How Can Businesses Go Beyond Profit and Purpose?
Posted on Wednesday 16 July 2025
Dr. Adrian Madden is a Senior Lecturer at the University of York, whose research interests include meaningful work, employee engagement and entrepreneurship in the informal economy, particularly in developing country contexts. He believes that knowing your purpose isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the baseline for your business.
While many organisations have declared their “purpose” in statements on websites and presentation slides, declaring a commitment to stakeholders, society and/or sustainability, he says the deeper and far more demanding question is: so what?
“What lies beyond profit and purpose,” he asks? “What does it mean for a business to be truly meaningful, not just to those who lead it or profit from it, but to those who work within it and whose lives it touches?
We spoke to Dr. Madden to explore that “beyondness” and what it really means to build a meaningful business.
The Essence of Meaningfulness: It's Not What You Think
Contrary to common belief, meaningfulness in business isn’t created by motivational posters, catchy missions or trendy wellbeing perks. In fact, as the research makes clear, meaningful work is intensely personal, deeply relational and, often, profoundly emotional. It is not engineered. It emerges, usually, in moments of unexpected reflection, when people see the difference their work makes to others.
“One of the most powerful insights is that meaningfulness is self-transcendent,” says Dr Madden. “True meaning often comes from focusing on something beyond yourself, whether that’s helping others, contributing to a cause, building a legacy or making a difference in the world. It’s the idea that:
- Purpose isn’t just about personal gain (like money, success, recognition)
- It becomes truly meaningful when it connects you to something greater (other people, your community, future generations, a mission or values that live beyond you.)
What Makes Work Meaningful - Or Meaningless, a research paper Dr Madden co-wrote with Professor Catherine Bailey, from the department of business and management at the University of Sussex, offers insights into what gives work meaning, as well as into common management mistakes that can leave employees feeling that their work is meaningless. Drawing on that, he continued:
“People rarely cite pay rises or KPIs as meaningful. Instead, they recall the nurse easing a patient’s final hours, the binman thanked by a stranger for keeping the community clean or the stonemason signing their name into a cathedral stone to be uncovered in centuries to come.
“These are moments that cross into the profound, where individuals, regardless of role, feel recognised, connected and significant.”
The Seven Deadly Sins of Meaninglessness
If meaning cannot be handed to someone, it can certainly be crushed. Through hundreds of interviews, they found the seven practices most likely to erode meaningfulness at work:
- Disconnecting people from their values – when organisational goals conflict with professional ethics or personal principles.
- Taking people for granted – a lack of recognition or appreciation, especially after extra effort.
- Assigning pointless work – tasks that feel disconnected from the organisation’s purpose.
- Treating people unfairly – perceived injustice or exclusion damages trust and morale.
- Overruling better judgement – disempowering people undermines both engagement and ethics.
- Disrupting relationships – isolation and exclusion sever essential human connections.
- Exposing people to harm – whether emotional, physical or ethical, unnecessary risk diminishes dignity.
While meaningfulness is hard to guarantee, these practices make meaninglessness almost inevitable.
The Ecosystem of Meaningfulness: A Framework for Flourishing
“So, what can businesses do?” asks Dr Madden. “Well, while they can’t impose meaning, they can cultivate the ecosystem where it can take root. According to our research, this ecosystem has four interlinked components:
- Organisational Meaningfulness
“This is the clearest layer. Your enterprise’s broader contribution to society. This is not just your mission, but your daily practices. Purpose becomes meaningful when it is lived, not laminated. A waste company painting recycled products onto trucks, for example, made their impact visible and relatable, far more than a memo ever could.
- Job Meaningfulness
“People across all roles, from priests and nurses to lawyers and shop assistants, described their work as meaningful when they could connect it to something bigger than themselves. So businesses can demonstrate how individual jobs fit with their organisation’s broader purpose or serve a wider, societal benefit.
- Task Meaningfulness
“Even the most purpose-driven jobs include mindless admin. But when people understand why it matters - and how it fits into something larger - it becomes bearable. As one stonemason said of chiselling square blocks for months: “At the time it felt pointless, but years later, I saw it was the foundation of everything I would go on to build.”
- Interactional Meaningfulness
“Relationships matter deeply. Moments of connection, whether with customers, colleagues or communities, often bring the most vivid feelings of purpose. These don’t have to be grand gestures. The exhausted shop team that stayed late to rebuild their store - and cried together on opening day - felt something no engagement survey could measure.
The Challenge (and Privilege) of Going Beyond
“Here’s the paradox. You can’t guarantee meaningfulness - but you can make it more likely by crafting a culture rooted in care, value alignment, contribution and reflection. By asking not just ‘What do we do?’ or ‘Why are we here?’ but ‘What difference do we make - and for whom?’
“We must also acknowledge that the answers might be complex, poignant or even painful. Meaning is not the same as positivity. As one nurse put it, the most meaningful moments in her work came not in triumph, but when she was able to make a patient feel seen as they passed away.
“Meaningful business, then, isn’t a brand strategy. It’s a moral endeavour - one that moves us beyond the pursuit of growth for its own sake and toward contribution, connection and care.
“The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl described how the human quest for meaning is so strong that, even in the darkest of moments, people seek out their purpose in life. So the same may be true for work. The task for today’s businesses is to go beyond the ‘how’ of operations and even the ‘why’ of purpose, toward something deeper. Beyond profit, beyond purpose and towards significance.”