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Looking for the value of mission
statements: a meta-analysis of
20 years of research
Sebastian Desmidt
University College Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
Anita Prinzie
Manchester Business School, Manchester, UK, and
Adelien Decramer
University College Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
Abstract
Purpose – After two decades of research, the effect of a mission statement on an organization’s
performance is still unclear. In order to address these shortcomings, a research project via the
setting-up of this paper seeks to identify all empirical studies addressing the mission
statement-financial performance relation, analyze how the mission statement-financial performance
relation is operationalized, and aggregate the findings of the identified studies by means of a
meta-analysis.
Design/methodology/approach – A systematic literature review procedure was developed to
identify all relevant articles and meta-analytic procedures were used to calculate the effect size of the
selected studies.
Findings – The study results indicate a small positive relation between mission statements and
measures of financial organizational performance. However, additional analyses indicated that
interstudy differences in measures significantly influenced the estimates (population effect sizes of the
created subsamples ranged from 0.0808 to 0.4100).
Research limitations/implications – These contradictive findings stress the importance and
impact of operationalization decisions in mission statement-performance research, and provide paths
for future practice-oriented research.
Originality/value – This study is the first to assess the performance impact of one of the most
popular management instruments, namely mission statements, by means of meta-analytical
techniques and, to evaluate the moderation effect of operationalization decisions on the cited
relationship. Furthermore, by aggregating research on the mission statement-performance
relationship, a knowledge base was devised which provides normative advice on the characteristics
of a “good” mission statement.
Keywords Mission statements, Organizational performance, Organizational analysis,
Financial performance
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
For two decades the performance implications of mission statements have been a
central area of investigation. However, research on the relationship between mission
statements and organizational performance has proved inconclusive. While some
studies have found significant benefits, others have found no relationship, or even
small negative effects. Hence, the question rises if developing a mission statement is a
worthwhile effort.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0025-1747.htm
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Management Decision
Vol. 49 No. 3, 2011
pp. 468-483
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0025-1747
DOI 10.1108/00251741111120806
The paper at hand addresses this issue by systematically reviewing the literature
examining the mission statement-financial performance relationship and analyzing the
strength of the cited relationship by means of meta-analyses.
2. The performance impact of mission statements
As a formal document that articulates an organization’s distinct and enduring purpose,
mission statements have become one of the most popular and widespread management
tools (2009). Some authors even state that mission statements appear to have evolved
into a prerequisite of doing business (Smith et al., 2001).
The key to this popularity most probably lies in a myriad mutually reinforcing
factors. One essential element, however, is the growing body of literature offering
validity to the assumption that developing a mission statement generates
organizational benefits which should ultimately result in improved (financial)
performance (Atrill et al., 2005; Bart and Baetz, 1998; Bart et al., 2001). Frequently cited
benefits include:
.Providing a sense of the organization’s direction and purpose. Mission statements
are the starting point of every strategic initiative. Only a clear definition of an
organization’s purpose makes it possible to formulate realistic and coherent
goals (Bart et al., 2001), and to choose between strategies (Kemp and Dwyer,
2003).
.Focusing the allocation of organizational resources. By providing a common
direction that transcends individual, departmental and transitory needs, the
mission statement acts as a strategic framework for allocating organizational
resources (Bartkus et al., 2000) and will facilitate organizational decision-making
processes.
.Communicating effectively with important internal and external stakeholders. The
mission statement can be an effective vehicle for communicating with internal
and external stakeholders (Bartkus et al., 2000). By clarifying the organization’s
goals, the organization can persuade stakeholders to provide the essential
(tangible or intangible) resources needed to sustain her activities (Sanchez and
Heene, 2004).
.Describing the values of the organization that will guide and inspire organizational
members. The mission statement serves as a focal point for individuals to
identify with the organization’s purpose and direction (Collins and Porras, 1995).
The resulting shared “sense of mission” hereby acts as a cultural control and
coordinating mechanism that focuses employee efforts on the achievement of
strategic goals (Campbell and Yeung, 1991).
