Why Middle Managers Are The Missing Link In Purpose-Driven Companies

In the age of corporate purpose, everyone seems to be talking about the “why” behind business. CEOs post about impact. Annual reports feature abstract statements. Yet despite the explosion of purpose-driven rhetoric, many employees still feel disconnected from it all. They view corporate purpose as either irrelevant, performative, or, worse, hypocritical. Why the disconnect?

New research (led by doctoral scholar Pauline Asmar and Purpose Chair director Professor Rodolphe Durand, both at HEC Paris), suggests the answer lies not at the top, but in the middle.

We recently studied nearly 60,000 employees across 469 companies in 31 industries. The goal: to understand how corporate purpose affects team commitment – not in theory, but in practice. What we found upends conventional wisdom. While senior executives may articulate the company’s mission, it’s the middle managers, those closest to employees, who determine whether that mission actually motivates people.

We call this process purpose dialogue: the ongoing, two-way communication between managers and their teams around the company’s purpose. Not just repetition of slogans. Not just “alignment” workshops. But real conversations about whether the purpose is engaging for the workers, how it contributes to a broader goal, and what that goal actually means in daily life.

And here’s the breakthrough: teams whose managers fostered this kind of dialogue reported significantly higher levels of commitment, which translates into stronger cooperation, fidelity, and pride. In other words, purpose worked, not because it was declared from the top, but because it was discussed and communicated from the middle.

Purpose Is More Than A Mission Statement

Let’s be honest: most employees don’t read shareholder letters or follow CEO pep talks. They experience their company’s purpose through their immediate work environment – through team meetings, performance reviews, or one-on-one chats with their manager.

Yet, too often, purpose is treated like a billboard: fixed, top-down, and largely symbolic. It’s assumed that the role of managers is simply to “cascade” the message – like parrots. But our research challenges this. Managers aren’t just mouthpieces. They’re mediators. Translators. Co-creators. When they open up space for dialogue about the company’s aspirations and invite their teams to interpret it in their own context, they create the emotional glue that drives commitment.

The Data Behind The Dialogue

Our study used longitudinal survey data from one of the world’s largest HR and organizational analytics firms. We measured “purpose dialogue” by examining how often and how meaningfully managers communicated about purpose in team settings. We also tracked indicators of team commitment, cooperation, and pride.

One striking finding: purpose dialogue on its own is not enough. Its impact depends on two other factors:

1. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Quality Variation. Teams where managers treat individuals unequally (e.g., favoring some while ignoring others) are less likely to benefit from purpose dialogue. In fact, when LMX variation is high, purpose dialogue is weaker due to higher levels of cynicism and unfairness perceptions rather than cohesion.
2. Autonomy. In teams where employees feel trusted to do their jobs with a degree of independence, purpose dialogue has a stronger, more positive effect. Autonomy allows people to connect the dots between their team’s work and the company’s mission, ultimately aligning the team members’ goals, as they communicate with each other more when they do not rely on the leader’s directives.

Put simply, purpose only sticks when people feel trusted and treated fairly.

Beyond The Purpose-Performance Paradox

For years, scholars and executives have debated the so-called purpose-performance paradox. How can we square companies’ growing investment in purpose with flat or inconsistent returns on performance and engagement?

Our answer: they’re looking in the wrong place. The paradox isn’t at the top. It’s in the gap between what’s said and what’s experienced. A purpose statement, however noble, doesn’t change behavior. But when purpose is actively discussed, with context, trust, and curiosity, it creates what we call consensus on task meaning: a shared sense of why the work matters. That’s what drives commitment.

The best companies already intuit this. Take NASA. In our recent Breakthroughs podcast, we shared how team leaders at NASA talk about “superjobs”—roles that integrate a wide range of skills with personal purpose. Employees there aren’t just building tech; they’re advancing humanity’s reach. But that sense of purpose doesn’t come from posters on the wall. It comes from daily dialogue.

What Leaders Can Do Now

So what should companies do differently?

• Train managers to initiate—not just relay—purpose conversations. Give them the vocabulary, confidence, and context to go beyond metrics and into meaning.
• Assess fairness and trust within teams. If people feel excluded or micromanaged, purpose dialogue won’t land. It will feel like window dressing.
• Encourage bottom-up purpose stories. Don’t just ask employees to repeat the mission or vision. Ask them how it shows up in their work. What part of the job connects to their own values? What makes them proud?

And for senior leaders: don’t delegate purpose, distribute it. Think of purpose like a living language. It only survives through use. Every team, every project, every manager has a role to play in keeping it meaningful.

The Middle Is The Medium

We believe corporate purpose is one of the most powerful levers for transforming organizations. But it has to move from the C-suite to the shop floor—not through slogans, but through shared sense-making.

In that way, middle managers are not obstacles to purpose—they’re its amplifiers. They don’t just parrot. They humanize. And that, in today’s workforce, is what makes all the difference.

Pauline Asmar is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Strategy and Business Policy department at HEC Paris.

HEC Professor Rodolphe Durand is the holder of the Joly Purposeful Leadership Chair.

Daniel Brown is the Chief Editor at HEC Paris and host of the “Breakthroughs” podcast.