Ideas

Lerzan Aksoy, Ph.D.
One organization feeds millions of people in the throes of hurricanes, fires, and wars. Another helps local bakeries build businesses online. Others create pathways to employment for thousands of neurodivergent individuals and employ people in recovery to design campaigns to promote healthy behaviors among young people.
These are examples, based on 62 executive interviews across 21 global organizations, the Gabelli School Dean and George N. Jean Ph.D. Chair Lerzan Aksoy, Ph.D., and her colleagues from educational institutions across the country, and around the world, uncovered through their research on social profit orientation. It culminated in the paper, “Social Profit Orientation: Lessons from Organizations Committed to Building a Better World,” which was published in the Journal of Marketing in July 2024. The paper defines social profit orientation through the business models these companies have embraced and offers a framework for other entities to embed and champion a similarly socially conscious approach in their missions and day-to-day operations.
“Companies with a social profit orientation make sustainable, social, and environmental impact core to their missions and value their ability to benefit the common good as much as financial success,” Aksoy explained.
Why is there a need for businesses to adopt a social profit orientation? In 2015, nations around the globe embraced the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a plan outlining 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and urging global action to end poverty, improve health and education, reduce inequality, tackle climate change, and preserve the environment.
Referring to the U.N.’s 2024 SDG Progress Report, Aksoy said, “We’ve made some great strides on things like energy and responsible consumption, much more than hunger and inequality. Overall, we’re nowhere near where we should be in meeting the 2030 goal. We need to be doing much more and we need to be doing it faster. In order to solve complex systemic challenges, we absolutely need the involvement of the business community.”
How can existing businesses integrate social profit orientation? “It’s about identifying internal champions who you can inspire as catalysts for change, making sure that you’re doing the storytelling from that lens, and building relationships that are not necessarily transactional. Everything starts with people and leadership. They have to embrace it,” Aksoy asserts.
She distinguished how social profit orientation sizes up to corporate social responsibility (CSR), an approach many organizations aim to follow particularly in light of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. She pointed out the distinction that CSR is seen as philanthropy.
“It’s voluntary actions that mesh with the brand of the organization. Social profit orientation makes the idea of impact on society core to its mission.”
In addition to the paper and follow-up research that is already in the works, the Gabelli School’s Responsible Business Center published a teaching guide to inform faculty members about social profit orientation with the intention of integrating it into course content and throughout the business curricula. The paper and the teaching guide can be found at: https://bit.ly/3AoLZXv
“It’s important as a service to our field and to future business leaders to understand the perspective of social profit orientation,” Aksoy said. “It’s already ingrained in our mission, this idea of responsible business leadership. It’s good business to do good.”
