Academic literature on the topic 'Mission statements'

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of mission statement contents and its function in guiding employee's behaviour from the organisational culture (OC) perspective. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on a mixed method approach. The quantitative content analysis of mission statements was performed on a sample of 222 Slovenian companies. Mission statement's keywords were analysed with exploratory factor analysis. Advanced network analytic approaches such as PathFinder algorithm were utilised to obtain better understanding of interrelatedness of underlying mission components. Three interviews with the top managers were performed as well. Findings – The mission statement content analysis identified five associated organisations’ orientations: concern for stakeholders, orientation towards stability, orientation towards cooperation and innovation, and development and growth. The interviews confirm missions’ role in communicating the espoused or declared OC, although different approaches to achieve employees’ commitment to the organisation's mission can be identified in regard to the size of the organisation. Originality/value – The cultural approach to the analysis of mission statements confirms that the mission statements incorporate basic contents of OC. The methodology applied gives new possibilities in the research of OC perspective of strategic statements.


 
 
 The purpose of this paper is to explore the policies, practices and procedures of inclusion across three universities in the San Francisco Bay Area: Stanford University, the University of San Francisco, and the University of California at Berkeley. Using a rubric which measures inclusion based on a three point set of criteria (equity, sustainability, and mission-alignment), the authors analyzed four common statements in which inclusion policies for traditionally marginalized students and students of color are contained: university mission statement, diversity program mission statement, diversity statement, and values/goals statements. The analysis revealed that although the values/goals statements align with the missions of the three institutions analyzed, there is often incongruence between the diversity program mission and diversity statements and the missions of the universities. This tension reflects the practice of institutions of higher education to draft policies that reflect inclusion language for diverse populations without making the necessary structural changes that impact values, attitudes, and practices.
 
 

Purpose Mission statements are a key element of any organization. Ideally, the mission statement should be written at the initial stages of an organization’s life to be a useful tool to guide future organization’s decisions and strategy. However, at the early stages of an organization’s life, the organization might still be under development with the objective and stakeholders not yet well-defined, and therefore, stating the mission so early on, might neglect some important elements. In this paper, the authors explore the difference in mission statement quality between missions that have been created at the birth stage of an organization versus missions that are just explicitly formulated once the organization is already well-established and an underlying implicit mission already exists. The authors use as an empirical setting university research parks. Design/methodology/approach The authors evaluate mission statement quality using content analysis. The authors then test the differences on mission statement quality between two groups of research parks, those that have followed a creation strategy versus those that have followed a formulation strategy, using mean of differences test. Findings The authors find that a formulation strategy produces more complete mission statements than the creation strategy. Research parks that have followed a formulation strategy include in their mission statements more references to relevant stakeholders, such as investors, than parks following a creation strategy with respect to their mission statement. Research limitations/implications The research setting is Spanish Science Parks. This research setting is appropriate to answer the research question, as two Park creation strategies, planned and unplanned, allow the researchers to clearly differentiate between two mission conception strategies. However, the sample size is rather small. Practical implications Research has shown that a well-defined mission helps organizations focus and strategy formulation. The authors’ research offers some guidance on how to achieve a high-quality mission statement which will, in turn, help organizations have a better definition of their purpose. Originality/value Research until now has assumed that the mission statement should be formulated at the initial stages of the organization’s life. The authors’ research shows that defining the mission statement later in the process creates higher-quality mission statements that better reflect the organizations purpose and relevant stakeholders.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) express their guiding principles and philosophy by defining their mission and vision. Mission and vision make obvious the social issues that NGOs seek to address. Using them wisely will help NGOs allocate their scarce resources better and improve communication with internal and external stakeholders. Despite the significance of mission and vision, more study focusing on NGOs is still needed. This study examines the mission and vision statements of NGOs working on international development in Korea. All KCOC (Korea NGO Council for Overseas Development Cooperation) member organisations’ missions and vision statements were reviewed for this. Based on the eight components of a mission statement identified by Pearce and David(1987), we examined the mission and vision statements of the international development NGOs in Korea. One of the key findings is that international NGOs and organisations with a lengthy history are more likely to have mission and vision statements. Secondly, the mission and vision statements comprise 4.1 components on average. The contents of the mission and vision statements of national NGOs and organisations founded in the 2000s or later are more diverse. Lastly, the organisation’s mission and vision statements most frequently refer to the organisation’s philosophy. The organization’s target, location, problems to be addressed, services, public images, growth, and technology were followed.

A mission statement is the most visible element of an organizational strategy; it ought to be effective in terms of reflecting its purpose. Particularly, top global brands, corporations, and business schools are expected to have modular mission statements that comply with the definition of an ideal mission statement. To determine how closely they adhere to the components of an ideal mission statement, this study compares the actual mission statements of the top organizations with the desired ideal mission statement. The study employed a meta-content analysis approach to analyze the mission statements of 400 organizations from diverse sectors, including Interbrand’s top 100 global brands, Financial Times ranked top 100 business schools, and top 100 conventional and top 100 Islamic banks. For each type of organization and for the whole sample, mission statements were analyzed for how many and what components they frequently include in their mission statements. The results show that only 5 percent of these organizations have perfect mission statements indicating majority do not prioritize creating mission statements that contain all the necessary components. The components such as self-concept, products and services, and customers were the most frequently communicated concerns, indicating a high level of importance on conveying identity, offerings, and relationships with customers whereas concerns for employees, public image, and technology were severely overlooked. The findings suggest a discrepancy between academia and industry regarding what constitutes an ideal mission statement inviting further research to better understand the components of an ideal mission statement and how they align with real-world statements. This research assists organizations in identifying gaps in their mission statements and aligning them with their organizational values, goals, and strategies by providing thorough theoretical and practical implications in the end.

AbstractWhat is the mission of agriculture and what techniques are used to accomplish the mission? This paper examines mission statements of agribusiness companies, agricultural producers, and environmental groups. One hypothesis is that agricultural producer groups share missions and objectives with environmental groups and their mission statements should demonstrate shared goals. A second hypothesis is that agricultural producer groups do not share missions or objectives with agribusiness companies and their respective mission statements should demonstrate their lack of common interests. The paper also asks which of these three groups will be the best sources of intellectual and other support as land-grant universities strive to fulfill their respective missions. It is not obvious from the mission statements that the three groups studied share missions or objectives. The mission statements neither reveal clear information on the second hypothesis, that agricultural producers do not share missions or operational objectives with agribusiness companies, nor do the mission statements demonstrate their lack of common interests. Analysis of mission statements is one place to learn which groups have common goals and should work together. But this is only a beginning.

Summary Due to the specific nature of their activities, chemical companies are exposed to significant reputational risk. One way to reduce this risk is by implementing a CSR policy. CSR can be built into the company’s strategy and communicated as a mission statement. The purpose of the article was to determine: 1. the types of values which chemical industry companies in Poland display in their mission statements, 2. if chemical industry companies in Poland display CSR values in their mission statements, 3. if these companies differ from others operating in the chemical sector in Poland in terms of displaying CSR in mission statements. The research was carried out through the Iramuteq program, which enabled content analysis of the collected research material. A total of 197 missions were analyzed to find that less than half of the examined chemical companies in Poland display CSR-related values sensu stricto in mission statements. It was also found that chemical companies (production-commercial) highlighted CSR values in their mission statements more often than analagous service-trade companies.