Corporate Mission Statements Research Articles

Corporate Mission Statements: An Appraisal-Based Study

A corporate mission statement aims to communicate the established goals of a company internally and externally. In this type of statement, attitude plays an important role in the expression of interpersonal linguistic meanings. Therefore, following Martin and Rose’s (2007) systemic functional linguistics (SFL) approach, this paper qualitatively analyzed the mission statements of the companies that hold the top seven spots in Fortune’s corporate reputation rankings in 2021, namely Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Walt Disney, Starbucks, Berkshire Hathaway, and Alphabet, from the perspective of the appraisal system. The results indicate that the most common sub-system of attitude found in these corporate mission statements was positive appreciation. However, it was also found that the distribution patterns of evaluation resource words of the selected mission statements are not quite similar. Further, given the functions of this particular genre, that is, shaping the identity of the company and its employees, it was found that the selected corporate mission statements employ attitudinal resources that are all positive in orientation.

Multimodal Representations of Lithuanian Brands: The Case of “Džiugas”, “Rūta” and “Pieno žvaigždės”

Figurative representations of brand images have not been thoroughly studied in Lithuanian linguistics. The present research aims to investigate the multimodal metaphors and metonymies explored by the famous Lithuanian corporate brands Džiugas, Rūta and Pieno žvaigždės. The work examines how the multimodal metaphors and metonymies of the brands are cognitively structured from the perspective of illustrations, logos and layout. The interaction of verbal and visual elements in corporate discourse is particularly important when expressed using graphics, logos and layout for the corporate mission statements, descriptions of the brand history and other materials available on their websites. The analysis reveals that the most frequent source domains for brand imaging are PERSON/LIVING ORGANISM, SUCCESS, TRADITIONS and CAUSE FOR EFFECT, PART FOR WHOLE, PRODUCT FOR PRODUCER metonymies, among others. In the case of personification, the brand is defined as an individual who possesses the qualities highly valued in corporate discourse: growth, positivity, adaptability, dynamism and collaboration. These metaphors facilitate a better understanding of the brand and contribute to the formation of a persuasive brand image that resonates with consumers. The analysis of the multimodal manifestations of brand identity in the cases of Džiugas, Rūta and Pieno žvaigždės reveals the intricate interplay of metaphor and metonymy in constructing and conveying meaning across various modes of representation. Each brand’s illustrations, logo and layout incorporate visual elements, typography, and colour palettes that contribute to their unique identities and evoke specific associations.

Social Justice and Corporate Mission Statements: Analyzing Values in Business Writing

This article describes and reflects on a collaborative, in-class activity that asks students in a business writing course to analyze the intersection of language, values, and social justice through a rhetorical analysis of corporate mission statements. The activity looks at how mission statements, as a genre, work to construct an ethos of civic engagement targeting a specific audience. Students reflect on values embedded in mission statements and compare these values with corporate action. Students then work in groups to create their own mission statements that direct their research and teamwork for their other, collaborative course projects. I offer this activity focused on mission statements as a concrete way to discuss social justice, values, and civic engagement in a business writing course; specifically, students explore how language impacts social justice and structural (in)equality.

How Does Mission Statement Relate to the Pursuit of Food Safety Certification by Food Companies?

Food safety has long been a major public concern in China. One question of the food processing industry’s emphasis on food safety social responsibility is whether a food processing company should pursue food safety certification for its products. As part of their corporate image, some food processing companies focus on food safety in their corporate mission statements. To enhance the legitimacy of a mission statement, as a guide for a firm, can provide food companies the legitimacy of perhaps pursuing food safety certification. However, we find that under different equity natures, the pressures on the normative legitimacy of the firm are different and the impact of mission statements on the acquisition of food safety certifications is also different. By analyzing the mission statement of companies in the Chinese food industry, we find that firms with a mission focusing on food safety concerns are more willing to pursue food safety certification. Moreover, compared to the firms with more distributed shareholder ownership, in firms where a majority shareholder has substantial control, the relationship between mission statements and the possession of food safety certification is stronger; compared to non-state-owned enterprises, in state-owned enterprise (SOEs), the relationship between firm mission statements of and the acquisition of food safety certification is stronger.