However, despite the profusion of literature supporting the claim that mission
statements can produce a host of organizational benefits and therefore stimulate
(financial) performance (Weiss and Piderit, 1999), some studies indicate that generating
these benefits in practice is not an easy task. Bart (1997), for example, enquired the
senior managers of 88 leading North American corporations and came to the
conclusion that only 8 percent of them thought that their current mission statement
was fully clear or self-evident to the rest of the organization, only 28 percent claimed
that they were making significant strides toward achieving their mission statement
The value of
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statements
469
and, the majority reported that the organizational understanding, commitment and
support necessary for mission statement acceptance was less than forthcoming.
Furthermore, research by Vandijck et al. (2007) pointed out that Flemish not-for-profit
healthcare managers feel that their mission statement has no significant positive
influence on the day-to-day behavior of their organizational members nor that
members throughout the organization are committed to the mission statement.
These findings are grist to the mill of mission statement skeptics who expound that
mission statements do not often appear to deliver the promised benefits (Piercy and
Morgan, 1994). Moreover, these skeptics argue that mission statements can sometimes
even be counterproductive. For example, mission statements that are empty public
relations initiatives (O’Gorman and Doran, 1999) can generate cynicism rather than
pride (Bartkus et al., 2000).
The ongoing debate between mission statement advocates and skeptics makes it
impossible to see the wood for the trees. Are mission statements a valuable
management instrument or just another empty bureaucratic activity? Despite the
determination with which the protagonists as well as the antagonists of mission
statements defend their point of view, and the growing body of literature supporting
the value of mission statements, it is still very difficult to answer this question.
3. Research objectives
Given the earlier formulated doubts about the effectiveness of mission statements, we
decided to review the empirical research addressing the relationship between mission
statements and financial organizational performance using meta-analytic techniques.
The objectives of this paper are therefore:
.To identify all empirical studies addressing the mission statement-financial
performance relation.
.To analyze how the mission statement-financial performance relation is
operationalized.
.To aggregate the findings of the identified studies by means of a meta-analysis.
Successively, we will discuss the utilized method of data collection, the methodology of
the conducted meta-analyses, the results and its implications.
4. Data collection
A selection process was set up to identify all published articles analyzing the
relationship between mission statements and financial performance. The applied
review strategy was based upon the systematic literature review process for
management research initialized by Tranfield et al. (2003). A systematic review process
differs “from traditional narrative reviews by adopting a replicable, scientific and
transparent process that aims to minimize bias through exhaustive literature searches”
(Tranfield et al., 2003, p. 209). The overall process of the conducted review is
summarized in Figure 1.
Prior to beginning the actual review, the review team initiated a scoping study to
assess the size of the study and to delimit the subject area. Not an easy task. Terms
such as mission statement, statement of purpose, vision statement and value statement
are often used to underpin overlapping, interchangeable and even distinct concepts
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(Schwartz, 2001). We decided to circumvent these semantic pitfalls by focussing only
on articles which explicitly use the term “mission statement” to indicate “a document
that articulates an organization’s distinct and enduring purpose [...] which should
answer some really fundamental questions about an organization, such as, “Why do
we exist?”, “What is our purpose?”, and “What do we want to achieve?”” (Bart and
Tabone, 1999, p. 20).
The next step was to determine the appropriate citation indexes. Based on
comparable studies (Leseure et al., 2004, Pittaway et al., 2004) eight computerized
bibliographical databases (Emerald, Psychinfo, Worklit, Web of Science, Ebsco,
Swetswise, Synergy and Proquest) were included in the research design.
Figure 1.
The systematic review
process
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statements
471
Finally, to round up the scoping study, all research decisions were captured in a
review protocol. The devised protocol was followed meticulously during the entire data
collection process.
