in rapid prototyping activities. Learning by doing enables affiliated workers to acquire new creative skills as well as new representations of innovation. These experiences give them confidence in their ability to play an active role in collective and innovative processes. When they go back to their offices, they in turn, help spread a new innovation culture within the workplace.

• For three years, French bank Société Générale sent more than 1,000 employees per year from its business hubs based in the greater Paris area to various open labs located in Paris to learn new innovative practices. Société Générale employees benefited from residency programs at La Paillasse, Makesense or liberty living lab where they worked on innovative projects during several weeks.

• Makesense Space offers co-working spaces and supports intrapreneurship programs for large companies. Its team supports intrapreneurs who have the opportunity to work within Makesense co-working space, and become “embedded” in Makesense’s community of innovators.

2) Remote working for finding new partners, ideas, and expertise

By regularly sending knowledge workers on short stints at open labs, companies can access new ideas and expertise that enrich their projects. This enables affiliated workers to become embedded in open lab communities that are characterised by heterogeneous expertise and collective creative projects. These environments allows them to explore new topics in depth and gain fresh insights for exploratory activities.

• In France, a number of large construction and transport companies such as Eqiom and SNCF work with ICI Montreuil. ICI Montreuil is both a makerspace and a co-working space dedicated to the crafts and creative industries. The ICI Montreuil’s community is made up of artisans from 50 different types of crafts and creative industries who are able to support the development of new original tools and products.

• Electrolab is another example illustrating original relationships with private actors. Electrolab is a hackerspace that contributes to developing new technologies based on the hacking ethos. Its community is made up of engineers, unemployed people, students, researchers, artists, etc. All members of the open lab share the same value of developing technologies based on hacking principles. Medium sized companies are also welcome. They have the opportunity to participate in the community’s activities and harness new creative ideas and ways of developing new technologies.

3) Remote working as a way of managing collaborative multi-partner projects

Firms increasingly need to develop multi-partner collaborations to explore user-centric innovations and address emerging societal challenges such as environmental sustainability. For companies, it is becoming essential to reconcile different perspectives: technological development, economic value and environmental issues. They must identify new partners and design new ways of operating and doing business.

Sending employees to work inside open labs can be an effective way to manage multi-partner projects. Open labs provide a neutral space that encourages out of the box thinking. As affiliated workers, employees don’t just come to the open lab for meetings and brainstorming sessions; they stay there one, two, or three days per week over several months to work on dedicated collaborative projects.

Collaborative remote working respectively helps employers to remain project-centred and accelerate the innovation process. It also increases their ability to adopt new collaborative practices when working off-premises. TUBA in Lyon, specialising in urban project development and Liberté Living Lab in Paris are hubs that have attracted interest from large companies such as Roche, ENGIE, Société Générale who design collective experimentation projects for smart cities or healthcare. Employees from these firms go there on one or two day per week placements over a three month period to work on dedicated collective projects.

Keeping collaborative work environment options open

The contribution of remote working to open innovation has been barely formalised by companies, even though many of them are already implementing such initiatives.

These practices help address the human element behind open innovation challenges, particularly in terms of skills, culture, and collaboration.

When companies reduce remote working, they may also deprive themselves of valuable opportunities to strengthen their capacity to manage open innovation.

As our results in the EU-backed Remaking project show, remote working can be an opportunity to build experiences beyond corporate physical boundaries to foster companies and organisations’ capacity for innovation.

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Valérie Mérindol a reçu des financements de BPIfrance pour mener cette recherche.

Paris School of Business a reçu un financement de la Commission européenne pour le projet Horizon "REMAKING" (G.A. Nº 101132685).

Alexandra Le Chaffotec ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

Chief Purpose Officers: Do firms really need them? For decades, the shareholder primacy model dominated corporate strategy, often displacing explicit discussions of broader organizational purpose. Today, in a world shaped by AI, economic uncertainty, and constant organizational change, many stakeholders want companies to stand for something more than short-term results. As a result, the term “purpose”, defined as the reason a firm exists in society, has become a powerful business buzzword, especially following the Business Roundtable’s 2019 statement on corporate purpose. However, the more companies talk about purpose, the fewer employees seem to believe them.

Research suggests corporate purpose may be “too good to be true”. Employees increasingly experience purpose rhetoric as vague, superficial, and disconnected from everyday work realities. Companies make ambitious promises about values and responsibility to connect with society, yet the day-to-day remains dominated by growth targets, efficiency pressures, and quarterly results.

Employees notice the gap between what organisations say and what they actually do.

The emergence of CPOs and the importance of being ‘purpose-driven’

This growing complexity has fostered a new executive role that has quietly emerged: the Chief Purpose Officer, or CPO.

Ubisoft, Virgin Atlantic, Cisco, Sephora, and KPMG, to name a few, have introduced purpose-focused leadership roles in recent years.

Their task is simple in theory but difficult in practice: making sure a company’s stated purpose influences real decisions. Rather than competing with financial goals, CPOs help clarify how purpose and performance can be aligned, especially when leaders face difficult trade-offs about growth, stakeholders, and long-term responsibility.

Our recent study of 44 Chief Purpose Officers across industries such as gaming, travel, and beauty found that these executives work at the intersection of strategy, culture, and ethics to transform their organisations into more purpose-driven entities.

