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High performing firms have been associated with “quality” mission statements defined by the choice of components. In an attempt to extend our knowledge in order to give more legitimacy to these claims and also provide more local and relevant reference for Ghana‐based firms, the purpose of this paper is to investigate, through a component analysis, how high‐performing Ghana‐based firms define their mission.

Mission statements of 50 of the Ghana Club 100 firms, primarily extracted from the official web sites, Initial Public Offer prospectuses and annual reports of the firms, were subjected to content analysis which evaluated and scored the mission statements based on the occurrence of 20 specific components.

The paper found that high‐performing Ghana‐based firms define missions to include components that the literature uses to measure quality; and these are similar to those of the UK, Canada and Ireland. Based on the ranking of the components, three categories were identified: the imperatives, the highlights, and the adjuncts.

The paper lumped together all firms irrespective of industry or sector. There is, therefore, the need to conduct further research to identify possible industry or sectoral differences, for better insight and relevance.

Ideas generated in this paper provide a guide to practitioners and firms regarding how they can develop mission statements, drawing on experiences of high‐performing Ghana‐based firms.

This is the first attempt to study how high‐performing Ghana‐based firms define their mission and hence is a major contribution to the scarce if not non‐existent Africa‐specific studies. It also provides a more prescriptive approach to crafting mission statements by proposing hierarchies of the components of mission statements.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the content of mission statements of India’s Super 50 companies, selected from Forbes India magazine, on multiple aspects such as components, stakeholders’ inclusion, content readability and strategic orientation.

A total sample of 29 companies was chosen for the study, whose mission statement details were available on their official websites. These firms’ mission statement was rated on the basis of nine selected components of what constitutes a “good mission statement.” Further, industry-level analysis was also carried out to measure significant differences between manufacturing and service industries. Data were analyzed using frequency analysis, average and t-statistics. Gunning Fog index was also calculated to measure content readability.

The results show that Indian firms largely focus on their customers as major stakeholders while defining their mission and emphasize upon values and philosophy, products or services offered, and integration of technology in production or processes. There is no statistically significant difference identified between the average mean value of components for sample manufacturing and service firms.

The study is cross-sectional in nature; however, a few firms redesign their mission according to need; therefore, a detailed longitudinal study of a few firms could open up new paradigms. The findings are based on sample firms selected from Forbes India, so generalization needs to be done with complete caution.

The study looks ahead of the most popular of David’s (1989) nine crucial components of mission statements, taking into account major shifts in the business environment. It also attempts to fill a contextual research gap by analyzing the mission statements of top Indian firms. Three crucial elements – “strategic decision,” “stakeholder concerns” and “critical success factors” – have been identified for Indian firms that define their mission statement.

Purpose statements persuade stakeholders of companies' reasons for being. The goal of this study was to analyze how purpose-driven companies craft their purpose, mission and vision statements and whether and how purpose statements differ from mission and vision statements.

This quantitative content analysis explored the brand personality traits, mission statement components and corporate ethos appeals that purpose-driven companies included in their purpose, mission and vision statements.

Results provide implications for corporate leaders and communicators who write these statements as well as theoretical implications related to brand personality, rhetorical theory and corporate ethos.

This research provides practical implications for corporate leaders and communication professionals about how to craft these statements, what components they might include and the potential benefits and downfalls of not clearly differentiating among purpose, mission and vision statements.

While several studies have compared differences between mission and vision statements, there is a lack of academic literature on how companies craft purpose statements. This study added to this body of knowledge on corporate communication.

Argues that a mission statement should contain goals, differentiation factors identify organisations’ aspirations and define the role of all stakeholder groups. Additionally they should establish the behaviour standards required to achieve the goals set out. David (1989) stated that every organisation has a unique purpose, set of goals and priorities and concludes that these priorities currently focus on three determinants of competitive advantage which are reflected in the mission statements of the UK’s top business organsations. Reports on an examination of the components of the mission statements of a large cross section of organisations.

When a mission statement is introduced to enhance the quality of health care management, it is vital to assess the actual impact. This article aims to consider the effect of introducing a single mission statement into an association of 18 not‐for‐profit hospitals by investigating the views of different groups of employees.

The paper explores the impact a mission statement has had by examining questionnaire responses from different groups of staff including the designers of the mission statement and those at the delivery point of services.