The actual data collection process consisted of four stages. In the first stage the
keyword “mission statement” was entered into the selected electronic databases. The
initial search yielded a staggering 11,118 citations. In stage two, the identified citations
were copied into the bibliographic software Endnote. The created data files formed the
basis for a more thorough title and abstract analysis in order to filter out irrelevant or
duplicate citations (Thorpe et al., 2005). Stage two allowed us to decimate the sample
collected in stage one. An overwhelming proportion of the initial sample consisted of
articles that mention the concept “mission statement” but do not discuss, analyze or
research it (for example articles about strategic planning or the Balanced Scorecard)
and/or are published in a non-relevant format or source (e.g. book reviews, opinions,
editorials, cover stories). As a matter of fact, of the thousands of articles reviewed only
516 citations complied with the pre-specified criteria.
Next, in stage three, the abstracts of the remaining 516 articles were carefully
screened in order to determine whether the article reported any empirical findings.
Each reviewed article was assigned a specific code. Code “A” articles report empirical
findings. Code “B” articles have no empirical basis and were as a consequence omitted.
The “A”-sample contains 75 articles and the “B”-sample 441 articles. In the fourth stage
of the data collection process the articles of the “A”-sample were carefully screened in
order to establish if they analyzed the relationship between formal mission statements
and measures of financial organizational performance. The fourth stage yielded 20
suitable articles.
In the fifth and last stage of the data collection process, the references of the selected
articles were analyzed. Stage five acted as a comprehensiveness control measure in
order to ascertain that the first four steps of the selection process have identified all
relevant empirical articles. Stage five of the selection process did not reveal any
additional empirical articles. The selected articles are listed in Table I.
5. Data analysis
We will first analyze the operationalization methods employed in the detected articles
and consequently aggregate the findings of the identified studies by means of a
meta-analysis.
5.1 Operationalization
As evidence suggests that construct measurement is a key area of concern for strategic
management research (Boyd et al., 2005), and study outcomes can be affected by
operationalization decisions and variable selection (Russell et al., 1994), we analyzed
how the constructs “mission statement” and “performance” are operationalized in the
detected articles. Table II summarizes our findings:
Table II indicates that there have been numerous ways in which mission statements
have been operationalized. More specifically, we identified seven categories, which in
turn, can be grouped into two subgroups:
(1) Presence of mission statement.
(2) Mission statement components.
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Study Sample size Study population Geographic location
(Analoui and Karami, 2002)
a
508 SMEs in the electrical and electronic industry UK
(Atrill et al., 2005) 143 UK listed companies UK
(Amato and Amato, 2002) 153 Fortune 200 and Forbes Best Small Businesses List USA
(Bart, 1996) 75 Industrial and advanced technology companies Canada
(Bart, 1997) 44 Industrial corporations North America
(Bart and Baetz, 1998) 136 Top 500 industrial corporations Canada
(Bart and Tabone, 1998) 103 English-speaking hospitals Canada
(Bart and Tabone, 1999) 103 English-speaking hospitals Canada
(Bart, 2001) 559 Not specified Not specified
(Bart et al., 2001) 83 Large corporations North America
(Bart and Bontis, 2003)
a
339 Fortune 1000 and Financial Post 500 North America
(Bart, 2004a) 20 Various North America
(Bart, 2004b)
a
339 Various Not specified
(Bart and Hupfer, 2004) 130 English-speaking hospitals Canada
(David, 1989) 75 Business Week 1000 USA
(O’Gorman and Doran, 1999)
a
115 Irish-owned SMEs Ireland
(Omran et al., 2002)
a
80 Various UK
(Pearce II and David, 1987)
a
61 Fortune 500 USA
(Sidhu, 2003) 17 Multimedia companies with more than 20 employees The Netherlands
(Sufi and Lyons, 2003) 30 Hospitality firms Not specified
Notes:
a
Article did not report the required summary statistics necessary for a meta-analysis and was consequently omitted
Table I.