Trends of Corporate Mission Statements: From pursuing profit to distinctive and social value

Abstract A mission statement has a significant meaning as the initial and essential step in a company’s strategic planning process. Previous studies have pointed out the necessity of monitoring and longitudinal study of corporate mission statements as they should be continuously revised against changes in companies’ strategies and business environment. This study aims to shed light on what types of strategies and values are currently highlighted in companies’ mission statements in comparison with the findings of a well-known previous study. Therefore, this study conducted a content analysis of 491 Fortune 500 companies’ mission statements. As a result, we found that “philosophy” is mostly highlighted and “profitability” is not emphasized in contemporary companies’ mission statements. Compared to the past study, these findings imply that there have been dramatic changes in the content of corporate mission statements. Besides, this study divided 491 Fortune 500 companies into two groups, high performers and low performers, according to their Fortune ranking and investigated significant differences between high and low performers using t-tests. The high performers were found to more often highlight “selfconcept” and “public image” than low performers. However, the difference in mean scores between high and low performers has become smaller than in the past finding. In particular, there is no statistical difference in mission statement component numbers between high and low performers. These findings can provide futher understanding about changes of companies’ strategic emphasis and the nature of corporate mission statements. This study provides a comparative insight for practitioners making company mission statements.

Statements of Corporate Purpose of Key Global Financial Institutions and Social Aspiration

An assessment of the extent to which corporate mission statements of leading global financial institutions reference corporate purpose, and connect that purpose with social outcomes.

The Linguistic Turn, Social Construction and the Impartial Spectator: why Do these Ideas Matter to Managerial Thinking?

One’s philosophical points of view, which form the bases for assumptions that we bring to management theory and practice matter, and matter deeply, to management thinking and corporate behavior. In this paper I outline three related threads of philosophical conversations and explain how they are important in management theory and practice: the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, deriving from the later writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a social constructionist perspective: a set of theories at least implicitly derived from the linguistic turn in philosophy, and the notion of the impartial spectator. I then use these three theories to analyze the idea of the corporation, corporate cultures and corporate mission statements, stakeholder theories and their differences, and the limitations of the popular notion of “corporate social responsibility.” I conclude that how one frames these management ideas makes a difference, a difference in theory and in practice.

Commitment to sustainability: A content analysis of website for university organisations

This research aim on investigating the commitments of organisations towards sustainability. For this research context, ‘commitment’ refers to the extent of information provided by universities in their website which demonstrated initiatives towards achieving the sustainability goal. The objective of this study was to identify sustainability initiatives highlighted within university websites using Australia as a case study. Thirty-nine (39) websites were reviewed and web content analysis was performed to publicly available data including any relevant accessible PDF documents attached to the universities website. Specific websites information was reviewed to detect sustainability themes in the broad university management and operations (i.e., in general policies, corporate mission statements, research activities, positions available and strategies). The commitment of Australian universities was significant and well established with a set of twenty (20) related themes were identified. The findings have some limitations because the established themes only emerged from the websites’ content without human validation which possibly weakens the correlations between website information and organisations actual practice. This possibility is recognised and for this reason, further assessment may be advantageous to provide verification of the findings. Therefore, further studies using other techniques are suggested such as interviews or observations for validation of data and reinforce the entire conclusions. An interesting aspect of this study is the validity of reviewing organisational websites for gauging actual practice and a number of researchers supporting this approached as indicated in methodology section of this paper.

A stakeholder analysis of employee disclosures in annual reports

AbstractLittle empirical research has identified what drives companies to voluntarily report employee‐related information. Ullmann's three‐dimensional stakeholder theory model is applied as a framework to analyse associations with corporate employee‐related disclosures. Measures are developed to estimate stakeholder power, strategic posture and economic performance associated with employee‐related disclosures. Results indicate that employee‐related disclosures increase with more employee share ownership, employee concentration, the quality of corporate governance, employee recognition in corporate mission statements, adverse publicity about employees and economic performance measured by profit per employee.

To be or not to be? Addressing the ethical void in Macao’s tourism and casino development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of ethics and codes of responsible behaviour in Macao’s casino tourism industry given its global leadership position in gaming, with suggestions on a way forward toward ethical tourism integration. Design/methodology/approach – The research examined the corporate mission statements of Macao’s casino concessionaires with regards to social message content as well as social outcomes to date within Macao’s various tourism stakeholders. Relevant literature on cross-sector social partnership was examined as a possible consideration for Macao’s tourism industry. Findings – Despite generating the world’s largest gaming revenues and tourism revenue contribution to gross domestic product, there are limited codes of ethics and an agreed level of acceptable behaviour and responsibility throughout Macao’s tourism and hospitality industry. This is further amplified by Macao’s small landmass, limited workforce pool, increasing tourism arrivals and a vast dependency on imports, creating a constant battle for resources and added pressure on its community and natural environment. Social implications – There are possible conflicts between Western casino compliance issues within those of Chinese business cultural practices. It is suggested that greater appreciation of this cultural and community setting is required to realistically adopt ethical codes. Originality/value – There has been limited discussion within Macao’s tourism industry on establishing a definition and scope for a code of ethics. Given the numbers participating and financial liquidity in Macao’s tourism system, the paper highlights the need for codes of ethics adoption, suggesting a cross-sector social partnership mechanism.

