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The purpose of this paper is to propose that top management commitment to its organization's mission statement moderates the mission's effect of firm performance. The proposed model combines numerous aspects of top management commitment to give depth to the moderating effect.

The paper provides a conceptual overview of the mission statement literature toward a theoretical model.

The impact of mission statements on firm performance long has been studied and debated, without consistent results. This paper proposes that this is due to the presence of moderating influences, specifically the commitment of top management, that, if not properly studied, will affect empirical results.

Practicing managers can unlock the power of the mission statement by involving the entire organization in the mission statement process, clearly and consistently communicating the mission's tenets, setting measurable operational targets from the mission statement, and periodically revising the mission to ensure it is current.

The concept of a moderator is original in the mission-performance debate. Concepts from several key articles have been combined in a unique manner to develop the model.

As market valuation shifts from earnings toward growth potential, entrepreneurial companies have become a more important part of a contract manufacturer’s customer portfolio. As a contract manufacturer emphasizes small, potentially fast‐growing companies, the risk of customer failure increases. However, the opportunity cost of missing a possible star customer justifies exposing the contract manufacturer to considerable risk that the entrepreneurial venture will fail. Explores characteristics of the ideal entrepreneurial supply chain from the viewpoint of contract manufacturers interested in doing business with startups. Emphasis is placed on a customer selection process and on nurturing the high‐risk startup customers. By choosing to do business with startups, but providing nurturing processes, the contract manufacturer simultaneously reduces the risks of missed opportunities and failed startup ventures.

Business‐to‐business (B2B) e‐commerce activity provides many growth opportunities for firms willing to explore this new approach. While B2B is often considered the domain of larger firms, the potential benefits of access to new clients, access to new global markets, and product line expansion are of particular importance to entrepreneurial suppliers. This article examines these benefits, as well as various mistakes an entrepreneurial firm may make in pursuing B2B e‐commerce. From this discussion, we recommend five action steps a firm should take to reap the tremendous benefits of supplying through a B2B network.

Managers are divided in their allegiance to their firms’ mission statements. Some managers swear by their mission statement while others swear at theirs. Evidence from two firms, as well as existing research, indicates that part of this disagreement originates in the manager’s view of mission statements. Managers who see mission statements as tools that can influence the inner workings of their organizations are likely to understand the mission’s usefulness. Managers who put their mission statements on display and expect them to magically transform organizational behavior are likely to be frustrated and see them as an exercise in futility. In this paper, insights from two managers who take the first view provide specific steps managers can utilize to harness the benefits of their mission statements.

This study highlights the instrumental role of the mission statement as a tool used by managers to shape value congruence to achieve enhanced employee performance levels.

A variance-based structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data obtained from a sample of 123 managers working in private organisations in Malaysia.

The management sensemaking approach is useful in mission statement research. Managers' involvement in clarifying the mission statement to various firm stakeholders, especially employees, is the strongest predictor of value congruency between employees and the firm, leading to improved levels of employee behavioural performance. Managers can influence value congruency through two processes: (1) guiding and shaping employees' values and (2) adapting the mission statement's contents.

Future studies can consider the impact of managerial role modelling on employees' value alignment with the firm in longitudinal studies. Other aspects of alignment offer further research opportunities, for example, HR policy alignment and alignment of marketing and operation strategies with the mission statement.

Managers should move beyond treating the mission statement as a management tool. Instead, it is a firm philosophy that reflects managers' words and deeds and exemplifies their philosophical ideals.

Despite three decades of research into the relationship between the mission statement and performance, the results have been mixed. Therefore, this study adopts a sensemaking approach to research the mission-performance relationship underpinned by the resource-based view (RBV) theory.

The purpose of this paper is to present analysis of the feedback predictive encoder-based analog-to-digital converter (ADC).

The use of feedback predictive encoder-based ADCs presents an alternative to the traditional two-stage pipeline ADC by replacing the input estimate producing first stage of the pipeline with a predictive loop that also produces an estimate of the input signal.