Overview of selected
articles
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statements
473
Measures of MS
Static focus Process focus
Measures of
performance
Study A B C D E F G I J
(Analoui and Karami, 2002)
a
£ £
(Atrill et al., 2005) £ £
(Amato and Amato, 2002) £ £
(Bart, 1996) ££
(Bart, 1997) ££ £
(Bart and Baetz, 1998) ££ ££££
(Bart and Tabone, 1998) £££
(Bart and Tabone, 1999) £££
(Bart, 2001) ££
(Bart et al., 2001) £££££
(Bart and Bontis, 2003)
a
££ £
(Bart, 2004a) ££
(Bart, 2004b)
a
£££
(Bart and Hupfer, 2004) £ £
(David, 1989) £ £
(O’Gorman and Doran, 1999)
a
£ £
(Omran et al., 2002)
a
££
(Pearce II and David, 1987)
a
£ £
(Sidhu, 2003) ££
(Sufi and Lyons, 2003) ££
Total 2 11 3 4 3 6 3 13 7
Notes: Operationalization MS: A ¼Presence of MS, B ¼MS Components/Content, C ¼Quality of MS, D ¼MS Drivers, E ¼MS development
process, F ¼Attitude towards MS, G ¼MS organizational alignment; Operationalization performance: I ¼Financial performance measures,
J¼Satisfaction with financial performance;
a
Article did not report the required summary statistics necessary for a meta-analysis and was consequently
omitted
Table II.
Overview of
operationalization
characteristics
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(3) Quality of mission statement.
(4) Mission statement drivers.
(5) Mission statement development process.
(6) Attitude towards mission statement.
(7) Mission statement – organizational alignment.
Numbers (1)-(3) are in the subgroup “static focus” and numbers (4)-(7) in the subgroup
“process focus”.
The most basic way of operationalizing mission statements is to measure whether
or not organizations have a mission statement. In this type of research, the mere
presence of a mission statement, regardless of its form or quality, is supposed to
positively influence performance.
A second method is to operationalize a mission statement by its content. Various
others have presented a blueprint of possible mission statement components and used the
resulting stencil to assess mission statements. Pearce and David (1987), for example,
identified eight components, which can be included in a mission statement while in a later
study David (1989) identified nine key elements. A third approach takes the importance of
the mission statement content even further and rates mission statements based on their
congruence with the content of a theoretical “ideal” mission statement. Such research is
based on the underlying assumptions that there is one best way to formulate a mission
statement and that the quality of a mission statement is determined by the presence of
specific components. The more components of the ideal that are traceable in a specific
mission statement, the higher the “quality” of that mission statement and hence the
stronger the relationship with certain performance indicators will be.
Although the first three methods have contributed significantly to our
understanding of mission statements, some researchers argued that excising a
mission statement from the organizational fabric it was imbedded in, results inevitably
in a loss of vital information. Consequently, they moved beyond examining the mere
existence or content of mission statements and focused on the role of the mission
statement process. The fourth approach, for example, focuses on the “drivers” of
mission statement formulation (Bart, 1997). In this type of research, mission statements
are measured by assessing managers’ reasons for creating a mission statement. The
central assumption hereby is that some rationales for developing a mission statement
are more related to mission statement effectiveness, and thus performance, than others.
The fifth approach operationalizes mission statements based on the style of the
development process or the degree to which certain organizational members were
involved in the development process. Process characteristics are hereby considered as
essential variables influencing the effectiveness of mission statements. The sixth
approach measures the degree of alignment between the mission statement and
organizational management systems. This research stresses that management systems
and processes must be aligned with the mission statement.
Lastly, mission statements are operationalized by assessing the attitudes towards
the instrument. For example, what is the degree of satisfaction with the mission
statement or the level of commitment to the mission statement? This attitudinal focus
indicates that the level of “mission statement acceptance” could be a driver of mission
statement performance.
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Let us now look closer at the operationalizations of the dependent variable, namely
financial performance. Our analysis indicates that the performance indicators can be
classified as “hard financial indicators” and “soft financial indicators”.
The term “hard financial indicators” refers to the variety of financial indicators that
are used to assess the performance of organizations (for example ten-year average
earnings per share, ten-year average return on investment, company stock market
return and profit margin).
In contrast, “soft financial indicators” assess financial performance by means of an
attitudinal indicator, namely the managers’ satisfaction with the overall financial
performance of the organization. Authors like Sounder (1987) argue that managers’
evaluations of an organization’s financial performance in perceptual or scaled terms is
an equivalent alternative for hard financial indicators.
