Leveraging the organizational mission statement to communicate identity, distinctiveness and purpose to primary and secondary stakeholders during COVID-19
Journal of Strategy and Management
ISSN: 1755-425X
Article publication date: 2 September 2021
Issue publication date: 19 April 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines comprehensiveness and responsiveness of mission statements for the top 100 retailers on the 2020 National Retailers Federation list in order to (1) evaluate how effectively they communicate organizational identity, values and purpose, (2) underscore a distinctive commitment to stakeholders and (3) what extent these efforts are reflected in revised mission statements or addenda to meet global pandemic challenges.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employs a 4-question metric to measure comprehensiveness and a two-pronged qualitative method of analysis consisting of keyword searches followed by content analysis.
Findings
Retailer statements are considerably comprehensive in describing purpose and audience yet very few articulate stakeholder value, differentiate themselves as distinctive or substantively reaffirm their core mission and values. Retailers seem more invested in strategic communication around diversity, equity and inclusion, based on web content in their consumer, job seeker and investor touchpoints.
Research limitations/implications
Coding and interpreting language through content analysis methods may introduce some level of subjectivity, particularly when dealing with unstructured data. Implications for how organizations acclimated in order to survive and thrive, while maintaining focus on stakeholders and strategy. Examining organizational mission statements and their contexts yields perspective into how organizations define themselves and what they do during times of crisis.
Originality/value
This study provides insights into the content, structure and functions of the statements against a specific comprehensiveness metric and reveals patterns about the texts and their contexts during a pandemic and strong cultural and societal movements.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Dr Mary Rist, Professor of Writing and Chair of the Department of Literature, Writing and Rhetoric at St. Edward’s University, for her guidance on sentence length and sentence structure, which informed sentence metrics in the methodology section.
Disclosure statement/Conflict of interest statement: There are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome. No aspect of this manuscript involved human subjects and no portion of this manuscript is under review or has been published elsewhere.
Data availability statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [L.O], upon reasonable request.
Citation
Ortiz, L. (2022), "Leveraging the organizational mission statement to communicate identity, distinctiveness and purpose to primary and secondary stakeholders during COVID-19", Journal of Strategy and Management, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 234-255. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSMA-04-2021-0085
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited