The purpose as a dynamizer of corporate culture and value generator

Analysis of the websites of IBEX-35 Spanish companies

Abstract

The new scenario emerged after the pandemic, together with the lack of trust of citizens towards institutions, social agents and the media (Edelman 2022), draw a reality defined by mistrust and uncertainty, where the population seeks in companies what institutions and their leaders are not capable of providing them. In this context, it is no longer enough for corporations to have a vision and a mission, a CSR program or a website filled with values; they also need a clear purpose, to turn their actions into practice and to return to society part of what it has given them over the years. Therefore, it is a necessity for companies to transfer all the information related to their corporations to society, to increase awareness of their corporate culture, their contribution to social issues, while transmitting their purpose and adding value to their corporations. In this sense, corporate websites are a very useful tool as an information channel, for that reason, this analysis of the websites of the Spanish companies that are part of the IBEX-35 during 2022 it is intended to find and study the corporate purpose of these companies as value generator. The objective of this work is twofold: on the one hand, to analyze whether companies are currently aware of the importance of the role they play in society. On the other, to find out if they incorporate their contribution to society through the purpose into their corporate culture, and if they transfer it to the public. The corporate purpose shows the company's sense of existence, but also its contribution to society, hence its importance as a generator of value in the company's corporate culture. For this, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the information from the corporate websites of all the Spanish companies that make up the IBEX 35 stock market indicator during 2022 is carried out.
The research results show that general growth that brand management, reputation, purpose, sustainability, ethics and transparency of companies are acquiring, it does not seem to have penetrated significantly in the large corporations analyzed yet. To date, most of these companies do not pay special attention to their corporate culture or the key intangibles that are part of it. None of the companies analyzed has its own specific space on its website to express its corporate culture and publicize its main intangible assets. Less than half of the companies analyzed (45,7%), convey the purpose to society on their website. The 54,3%, still do not consider the purpose as an intangible that adds value to the company and contributes to improve business capacity and management, as a lever of change, which allows anticipating changes. The purpose expressed by the companies analyzed around two fundamental axes, on the one hand, around concepts close to social and human issues such as; society, the planet, ecology, sustainability, sustainable development, human and labor rights, social dialogue, people, and on the other hand around concepts more linked to business issues such as; sustainable infrastructures, economic progress, energy supply, decarbonization, energy model, electricity.