The study's outcomes indicate the value of examining the views of staff that are not in senior management. The evaluation of the mission statement's impact by senior managers was at variance with that of other staff.

The findings highlight the inadequacy of only examining senior management's opinions when considering the benefits of having introduced a mission statement into an organisation. In this study we identify those who originated or contributed to the mission statement in the first place. Once launched, a mission statement can have an impact throughout all staff, and that information needs to be captured in any assessment. This is consistent with the high rating normally given to a mission statement being an aid to motivating all staff. An important dimension of this study is the impact of a single mission statement throughout a group of dissimilar hospitals.

One of the most popular management tools in the world, the mission statement also is subject to widespread criticism. In order to improve our understanding of the mission statement's strategic value and to provide actionable recommendations for healthcare organizations, the paper adopted a social constructionist perspective in a mission statement study conducted among Canadian hospital executives. The paper found seven factors underlying 23 possible mission statement content items. Four of these (grand inspiration, benefactors, competitive orientation and business definition) corresponded to the dimensions of dominant managerial logic proposed by von Krogh and Grand, and were positively related to various behavioral, financial performance and mission achievement measures. The findings indicate that not all mission statement components are created equal and that the recommendations of major strategy texts may require reconsideration where this particular institutional context is concerned.

This paper seeks to determine whether significant differences exist between secular and faith‐based hospitals in terms of specific mission statement components and mission‐related performance variables.

A total of 130 top managers from a sample of 515 Canadian hospitals responded to a comprehensive questionnaire investigating 23 mission statement components and seven mission performance outcome measures. Data were analyzed using frequency analysis, one‐way analysis of variance, MANOVA, chi‐squared and Mann‐Whitney U tests.

The analysis showed that differences in mission content exist between different types of hospitals, and that these differences form a pattern of sorts within each type. It was also found that faith‐based hospitals out‐perform their secular counterparts in many ways.

The research and its findings are limited in their application to relatively large Canadian health care organizations and the responses/opinions given by managers from a hospital's senior echelons.

The results have implications for all health care organizations interested in improving the results in their mission performance scorecard. The findings both confirm the impact that mission statements can have on selected hospital performance indicators and demonstrate that faith‐based hospitals have been more diligent in taking advantage of them.

This is the first paper to show that specific and significant differences exist between the mission statements of secular and faith‐based hospitals and that those differences are associated with hospital performance. These findings will be of special interest to senior hospital administrators and “directors of mission” within faith‐based institutions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This study aims to explore the intellectual connections of mission statement research to identify the influential domains of source knowledge and emergent areas of research for future studies.

The authors deployed bibliometric methods, namely, citation, co-citation and network analysis. The authors collected data from the Scopus and Web of Science databases and analyzed the connections of the most influential articles.

The authors identified four knowledge domains that informed the mission statements literature: guidance on mission statement development, the value of mission statements, mission statements and organizational issues, mission statement content and communication. And the authors spotted four opportunities for knowledge advancement based on theoretical frameworks, performance measures, content and context.

Practitioners should think beyond the immediate benefits of mission statements, such as performance and legitimacy improvement. Instead, they should focus on long-term benefits, information advantages and democratizing the development phase of mission statements.

Mission statements have attracted scholarly attention over the past 40 years. Despite the formation of a considerable body of knowledge, intellectual connections of mission statement research have been largely neglected. Previous studies had a narrow focus or insufficient coverage of the literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first full-scale bibliometric study on the intellectual connections of the mission statements literature.

Research indicates that high‐performing firms share common components among their mission statements. The present study aims to begin a search for a similar correlation among academic schools of business.

Content and statistical analyses are used to analyze mission statements gathered from nearly all AACSB‐accredited business schools.

Mission statements for AACSB‐accredited schools are less than a page but not extremely short nor memorable. They address multiple stakeholders and usually do not include vision statements, goals or objectives. They often do not reference quality or the AACSB.

The sample was AACSB schools. As such, one should be circumspect in generalizing to other areas of business.

This paper shows deans and other interested stakeholders what an average mission statement for an AACSB school looks like. It also suggests that mission statements do not effectively identify individual universities. In general, mission statements are found to be longer than expected.

Business school deans need to be aware of the mission statements among their competitors in order to make better decisions in writing their own statements. Also, the research lays useful groundwork for those who want to discuss more controversial issues, such as the following: do mission statements differentiate the schools or is each school mission statement so similar to the others that there is little or no value in its expression?