Mission Statements: Distinction Tool or Wasted Effort

Abstract

Mission statements, although long accepted as an important part of the strategic planning and implementation process in the corporate world, have increasingly become requirements within institutions of higher education as well. Beyond mission statements’ ability to provide direction and to support strategic choice, mission statements are also seen as important marketing tools. This study investigates what schools are saying in their mission statements; whether they provide a meaningful basis for strategic choice; and, whether they offer the necessary distinction or differentiation from a positioning perspective through a content analysis of the mission statements of top 100 business schools in the 2009 Financial Times Full-Time MBA ranking. We find that the mission statements of business schools, at the group level at least, exhibit very few, if any, significant differences. To stand out from the pack in terms of its mission statement, a school would have to say some very distinctive things. This might be difficult since identifying what makes the school truly different might be a very difficult exercise, and a school that does differentiate itself strongly in its mission statement might risk defining itself out of the market. Is achieving distinction through a mission statement a “mission impossible” for a business school? Our evidence seems to suggest that it is difficult because, as the mass of essentially similar mission statements suggests, schools appear not to want to be ignored by not saying the right and expected things. Difficult, but probably not impossible! Using a mission statement as a tool for distinction may be difficult but it seems that the effort is likely not wasted.