5.2 Meta-analysis
Although the literature review detected 20 relevant articles, six studies did not report
the required summary statistics necessary for a meta-analysis. As a result, these
articles were omitted from the sample (marked with a superscript “a” in Table I). The
final sample hence consisted of 14 studies involving 206 correlations or effect sizes. As
including multiple effect sizes from one study in the same analysis would violate the
assumption of independent data points, we decided to calculate one effect size per
study by averaging the studies’ correlations into a single mean value (Lipsey and
Wilson, 2001).
Next, to provide a more accurate estimate of the population correlation and its
variability, we corrected the 14 included effect sizes for sampling error. The reported
population effect sizes are thus the weighted average of the correlations in the
(sub)sample. As meta-analysis does not require a large number of studies and can be
usefully applied to as few as two or three study findings, the rather limited size of our
database proved to be no problem (Hunter and Schmidt, 2004).
All calculations were made utilizing the statistical software program Meta-analysis
5.3 (Schwarzer, 1995) and were based on the meta-analytic procedures of Hunter and
Schmidt (2004).
6. Results
The results of the performed meta-analyses are presented in Table III. The initial
analysis comprises 14 effect sizes from 14 different studies. The population effect size r
(weighted mean r) of 0.22 indicates a small positive relation[1] (Cohen, 1988) between
mission statements and measures of financial performance.
However, the underlying data set proved to be heterogeneous and the null
hypothesis of homogeneity was consequently rejected, implying that the variance in
effect sizes may be attributed (partly) to the influence of moderator variables (Verlegh
and Steenkamp, 1999). To test the impact of potential moderating effects, we created
subsamples of studies based upon the earlier discussed variances in measurement
methods of both the independent and the dependent variable.
Subsample 1 (static focus) resulted in a population effect size rof 0.2579 while
subsample 2 (process focus) demonstrated a much lower population effect size rof
0.1414. A comparable outcome was noted in the subsamples based on
operationalizations of the dependent variable. Subsample 3 (hard financial measures)
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Subgroup criteria
No.
studies
Total
sample
Mean
r
Observ.
variance
Residual
variance
Ex-plained variance
(%) 95% C.I.
Homogeneity
data
All articles 14 1,945 0.2257 0.0218 0.0153 29.69
20.017133 to
0.468601 No
Static focus 9 1,586 0.2579 0.0202 0.0152 24.47
0.015817 to
0.500119 No
Process focus 7 545 0.1414 0.0120 20.0003 100
0.141400 to
0.141400 Yes
Hard finan. 9 1,077 0.1350 0.0081 0.00004 99.47
0.122242 to
0.147845 Yes
Soft finan. 5 868 0.3382 0.0160 0.0115 28.2
0.128070 to
0.548452 No
Static !Hard
finan. 7 958 0.1490 0.0073 0.0003 95.55
0.113724 to
0.184421 Yes
Static !Soft finan. 2 642 0.4100 0.0010 20.0011 100
0.410005 to
0.410005 Yes
Process !Hard
finan. 4 339 0.0808 0.0020 20.0096 100
0.080884 to
0.080884 Yes
Process !Soft
finan. 4 309 0.1935 0.1135 0.0299 93.06
0.134970 to
0.252214 Yes
Reduced sample 12 1,303 0.1349 0.00712 0.0000 100
0.134942 to
0.134942 Yes
Table III.
Subgroup meta-analysis
of moderator effects
The value of
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477
yielded a population effect size rof 0.1350 while the population effect size rof
subsample 4 (soft financial measures) increased to 0.3382. Subsample 1 and 4 still
demonstrated a homogeneity problem. As a result, we matched the dependent and
independent operationalization categories in a two-by-two matrix in order to create
four new subsamples. Subsamples 5 to 8 displayed population effect sizes rranging
from 0.0808 to 0.4100, explaining 2 percent to 17 percent of the variation in financial
performance, and passed the test of homogeneity. Consequently, the conducted
meta-analyses indicate that operationalization decisions impact the magnitude of the
mission statement-performance relationship.