The Virgin Way: Everything I Know about Leadership

The Virgin Way: Everything I Know about Leadership Sir Richard Branson Penguin Group (USA) LLC (2014) 352 Pages, Hardcover, $29.95Have you ever envisioned working for a company where the sky is literally the limit, and your boss is standing next to you encouraging you to jump head first into the unknown? Do you thrive on unconventional approaches to business, people management, and organizational leadership? Do you dare to dream big? If you answered yes to any, or all, of these questions, then this book may be the motivation that you need to take the next step. Screw it, let's do it! is the approach that the ingenious Sir Richard Branson takes in his brilliantly entertaining handbook for leadership and management The Virgin Way: Everything I Know about Leadership. Author of more than a dozen books on business and entrepreneurship, Sir Richard Branson has no qualms about openly discussing some of his most legendary successes, epic failures, and all of the vitally important lessons that he learned along the way.Branson began to build his commercial empire at the age of sixteen after dropping out of school to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. More than four decades later, his reign extends over more than one hundred entities that comprise the Virgin Group. The Virgin Way: Everything I Know about Leadership provides the reader with an inside look at Branson's unconventional approach to leadership which can be summed up into four major categories that have impacted the way that he has triumphantly conducted business. Part One, entitled LISTEN, begins with and introduction to Branson's early history as an entrepreneur and discusses how his upbringing encouraged him to pursue his dreams and never question his instincts. He then transitions to topics of great importance such as the art of active listening, customer service and satisfaction, the finely honed craft of K-I-S-S (keep it simple stupid) - why less is often more, and ends the section with a candid discussion on why the majority of all corporate mission statements are anything but inspirational on virtually all levels. This section is a phenomenal icebreaker for this book, and really gets the reader prepped for the underlying issues that Mr. Branson raises throughout the remainder of the book. Section Two (LEARN), Section Three (LAUGH), and Section Four (LEAD) all follow suit using Branson's real life anecdotes to further explore topics that are essential to leadership in the 21st century. He delves into meaningful issues in such areas as hiring the right employees, creating a strong corporate culture, collaboration, and decisionmaking.The Virgin Way: Everything I Know about Leadership is a very straightforward and lighthearted management and leadership guide that is overflowing with valuable narratives and real life experiences from the well-known Sir Richard Branson. Branson's charismatic personality and zest for life added a personal touch to this book that few business periodical authors are able to capture, and his smooth conversational writing style kept me, as the reader, on my toes and always wondering what he would come up with next. …

Assessing Instrumentality of Mission Statements and Social-Financial Performance Links: Corporate Social Responsibility as Context

This study blends stakeholder theory’s instrumental component with contingency theory’s accommodation and advocacy variables for a new framework used to scrutinize corporate social responsibility (CSR) elements in mission statements with possible linkages to corporate financial performance. Although findings have been mixed among research on corporate mission statements’ connection to performance, we found that looking for links in a CSR context lends new significance to mission statement instrumentality. Specifically, we content-analyzed Fortune 500 corporations’ mission statements to compare/contrast language used regarding stakeholders and other specific characteristics central to CSR. Findings suggest that higher-performing corporations’ mission statements devoted greater attention to accommodation variable components – such as desired public image, concern for satisfying employees, and concern for relationships. Higher-performing corporations’ mission statements also attended more to advocacy variable components – addressing corporate concern for market/profit/product. Although findings do not definitively establish causality between mission statement and social/financial performance, discovering that higher-performing corporations attend more to stakeholders and to market/profit/product than lesser-performing corporations underscores mission statements’ instrumentality and represents a more nuanced means for investigating mission statement/ performance linkages.

Metaphor use in Chinese and US corporate mission statements: A cognitive sociolinguistic analysis

Corpus-based approaches to researching metaphor use in business English have become increasingly prevalent, but metaphor use in the genre of mission statements has received little attention. Using a self-built corpus with the help of the corpus tool Wmatrix, we compared metaphor use as a discursive and cognitive strategy in the mission statements of Chinese and US companies from a cognitive sociolinguistic perspective, focusing on three conventional conceptual metaphors in business discourse: BRANDS ARE PEOPLE, BUSINESS IS COOPERATION, and BUSINESS IS COMPETITION. The use of the source domains of these conceptual metaphors was found to differ significantly in the mission statements of Chinese and US companies, thus revealing differences in the underlying corporate identities and ideologies. Chinese corporations, which tend to describe themselves as energetic leaders and strong competitors, are more competition-oriented, whereas US corporations, which tend to project themselves as ethical and responsible community members, are more cooperation-oriented. The findings of this comparative study can shed light on how Chinese companies build their brand images and thus lead to a better understanding of changing national image of China.