The overload condition for feedback predictive encoder ADCs is dependent on input signal amplitude and frequency, system gain and filter order. The limitation on the practical usable filter order is set by limit cycle oscillation. A boundary condition is defined for determination of maximum usable filter order. In a practical implementation of the predictive encoder ADC, the time allocated to the key functions of the gain stage and loop quantizer leads to optimization of the power consumption.

A practical switched capacitor implementation of the predictive encoder-based ADC is proposed. The power consumption of key circuit blocks is investigated.

This paper presents a methodology to optimize the bandwidth of predictive encoder ADCs. The overload and stability conditions may be used to determine the maximum input signal bandwidth for a given loop quantizer. Optimization of power consumption based on the allocation of time between the gain stage and the successive approximation register ADC operation is investigated. The lower bound of power consumption for this architecture is estimated.

A comprehensive literature review of performance management within the Dutch steel processing industry is presented. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the motives for companies to become excellent performers in their field of expertise. These internal and external motives (refined by quantitative analysis of bibliographic data) sought to reveal the common factors that impact company performance.

Inductive reasoning was adopted using an interpretivist philosophical stance to generate new theoretical insight. A mixed-methods analysis of pertinent extant literature afforded greater synthesis of the research problem domain and generated more valid and reliable findings. The software visualisation of similarities viewer was used to conduct a qualitative bibliographic analysis of extant literature to yield greater clarification on the phenomena under investigation.

Four thematic groups of past research endeavours emerged from the analysis and were assigned appropriate nomenclature, namely: industry internal motives; industry external motives; excellent performer and incremental working method. To further expand upon the continuous improvement process (CIP – embodied within performance management), the paper describes the virtuous cycle of improvement, which consists of the consecutive steps of “planning”, “doing”, “checking” and ultimately of “acting” accordingly to the previous steps. It can be concluded that a high-performing company acts according to its mission, plans in line with the vision do as defined in the strategy and checks by reflection.

This unique study provides invaluable insight into the performance management of Dutch steel processing companies. Although the research context was narrowly defined, the findings presented are equally applicable to clients, contractors and sub-contractors active in other sectors of the construction industry. The research concludes by prescribing factors of mitigation strategies to support chief executive officers to focus on the optimum distribution of their scarce resources.

This study uses a stakeholder perspective to explain the content of mission statements, in particular the inclusion of stakeholder groups. The study uses stakeholder dependency theory and resource dependency theory to explain the content of mission statement. In line with this perspective, stakeholders in this study will be classified as either being resource providers, such as employees and customers, or non‐resource providers, such as the community and the environment. The primary aim of the study is to find evidence for the theoretical relationship between the importance of stakeholders to the company and the inclusion of stakeholder groups in the company's mission statement.

The use of a large dataset with 490 observations enables a multivariate analysis of mission statement content, focusing on country‐, industry‐, and company‐specific factors.

The study finds that stakeholder groups the company is more dependent on, are addressed in mission statements more frequently. In addition, the profile of an industry, legal origin and ownership concentration are found to be related with stakeholder inclusion in mission statements.

The database used adopts a broad definition of a mission statement, as a result of which the study may also include documents such as vision statements. Additional factors might exist that could explain the inclusion of stakeholder groups in the mission statement. For example, Hope states that both legal origin and culture are important in explaining corporate disclosure. Therefore, literature on cultural dimensions by Hofstede and Schwartz might also be used as explanatory variables in future research. Finally, additional evidence on the industry classification developed in this study is required to further substantiate these results.

The observed differences in mission statement content with respect to stakeholder management signify the fact that the mission statement is not a standardized document which can simply be ignored by managers. Therefore, managers must be aware of the environment in which the company is situated, in order to approach the stakeholders which are most important to the organization. A failure to recognize and include essential stakeholders in the mission statement may be costly in the long run, particularly when competitors are better able to address these stakeholders.

This study adds to the existing stream of literature on mission statements by introducing the dependence of the company on the stakeholder as an explanatory factor for the inclusion of stakeholders in mission statements. Consequently, the study uses stakeholder dependency theory and resource dependency theory to explain the content of mission statement, rather than signaling theory. Furthermore, this is one of few empirical studies on mission statements that uses a large dataset with 490 observations, enabling a multivariate analysis of mission statement content.