They help by connecting lofty purpose statements to the reality of organisational life.

In practice, this means asking difficult questions during leadership meetings:

• Does a business decision align with the company’s long-term direction and with its purpose?
• When does growth undermine the organisation’s purpose?
• How does the company create value for society? And where its activities cause harm, what changes are needed to transform the business?

Some CPOs redesign hiring and reward systems so employees are evaluated partly on their contributions to strengthening the organisation’s purpose. Others develop “purpose metrics” that executives discuss alongside financial performance.

Some examples are surprisingly concrete. One executive told us their company had ended relationships with clients whose practices conflicted with its values. Another described leadership meetings where executives openly discussed their emotional reactions to climate-related events. Some make purpose visible in simple, tangible ways. One CPO, for example, created a “light bulb wall”: each time an employee acts in a way that brings the organisation’s purpose to life, a new bulb is switched on. Over time, the wall becomes a visible reminder that purpose is enacted through everyday decisions and small, repeated actions.

At first glance, CPOs’ practices may appear unusual. In reality, they reflect a deeper transformation in management itself, trying to integrate moral and emotional considerations into strategic decision-making.

CPOs set out to reshape how organisations think about their societal role. They foster emotional engagement around shared values. They build relationships across stakeholders and departments. And they embed purpose into tangible structures such as incentives, metrics, and governance systems. In short, they attempt to transform abstract ideals into operational reality.

Can CPOs really make a difference?

The big question is whether companies need a dedicated executive for this work. While the role may overlap with functions such as HR, CPOs add value by linking purpose to long-term strategy and governance. As purpose is not static, CPOs support purpose evolution. They ensure that decisions reflect the organization’s responsibilities toward employees, customers, and communities, turning purpose into a practical guide for business.

Critics argue that Chief Purpose Officers risk becoming symbolic figures with little real influence. If one executive champions purpose while finance and operations teams control the actual decisions, nothing changes.

As a result, in some organisations, the role can become a form of corporate theatre: a visible commitment to values without meaningful structural reform. And lastly, purpose is also difficult to measure. Unlike sales or profits, its impact is harder to quantify. That makes it easy for sceptics to dismiss the role as another management fad.

Our research suggests that CPOs only make a difference under certain conditions.

1. The organisation must genuinely use purpose as a decision-making filter and link purpose with strategy.

2. The CPO must have both legitimacy and authority. They must report directly to the CEO and participate in strategic meetings.

3. Leadership must visibly model purpose, especially when it conflicts with short-term profit. If the CEO abandons purpose when it becomes inconvenient, the entire effort collapses into theatre.

When these conditions are present, organisations can change in tangible ways. Hiring practices evolve. Supplier relationships shift. Incentive systems are redesigned. Purpose begins to shape everyday decisions and becomes strategically relevant.

So, do firms need Chief Purpose Officers? Increasingly, yes.

In a business world marked by technological disruption, social pressure, and growing distrust of corporate rhetoric, firms face pressure from all directions at once. They must remain profitable, innovate quickly, attract talent, respond to social expectations, and adapt to technological change. Purpose does not replace these goals. It helps connect them.

This is where Chief Purpose Officers can make a difference.

Their role is about helping organisations clarify what they stand for when facing difficult trade-offs and competing priorities.

CPOs cannot solve these tensions alone. But they can help organisations turn purpose from a marketing message into a tangible, organisational reality that can be experienced in the workplace.

Why Europe needs CPOs

Society is raising the bar for responsible business. The European Union’s Corporate and Sustainability Reporting Directive and Green Deal now require large firms to align finance and operations with stated sustainability commitments and report on their impact. Yet compliance alone does not create purpose.

A company may report strong environmental performance while still lacking a clear reason for existing beyond shareholder returns. A Chief Purpose Officer is one emerging and fragile answer that helps close this gap by ensuring that a company’s purpose genuinely shapes financial and operational decisions, driving the transformation of European businesses toward more responsible and sustainable models.

Ones to watch

List of top executive appointments dedicated to upholding best practices:

• Richard Boele, Chief Purpose Officer, KPMG Australia
• Alexandra Michat, Chief Purpose Officer, Exo Travel
• Simon Cheetham, Chief Purpose Officer, Andrew Property & Purpose
• Priya Srinivasan, Chief People and Purpose Officer, Coty
• Laura Dunne, Chief Purpose and Proposition Officer, Lincolnshire Co-op
• Caroline Jeanteur, Chief Purpose Officer, Ubisoft.

Paradoxically, several CPOs in our study suggested that their ultimate success would be to make the position less necessary over time by embedding purpose into the organisations systems, routines, and decision-making processes.

Yet the very emergence of the Chief Purpose Officer points to a broader shift in modern capitalism: companies are increasingly expected to demonstrate how their purpose shapes how they create value, govern themselves, and respond to society’s demands.

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The full research on how to implement purpose in organisations is available in “Dynamic Strategifying: How do Chief Purpose Officers make purpose strategic and strategy purposeful?”, published in Long Range Planning (2025), and “Too good to be true? The ambivalent consequences and managerial challenges of purpose implementation,” in European Management Review (2026).

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A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

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Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.