Organizational sacralization and discursive use of corporate mission statements

The religious origin of organizational behavior is not easy to recognize, nor are the implications of the Christian heritage of concepts and ideas as applied to organizations. This paper seeks to remedy this by investigating the theological roots of the mission concept. Our central argument is that corporate mission statements are sometimes used as manipulative communicative tools which seek organizational legitimacy through the rhetorical inclusion of secularized Christian values. We find in Koselleck's (1985) Conceptual History theoretical arguments by which to evaluate the bridge between theological and corporate concepts of mission. Then, we discuss mission as a theological concept, showing how it developed in modern societies and how its discursive use in business can be evaluated. With an analysis based on Habermas' (1985) work, we conclude that, as a communicative tool, a corporate mission statement helps organizations manipulate meanings about their purposes and legitimacy in Christianity-based societies. This process reveals how the mission concept contributes to increase organizational sacralization and represents a powerful tool for improving a corporation's social image and as a consequence may induce social consent.

Constructions of purpose: A corpus-based analysis of corporate mission statements

AbstractThe various incarnations of cognitive linguistics can be characterized by a common contextualized view on linguistic structure. Emerging from this philosophical cornerstone of the cognitive-linguistic enterprise is a growing body of research that systematically inquires into the intricate interplay of the cognitive, social and situational dimensions determining grammatical and lexical choice. The present paper ties in with current explorations of the interface between cognition, pragmatics and grammar through a corpus-based study of the grammatical and discursive construction of purpose. We argue that constructions marking such goal-oriented actions provide a valuable resource for the study of the grammar-discourse interface, because they (implicitly or explicitly) involve a positioning on various axes, including modal, temporal, force-dynamic and interpersonal.In order to answer the onomasiological question of how purpose is expressed in discourse, and how the above axes interact in motivating the choice for a specific grammatical construction, we conducted an exploratory corpus study, based on authentic German data. The specific text genre that we selected for our analysis is that of corporate mission statements (

The discourse of self-presentation in Scottish university mission statements

This article investigates what the current mission statements of the 20 Scottish universities reveal about their aims and priorities in the challenging environment of higher education. It traces the origins and use of corporate mission statements and their transfer into United Kingdom higher education and then demonstrates how researchers have used university mission statements as sources of information on a wide range of topics. Through textual analysis, the study identifies the main themes present in the Scottish mission statements and examines the vocabulary more closely, comparing it with the wording of recent policy documents. The analysis reveals that the mission statements convey an overall impression of sameness rather than distinctiveness. Questions emerge about the striking emphasis on competitiveness at national and global level and the surprising lack of focus on some key areas, particularly the student experience. The final part of the article suggests that an understanding of the political context can shed light on why the universities are choosing to present themselves in this way.

A comparative analysis of web-based corporate mission statements

This study aims to identify the nature of the mission statements of the largest companies in Turkey and around the world and to analyse these statements in a comparative fashion. To that end the web-based mission statements of companies have been examined according to a content analysis method with three distinct criteria, which are used frequently in the literature. In order to determine whether there is a difference in the nature of the mission statements according to where the companies are located, independent groups t-test has been applied. As a result of this study it has been determined that all the companies utilize relatively qualified mission statements and that there is no significant difference between them. Key words: Mission statements, stakeholders, websites.

Exploring the Relationship between Mission Statements and Work-Life Practices in Organizations

Corporate mission statements are ubiquitous, but their relationship to organizational practices, especially those noted for their high quality, remains a subject of debate. We use the case of work—life practices in publicly traded financial services firms to illustrate an innovative method for studying this issue. Overall, we find variation in the mission statements of firms in the same organizational field. We also find relationships between these statements and high-quality investment in work—life practices, as recognized by Working Mother magazine and Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini. The mission statements of firms recognized for their work—life initiatives were more likely than those of competitors to emphasize the value of employees and less likely to stress shareholder value. We identified four types of mission statements, a pattern which may reflect the dual influences of distinctive organizational commitments and pressure from institutional actors. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literatures on work—life initiatives, strategic implementation, and organizational theory.

Disclosures of Corporate Mission Statements in Bangladesh: A Supply Side Analysis

This paper discusses the purpose of mission statements and discusses their intended audiences. It also examines the theoretical rationale that leads to the disclosure of mission statements. The disclosure, length, and components of mission statements are also examined. Based on annual report, this study focuses on 14 specific components of mission statements. The study results show that 60 companies (35%) out of total sample of 171 listed public limited companies in Dhaka Stock Exchange are disclosing mission statements. The results also show that the companies are focusing more on customers, philosophy, financial goal, communities and products. 78% companies are somewhat focusing on MD stakeholders. Environmental disclosure has been found to be the least preferable component in the mission statement.

THE IMPACT OF MISSION STATEMENTS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS FROM A SENSEMAKING PERSPECTIVE.

The article presents an analysis of corporate mission statements in terms of sensemaking theory. There is said to be a dearth of evidence that mission statements, although popular, are actually fun...