How and Where Do Shared Goals Exist? The Social Ontology and Normativity of Organizational Goals

Abstract

Organizations don’t have a mind and can’t have goals if we follow a microstructural approach that builds on methodological individualism. Yet, paradoxically, the existence of a normatively binding, shared organizational goal is typically a definitional criterion of what makes a group of individuals an organization. Building on the recent philosophy of social ontology, I answer this puzzle by demonstrating how agents within an organization believing in a shared goal make such a shared goal epistemologically independent, while ontologically emergent and dependent on individual beliefs. Through this collective belief, organizational goals become functionally real and normatively binding, and part of the most predictive theories to explain how individual agents behave in an organization. I also analyze how the deontic duties and rights of within-organizational roles aim to ensure that every member is either inspired, obliged, or channeled to engage in activities serving those goals, while also determining how much each member can influence the shared goals. This helps to bridge the micro-macro gap in organizational research by providing an account of the normative microfoundations for how individual agents come to adhere to organizational goals and together form a “group agent” capable of having goals and being morally responsible for them.