Further analysis revealed that the rather large population effect size rand variance
explanation power of subsample 6 (r¼0:4100 and R2¼0:16810) is produced by just
two studies, both with a large sample size. As the results are all weighted, those two
studies have a disproportional large impact on the overall population effect size r. In
subsample 9 we omitted these outliers. The population effect size rof the 12 included
studies is 0.1349 and the explained variance is 1.4 per cent (total sample size ¼1;303).
The dataset of subsample 9 proved to be homogeneous and thus indicates that there is
a positive, albeit small, relationship between mission statements and measures of
financial organizational performance.
The question now arises which specific mission statement characteristics influence
the magnitude of this relationship. In order to answer this question, we re-analyzed the
selected articles and listed the mission statement characteristics, which displayed the
strongest relationship with performance. The conducted content analysis indicates,
first of all, that it cannot be concluded from the selected studies that there is a
performance difference between organizations that have a mission statements and
organization’s that have not (David, 1989). However, when organization’s do decide to
craft a mission statement, the study results indicate that positive differences in
performance were found to be associated with mission statements which contained no
financial goals, identified an organization’s values/beliefs, defined an organization’s
purpose(s), unique identity, distinctive competence/strength, and were relatively short
(Bart and Baetz, 1998; Bart and Tabone, 1999; Sidhu, 2003). In addition, mission
statement performance seems to benefit from a specific focus on the stakeholders
served and the means to satisfy them (Bart and Baetz, 1998; Bart and Tabone, 1999).
Second, with regard to the mission statement development process, the studies
indicate that managers whom develop a mission statement with the aim of inspiring
organizational members, promoting shared values, and providing a common direction,
are most likely to increase their organization’s performance (Bart, 1997, Bart, 1998,
Bart et al., 2001). Furthermore, the amount of internal stakeholders involvement, and
especially the degree of involvement of the members of the Board of Directors, was
found to be positively and significantly related with performance (Bart, 2004a; Bart
and Tabone, 1998).
Just formulating a mission statement, however, seems not to be enough to maximize
its benefits. The selected studies provide support for aligning virtually every
organizational dimension with the organization’s mission statement. Some of the
strongest alignment relationships with performance were found in the case of strategic
planning, operating planning, budgeting training, leadership, objective setting
systems, and especially an organization’s performance evaluation system (Bart and
Tabone, 1998).
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7. Discussion and conclusion
Although some authors question the effectiveness of mission statements, the results of
the current study confirm that there is a growing body of literature supporting the
notion that mission statements do matter in terms of their measurable association with
an organization’s financial success (Bart et al., 2001). Furthermore, our analysis of the
empirical literature indicates that there is a positive, albeit small, relationship between
mission statements and measures of financial organizational performance but that the
exact magnitude of the relationship is influenced by operationalization decisions. Time
to shelve the discussion?
Not necessarily, although previous research provided valuable information on the
mission statement-performance relationship, our analysis of the methodological
characteristics within this field offers some food for thought and paths for future
research.
First of all, our analysis indicates that the majority of the reviewed studies rely on
bivariate models to assess the magnitude of the mission statement-performance
relationship. Even if these research results indicate that the nature of the mission
statement-performance relationship is without a doubt positive, it establishes a
correlation without offering insights into causality. Consequently, more focused
research is needed to assess the characteristics of this relationship, and to help
practitioners craft a “good” mission statement. Moreover, our results indicate that
operationalization decisions and variable selection significantly influence the strength
of the mission statement-performance relationship. In combination with the detected
diversity in measurement methods this could pose a threat for the external validity and
generalizability of individual studies.
Second, the majority of the analyzed studies tries to link a specific mission
statement indicator to financial performance. The question can be raised if indicators
of financial performance are suited to assess the effectiveness of mission statements.
Given the number of intervening factors influencing financial performance, the
relationship between mission statements and the bottom line is in almost all cases
expected to be weak in magnitude and complex. Additionally, the assumption that
mission statements are unambiguously supportive of higher financial returns isn’t
necessarily correct. Organizations may, for example, use a mission statement to
establish a primary purpose of quality or technology leadership, which places financial
performance in a secondary role. Besides, as Campbell and Nash (1992) indicated,
organizations often use mission statements as an instrument to increase or secure
organizational members’ commitment. However, even if the mission statement is
effective and succeeds in increasing organizational members’ commitment or
motivation, will this automatically translate in higher financial returns?
These remarks prompt us to rethink the ways we have operationalized the mission
statement-performance relationship. Hence, we propose to focus in future research on
developing conceptual frameworks explaining the mission statement-performance
relationship and to test these theories empirically. The first step in this process will be
to abandon the assumption that mission statements are a magical instrument that,
once crafted, flow automatically through the organization and help solve a wide variety
of managerial problems. Future research should focus on determining which mission
statement characteristics induce specific organizational benefits and thus influence the
effectiveness of mission statements. This approach calls for a shift of focus within
The value of
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statements
479
mission statement research as it requires a careful translation of the mission
statement-performance relationship into its causal components. More specifically,
researches will have to determine the specific benefits associated with developing,
implementing and communicating a mission statement, appropriate ways to measure
the quality of the mission statement (process) in light of the aspired organizational
benefits, and performance indicators which can be linked directly to the mission
statement operationalization. Table IV provides examples of possible
operationalizations.
Unraveling these causal relationships between mission statement characteristics
and specific organizational benefits will help to identify the organizational and
individual factors enhancing or hampering the effectiveness of mission statements,
and to open the existing black box between mission statements and organizational
performance.
8. Limitations
It should be noted that the findings of this study are subject to a number of
methodological caveats, which are common to many studies in this area. First, several
of the meta-analyses are based on small numbers of studies whereby the magnitude of
several of the population effect sizes could be altered by adding just a single
large-sample study. Nevertheless, the conducted meta-analyses do help to reduce some
of the subjectivity associated with traditional review techniques (Mathieu and Zajac,
1990). A second limitation of the paper at hand is its focus on published journal articles.
It is known that the effects reported in published studies are generally larger than
those reported in unpublished ones. Excluding unpublished studies is thus quite likely
to introduce an upward bias into the size of effects that will be found. Although such a
”file drawer problem” is inherent to most meta-analyses (Rosenthal, 1984), study
Mission statement benefits Potential operationalizations
Potential dependent
performance variable
Providing a sense of the
organization’s direction and
purpose
“Clear definition of purpose” Better formulation of short- and
long-range goals
Better organizational
understanding of short- and
long-range goals
Focusing allocation of
organizational resources
“Clear delineation of strategic
boundaries”
Better allocation of
organizational resources
Improved organizational
decision-making processes
Communicating with internal
and external stakeholders
“Clarification of the
organization’s value
proposition”
Stakeholder support for the
organization
Stakeholder knowledge of the
organization
Highlighting organizational
values that will guide and
inspire organizational members
“Clear value statement” Cultural controls and
coordination within the
organization
“Shared sense of mission” within
the staff
Table IV.
Alternative
operationalizations of the
mission-performance
relationship
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results should consequently be interpreted with care. Third, given the sometimes long
period between the submission date of an article and its actual publication date,
literature reviews based on published material always display a “time lag” of one to
two years. Recent evolutions or research are consequently not detected by such a
method. Hence, these results should always be used in association with a specific
timeframe and not extrapolated to other timeframes. Although this analysis provides
valuable information about the empirical knowledge of the relationship between
mission statements and measures of financial organizational performance in a given
timeframe, recent evolutions within the field could already have caught up with the
formulated remarks and suggestions.
Note
1. Effect size: 0 #0.20 !Small; Effect size: 0.21 #0.39 !Medium; Effect size: #0.40 !
Large.
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Further reading
Rigby, D. and Bilodeau, B. (2009), Management Tools and Trends 2009, Bain & Company,
Boston, MA.
Corresponding author
Sebastian Desmidt can be contacted at: sebastian.desmidt@hogent.be
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